Thursday, February 25, 2010

Going Green

As a child I remember my father jokingly replicating the words of Kermit the Frog, "It ain't easy being green." This green that Kermit was referring to was more lonesome then the Green you hear about in advertising, a term slung by journalists and media mouths, even commonly by people who think they are doing good for the environment. Green is the color well known for envy, and for fresh life. Someone can metaphorically be green, as in new and unexperienced, I feel green in this way. I feel young and inexperienced, and yet just like a banana I will grow old, accumulate spots and areas of ware. If I live long enough I too will shrivel and be allocated to the freezer in hopes of later mixture into bread.
Green it a good color but should not overshadow the need for a complete spectrum of color. I sometimes chuckle at the silliness of rallying around the idea of a color. 'Go greener' the hybrid buses scream at you from their ceiling panels. We must indeed respect nature if that is what is implied, but along with the greens of nature, the ugly brown mess of decay that we need must also be respected. It will become our soil, and if left long enough a energy packed underground storage of carbon in the form of oil and coal. The balance nature lives on must have green life as well and brown and black death. Where anything is consumed its by products must be expelled and hopefully recycled. Much in the way yogic thinkers believe breath must be allowed in to retrieve oxygen, nitrogen and other by products must be allowed out, and there is not one without the other.
Is a Pedicab ride green?
Well indeed it is I would argue, but it is also brown, white, and red. Brown like the color of repeated sweating in cloth, like the skin after bicycling around in the sun, white like the salt dried from sweat rolling off the side of my face. White like the teeth of a smile and laugh at the joys of riding in such a contraption as a Pedicab. Red in the face with blood pushing through my body, Red in blushing cheeks of your face as you and your date enjoy the night air.
Green? Yes quite, but just as the bright green of spring must be celebrated, so too the vulture and decay of fall be respected and honered. The need for various biospheres like the brown desert of the Gobi must balance with the green of jungle across the equator.
Will the world even be all green? The need for cars, railroads and other fossil fuel burning vehicles had been established in a short amount of time historically. Before the steam engine people used nature, like the rivers and wind, not heat. Travel was accomplished faster with horses, and where did their energy come from? From the same place I get it, food.
Food is energy, heck we wouldn't even need food if we has cytoplasm rather then melanin. An ability to take a wave and process it in your digestive system just isn't in the cards for humans the way it is for plants.
Doing things that are energy efficient in the long run are Green and I encourage people to make that choice, yet lets get to the real reason of why we are doing things. Perhaps not because they are green but because they contribute to a healthier earth, a earth that needs all colors and especially green. But when thinking about how I got my energy to transport people I think Brown, like peanut butter, like George Carver's peanut oil car, like the color of cloth after repeated sweating.
Green by chance will be St Patrick's day March 17th, the next day I plan on being out on the streets to join in the joys of transportation.