Kermit was right — it's not easy being green

In the latter days of the second millennium A.D., a talking frog uttered a prophetic lament.

“It's not easy being green,” said the sage frog to all who had ears to listen and eyes to watch “Sesame Street.”

In this way, the prophet known as Kermit presaged the challenge of the new millennium.

Being green is dauntingly difficult in today's world. Whether you call it living lightly on the earth, reducing your carbon footprint, or being environmentally friendly, the green life is fraught with challenges. As the new year starts, let's take a look at the challenges — and the hope — in being green.

The fundamental obstacle to being green is that it is antithetical to consumerism, and consumerism is key to a healthy economy. After all, a former president admonished us to shop. Credit card companies court us, thriving on our spending money that we don't have. Advertisers cajole us to purchase things we don't need. Slick marketing seduces us into buying things we didn't even know we wanted. And of course there are the Joneses with whom we must keep up.

Thus, we are suckered into buying stuff. Lots of stuff. Big stuff, little stuff. And a notable first for our 200,000-year-old-species, electronic stuff. Even the nouveau-Luddites are not immune to this.

Consuming so much stuff takes a tremendous toll on the planet. Consuming requires producing, producing requires extracting, extracting leads to exploiting, and the whole kit and caboodle is altering the global climate. Oh, and there's the pesky little problem of toxic waste — particularly from the plethora of electronic gizmos we have fallen in love with.

If you're one of the brave few who cries, “Wait a minute! I don't want this!” — if you're one who wants to effect change, what on earth can you do? It's a tough question with a tough answer. Ready? Here it is: Buy less stuff. Use less stuff. Need less stuff. Or, as a writer more eloquent than I stated, “Simplify, simplify” (Henry David Thoreau, 1854).

Easier said than done. You're not sure you can cut back on how much stuff you buy. You're not sure what stuff to buy. The distinction between needs and wants is still blurred. Where do you start?

You start with a small step — say, for example, the step into the grocery store. There's that plastic bag recycle bin, right at the entrance. Use it. Then, perusing the aisles, find the one with locally grown and/or organic items. If you can't find produce from Illinois this time of year, Wisconsin is close enough — or Michigan. And California's produce is more local than Argentina's.

Another step you take every day is toward the kitchen garbage can. Think twice before throwing that bottle away. Rinse it, then take a step to the recycling bin. Now, to make the effort to recycle worthwhile, take some extra steps at the store. Read labels. Look for products with the highest percentage of recycled — and recyclable — components. If you don't buy recycled, there's little point in that recycle bin you put out on the curb.

Here's another small step you can take. When you reach for the expired prescriptions in the medicine cabinet, don't step toward the wastebasket to throw them away (or to the toilet to flush them down!), set aside the jar of pills and take it to special collections sites for medications.

One of the steps with the biggest impact on the planet is the step into the garage where we get into our vehicles every day. This is a hard step to change, as our culture has built a lifestyle based on our love affair with the internal combustion engine and all its trappings. The automobile has shaped the design of our towns and cities, our vocations and avocations, and — as was made so painfully clear in the economic crash-and-burn of 2009, the auto industry has become a cornerstone of our economy.

While you, as an individual, can't stop the juggernaut of a giant so big and so powerful as the auto industry, you can take green steps around it. Are there places you can walk or bicycle instead of drive? Your workplace? The post office? The library? The bank? If not — and for many this is true--- the next best thing is to combine errands, plan your driving to reduce unnecessary trips, and cut back your miles on the road. Carpooling is another good option.

You may still be skeptical that little individual lifestyle changes can effect any global change. Especially when over 1 billion Chinese are buying cars and iPods and flat screen TV's and furnaces and air conditioning units and automatic garage door openers — and importing United States' coal to power many of these things.

Author Michael Pollan addressed the green dilemma head on in a New York Times Magazine essay published in 2008. Pollan asks the poignant question, “Why bother?” To many people, the personal efforts to be green seem insignificant if not futile. The global environmental problems are too large, too overwhelming.

“The reasons not to bother are many and compelling,” Pollan wrote. Should we just shrug our shoulders and go back to buying new Blu-Rays and driving our cars and running our appliances like there's no tomorrow? No. Because there is a tomorrow.

Pollan posited that, “If you do bother, you will set an example for other people. If enough other people bother, each one influencing yet another in a chain reaction of behavioral change, markets for all manner of green products and alternative technologies will prosper and expand. … Consciousness will be raised, perhaps even changed: new moral imperatives and new taboos might take root in the culture. Driving an SUV or eating a 24-ounce steak or illuminating your super-sized home like an airport runway at night might come to be regarded as outrages to human conscience. Not having things might become cooler than having them.”

Chew on that thought for a while.

“Going personally green is a bet,” Pollan continued, “nothing more or less, though it's one we probably all should make, even if the odds of it paying off aren't great. Sometimes you have to act as if acting will make a difference, even when you can't prove that it will.”

Kermit was right. It isn't easy being green. It is, however, an imperative. There is a tomorrow to care about, and the world is watching us. Let's all take whatever steps we can toward greenness in 2011. Together, we can do it.

• Valerie Blaine is a naturalist with the Kane County Forest Preserve District. E-mail her at blainevalerie@kaneforest.com

To learn more

Learn about green living at the Kane County Forest Preserve District's class “Bioregionalism: There's No Place Like Home” set for 7 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 19, at Brewster Creek, 6N921 Route 25, St. Charles.

Attendees will explore the concept of “sense of place” and how it affects the commitment to environmental stewardship where one lives.

For information about this class for adults, call (847) 741-8350, ext. 10, or e-mail programs@kaneforest.com.