Green Light

It's official. I am, as some not so nice conservative commentators would say, a Greenie Weanie.

I was in the grocery store, for a few of those blessedly unencumbered moments a mother enjoys. I was looking for dixie cups for my son to rinse out the 'tooth-taste' after brushing. I could only find the plastic version. I put the package back as I knew it would take a bazillion years for the cup to fully not be impacting the earth.

Please understand one thing. I think humans were created to care for, steward and use all the earth has to offer. This includes meat. I love a good steak as much as the next gal. This includes drilling wherever we damn well please to get the oil we are sitting on-instead of paying countries that harbor and train terrorists. In essence we are paying people to plot to kill us and end our way of life because we can't dig in our own backyards. It's much like sitting on the lid of a water well and burning to death because we don't want to take the lid off because, well, it might hurt something. Sorry, political tangent. Short of everyone riding bikes and learning to rollerblade, things ain't realistically gonna change in the near (or far) future. And if any fellow Greenies tell me I should trade in my SUV for a smaller, hybrid, they can come and tote my family (and the ten tons o' gear) around for a week and then get back to me.

All that political tirade aside, I do believe in our responsibility to steward the earth as we have been given it. If we can do something cleaner, cheaper and better, we should. It's why I am so excited to be working for an environmental solutions company (http://www.missioncriticalsolutions.com/). They manufacture electric vehicles fast enough to be used by law enforcement. These aren't those little scooters that only go above 5 mph when going downhill. These are real cars, with real power.

I am excited to work for a pharmacy services company that installed geothermal heat without help from the government. They did it because it made business sense. It cut their heating/fueling costs dramatically. It was expensive and risky. It was a brilliant move.

I have the luxury of thinking sustainable and environmentally friendly because I am not fighting each day to simply make it through the day. It is through the business lens I look into the Green Movement. If we can do things in a way that uses less energy, creates less waste and is healthier for us I say, "Hooray!".

As the mother of a five year old, I am often privileged to tote him to the drive in for a kid friendly movie. Mostly, I try to read a book and not fall out the back of the truck. Sometimes my husband and I cuddle and sip our favorite beer, drifting off for a quick nap while our little is enthralled with the latest kid-merchandising opportunity. However, for the Pixar movie WALL-E, I couldn't look away.

It was a morality tale for grown ups. It posited that we could consume ourselves out of our very humanity. Can we? Probably not. However, it does ask the simple question of, "How much is too much?" Who gets to determine that shifts with every administration and political action committee. Some think we should return to the days of walking, living in caves and not shaving. Others buy their way out with manufactured morality by purchasing "carbon" credits from some underdeveloped hell hole which would use the same petroleum based vehicle if they weren't so busy killing each other.

I just say I can do a little. I did my part today. I put back the plastic sippy cups.

What will you do?