26 Miles

Go Green, Get Rich?

// February 23rd, 2007 // Life

After suppressing my initial revulsion at the thought of a Monty Burns-esque captain-of-industry sitting in his expansive study next to a warm fire in his Gothic armchair, sipping Brandy and scheming about how to get rich off of so-called “Green” business opportunities, I realized maybe it was me who was looking at it all wrong.

CNN Money and Business 2.0 magazine have an article espousing a few choice ways we can all make the environment a little better, and get stinking rich in the process. More specifically, they’re profiling a handful of companies who are making some effort at addressing specific global environmental issues, such as oil dependency or global warming.

While many make individual efforts to do what they can to be less consumptive or at least recycle their aluminum cans, few identify themselves with the organized environmental movement, which is often portrayed by the press as a radicalized fringe who chain themselves to trees or vandalize popular symbols of environmental injustice.

But as the world’s leading consumers and polluters, we in the US must take a good look at what makes us tick as a culture when choosing the path that may lead us towards a brighter, greener future for our kids and grandkids. The organized environmental movement should refocus it’s effort on fostering, funding, and marketing business ideas that make the “Green” solution what I’ll call the “brain-dead” choice. The green-solution must be cheaper, must work as well as or better, must last longer, and be at least as easy to get as the “Brown” alternatives are in the market.

The environmental movement has to be brought to the center politically. It must take an active role in championing ideas, businesses, and people who strive to change the economic model to favor “Green” ideas. My own shock at seeing “green” and “get rich” in the same sentence is symptomatic of a popular conception that the two are irreconcilable. For “Green” to succeed, this has to change.