Green vs. the American Dream to be debated at MCC

Big homes on big lots with big driveways for big cars have traditionally been mainstays of the American dream.

So does “going green” mean saying goodbye to all that?

It’s all about making choices and cost-benefit analyses, experts say. And yes, it definitely means adapting to change.

“Americans have been living off cheap, plentiful energy for a long time. You can argue that has fueled our growth and our awesome lifestyle,” said Ted Erski, earth science instructor at McHenry County College, who advocates considering the installation of a wind turbine on campus. “If we change that, will it mean we’re in for uncomfortable changes and financial issues?”

Erski is among the speakers taking part in the college’s upcoming Spring 2011 Speaker Series, whose theme is: “Is the Drive for Green Destroying the American Dream?” The series kicks off Tuesday, Feb. 1, with a showing of the “The Green Machine” from the PBS series, “e2,” followed by a panel discussion featuring college faculty.

The goal of the annual series is to “address hot topics going on in our community, and also showcase through these discussions the work our faculty is doing,” said Christina Haggerty, director of marketing and public relations for the college. The first series took place last spring and focused on food-related topics such as shopping locally and childhood obesity.

This year’s series title was meant to provoke thought and elicit debate among panelists and community members, Haggerty said.

“The goal is not to pick a side, but create some potentially controversial and interesting discussion,” she said. She expects a Feb. 26 “Green Debate,” whose panelist lineup will be announced in February, to be particularly spirited.

Christopher Steiner, author of the 2009 book, “$20 per Gallon,” and a staff writer for Forbes magazine, will be the featured speaker on March 1. Steiner believes that rising gas prices will eventually force people to live in smaller homes and move from exurbs closer to urban centers, but the change won’t be drastic, nor necessarily bad.

“The American dream is not about acres of land and enormous amounts of square feet at home,” he said. “I think we kind of lost sight of that over the last 20 years.”

Going green sometimes means adapting to social costs, such as bad smells emanating from landfills that produce methane gas, and the displacement of homes when hydroelectric power dams are built, instructor Erski said.

Sometimes, aesthetic changes are enough to get people nervous. “I don’t think anyone loves looking at water towers, but we they are all over and we don’t think about it. A turbine is something we haven’t seen, and that we immediately notice.”