Being green isn’t easy, as Kermit the Frog warned us. Although he spoke about discrimination, it also applies to taking care of the natural resources entrusted to our care.
There is an American Petroleum Institute advertisement (http://www.api.org/aboutapi/ads/index.cfm) running on television that talks about the amount of fossil fuel that remains for us to discover and use. An attractive blond actress says that we have plenty of resources - “enough for 60 years.” They intend to reassure me that all is well.
But wait!
“Enough for 60 years” means that we will run out before the babies in the neighborhood reach retirement age. We will run out of oil in their lifetime.
That commercial communicated something to me all right – that we have to get off oil and we have to do it in a hurry. Sixty years is nothing – it’s a mere blink in the eye of time. If we do not get serious about this, we sentence our children to what? I hate to think.
The API commercial got through the din of the messages that bombard me every day and connected. Although my response was probably not what API intended, I heard the words.
As I age, I remember things my grandmother told me and I find I am applying her wisdom to my own life. She frequently cautioned me to hear both sides, to get all the facts and to think carefully about what I am told. She also told me that ants move mountains and if I want to see change in this world, it has to start with me.
I’ve made a lot of decisions lately that are based entirely on energy conservation. I made some of those decisions because of the API ad. In sixty years, I’d better be using an alternative energy source.
So what am I doing? I stopped buying water in plastic bottles. We are recycling at work and I take a recycling bag with us to family outings. Before I buy something, I think about what will happen to it when I am finished with it.
I have a long way to go but it’s a start. Thanks API. I hope others get the message, too.
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