Our planet is in peril. The greenhouse is affected, black ice faces constant discrimination, and one in five Americans don’t even recycle their tissues. It’s not because they hate the environment; it’s because they’re not aware of it. If you want to get anything done these days, you have to raise awareness like it’s that unwanted child from your first marriage. And awareness, my friends, is harder to find at our school than blonde hair. Something has to be done. So buckle up, Northwestern. I’m going green.
Until recently I was unaware there even was an environment. When I heard the word, I thought it was a new Altoids flavor. I thought the National Park Service was a sitcom on NBC and photosynthesis was an application on my Mac. But it turns out nature is responsible for some pretty sweet stuff. Without it we wouldn’t have big-wave surfing, animal crackers, Al Roker and the game Twister would be known by its less appealing original name, “Kama Sutra for Kids!”
We have to make people aware that every time they start their car, they’re giving Mother Nature a titty twister, and it all starts with the color green. Making red and yellow traffic lights green during Earth Week would raise awareness and the number of accidents, both of which would take gas-guzzling SUVs out of the picture. We can eliminate all holidays that don’t have a strong green agenda, so Arbor Day and St. Patty’s are safe, but Christmas better drop the color red if it wants to stick around. Envy will be named the hippest of the deadly sins (sorry, Jessica Simpson, gluttony didn’t catch on). We’ll make music greener by changing the lyrics of “Paint It Black” and outlawing “Diamonds On the Soles of Her Shoes” because it encourages carbon footprints. I want to make all gardening tools green, not only to reward environmentally friendly behavior, but because then we’d have awareness in spades (badum-ching!).
If green-washing the world isn’t enough, burning a forest or killing off some endangered species could really turn some heads. You don’t know what you got till it’s gone, and there’s nothing like a good oil spill to get people thinking.
Also, awareness is a scarce resource. We need a monopoly to get anything done, and that means stealing it from all other causes. Breast cancer? What’s that? I thought that pink ribbon just meant you were bi-curious. AIDS? Never heard of it. What kind of epidemic is a synonym for “helps” anyway? It’s go green or go home, and conservation is out to crush the competition.
Sure, I could tell you to recycle this paper after reading it (or if you’re reading online, to refresh the page a few times), but is that really going to help save the planet? I say you recycle naked while shouting obscenities in a Michael Jackson mask. A green Michael Jackson mask. It may not get anyone to follow suit, but there’s no doubt they’ll be aware.
Weinberg senior David Moss can be reached at [email protected].
