The Pros and Cons of the United States "Going Green"

The buzzword for the environmentally conscious is "green". Environmentalists want Americans to believe that green is good and that every other way to live will condemn humanity, and indeed all of nature into an existence that makes Hades look like Club Med. At the same time, industrialists are clamouring to get out the word that the earth is so resilient that eating coal dust is essential for a long and healthy life. The answer is likely somewhere in the middle. Moderates understand the value of good stewardship of our natural resources, but they also understand that the conversion process takes time and comes with some hefty price tags. Here are three benefits to the United States choosing to "Go Green" and three drawbacks that must be considered in any plan to do so.

The Good

• Learning to use our natural resources with respect to how finite they are will serve future generations and prolong the amount of time that the earth will continue to sustain life. No matter how you view the world's resources, the one thing everyone can agree on is that natural resources do not exist in limitless supplies.

• Creating new environmentally friendly products and refitting the world with such items will create jobs. Jobs in new technology sectors have traditionally been high paying. Going green is good for workers, and therefore good for the economy.

• Necessity is the mother of invention. When laws limit people, human ingenuity finds its foothold and invention takes the place of convention. With the introduction of new laws that force companies to find green alternatives come up with inventive plans that increase productivity, quality, and in some cases even revolutionize the way we do things.

The Bad

• While going green may be good for the long-term economy, companies are the ones who must shoulder the financial burden of unsure investments. That which looks possible from the outset is often mired in more hoopla and expense than it is in reality. When companies lose money on such investments, workers lose jobs, companies go under, and the economy crumbles.

• Going green eats up time for productivity. In the 1970's nearly every juice bottle, pop can, and newspaper found its way into a landfill. Today, people stop for an extra few seconds or minutes to separate recyclables from true garbage. While it's arguably good for the environment, the fact is that 3 minutes per week over 300 million citizens take up 7,800,000,000 man-hours of time per year. The smallest bits of time taken to go green, when spread out over the whole of the citizenry will adversely affect the gross national product.

• When new industries grab a foothold, old industries will fall by the wayside, causing an avalanche of job loss, financial hardship, and in some cases catastrophic poverty. Imagine if every oil-producing nation was suddenly left without any viable resources because the world suddenly switched to another form of energy. Those people are our trading partners. The world has gone global. To destroy an industry in a developing nation now costs us money and jobs here in the United States.

The Truth

In the long term, going green is a Utopian ideal to which we must aspire if life is to continue on this planet. However in doing so we must also leave as small a footprint on humanity as we are able. Incentives for invention are worthwhile. Penalties for overindulgence are worthwhile. It is more important that society train itself in the mindset of good stewardship than it is that the electric car obliterate the need for oil inside of 10 years. The truth of consummation is that humans will always consume natural resources. We do so at a lower rate per capita today than we did in the 1970s and that trend is continuing. It is better that the trend continue than that humans ever find a single solution that allows us to indulge our whims without a requirement of stewardship. May you enjoy a rainbow of environmental possibilities, the color green among them.