Greener Thinking was founded to try to help find a way to make “going green” more than just a cult with geek like savy. We knew that going green is more than just having a few people who were looking for a challenge. Going green needs to be more of a requirement. It needs to be fashionable and easily accessible and envied. We knew that it would not be too long because there were so many things coming together all at once. 

Yesterday I went to the Detroit Auto Show and saw some really cool things that I believe people will want and not because its green but, because its cool. Many people will want the Chevy Volt because it will save them gas money and all the cool gadgets included in the package. That is what green needs to mean. That people will buy a green product because it is BETTER than other products not ONLY because it is green.

Barack Obama looks as though he understands these challenges and would like to increase the perceived value of green products and invest in making them more viable to increase demand. This will eventually make people opt for an electric car, not because gas cars are dirty, but because electric cars perform better and you will never again have to stop at those “Old Fashion Gas Stations.”

Congratulations Barack Obama.

Help lead us to Greener Thinking.

Once upon a time there was a planet in a galaxy far far away. This planet had many residents through out its lifetime. Some of these residents were kind to the planet and it made the planet happy. These residents were called “birds” and “animals”. There were also some residents who had learned if you burned things it gave off energy. With this newly discovered power these residents expanded quickly and desecrated the forests with new “Civilizations.” These residents were called “humans” and the planet they called home was “Earth”… Wait, that’s us! Oh, wait, that’s us…

There has been quite a bit of new information coming out in the last couple of days about Greenland and its glaciers. Most of it does not look good. Some have even stated things that you really do not want to hear such as “It is too late already.” Not very promising when you are trying to fight a battle against pollution and at the same time trying to supply more energy to more and more people. Greenland’s glaciers have been receding at an increasing rate. Some of the predictions made by scientists for the next hundred or more years have already come about. 

But as always there is an opposite side of the story. In Britain a judge has taken it upon himself to judge fact from fiction with Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and predict the future. According to the British Times “This is distinctly alarmist and part of Mr Gore’s ”wake-up call“. It was common ground that if Greenland melted it would release this amount of water – “but only after, and over, millennia.”

So between these newfound facts New York and Florida will disappear in the next couple of years or a few millennia. Me personally I would rather try to stop it in the next couple of years and later find that it was unfounded instead of a few million people losing their homes. 

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Alternet
Times Online

As always art imitates life… or is it the other way around? They come so close any more that it is hard to tell which came first. While watching the new “Simpson’s Movie” I realized that sometimes the best way to get a point across is to exaggerate it. Before you read any further, I would like disclose that this article may include spoilers if you have not seen the movie yet. 

In the movie there were many warnings of destroying the planet. With one family and humor they were able to capture different angles of the debate on global warming. Lisa as always is trying to make the world a better place and represents the activists. She spends her time trying to educate people on the failure of their ways and how it will affect future generations. But that analogy is easy. In the movie Lisa warns Springfield if they don’t change their ways that they will destroy the environment. To this the residents just scoffed as if it did not concern them until Lisa stated that the water they had been drinking through the night was from their very polluted lake near by. This got their attention and helped them understand the immediacy of the problem. This is the exaggeration that I was speaking of. You cannot show someone an issue and have them respect it unless you can show them how it will directly affect them. 

Homer is the ignorant (not stupid) everyday person that does not really have a preference as to what is right or wrong. He just does what is easiest. This category is probably the category that contains most of the population. These people do not really have any idea that things they do can affect the environment and as so destroy their environment without knowing it. Burning plastic cups in a bonfire, throwing garbage out the window while driving, and making 40 copies of a power point presentation instead of e-mailing it to the attendees. In “The Simpson’s Movie” Homer was sitting in line to have his hazardous waste to be taken care of properly, when he hears that there is a doughnut sale, instead of waiting he does the easy thing… well according to him it is easier… he drives through many pylons and a fence and throws his trash into the lake. This dumping is the final straw for the lake and starts the beginning of the end for Springfield. The government traps Springfield in a bubble because they are “the most polluted city in the world.” They are locked in the bubble so that they cannot spread their filth to the rest of the planet. 

Don’t let your town get trapped in a bubble, find your own analogies and see how humor can help make a point of a very real problem go see the movie. 

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Ignorant Definition