Being green has some seeing red

Green used to be just a color. Occasionally, it was used as an expression to mean inexperienced. But now the connotations that power this word run on solar panels. To admit to not recycling, to retain apathetic feelings toward polar bears, and to accuse the scientific community of fear-mongering is equated to blasphemy.

Ecological propaganda is proliferating society, sending citizens in a frenzied spree to the Home Depot to pick up those funny shaped light bulbs that make the living room look as dingy as a gas station bathroom. The barrage of information and misleading statistics has left everybody, except those whose job it is to keep the public in the dark, rather confused.

President Obama's second trip to Copenhagen, sans 2016 Olympic bid, concerns the tangible boogey man that global warming has become. The 2009 Climate Conference is shouldering the Atlas-inspired ambition of carrying the world on its shoulders.

Obama's new addendum to his already full plate is the underreported cap and trade bill that would regulate carbon dioxide emissions with pollution permits. The bill passed in the House with the terms of a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020 as compared to the 2005 recordings. The bill is currently working its way through the Senate, with a provision of a stricter 20 percent reduction also by 2020. The eventual goal is an 83 percent reduction by 2050.

The domestic energy economy now faces the onslaught of critics that range from environmental lobbyists to advocates for the poor. The 1,201-page bill now carries the weighty effect of rippling influence as it trickles down from Capitol Hill to Main Street.

The $175 price tag that will be tacked to the burdens of each household by 2020, coupled with the threat of outsourcing industrial labor abroad, adds wariness in the public that is hopefully being reciprocated in Washington. America's presence in Copenhagen is supposedly one of a leading nation, but will the ones destined to follow (China and India) walk our path?

Saving the world from or for people, does it really matter? Frankly, once the doctored statistics were discovered in the assumed incontrovertible logos argument, the house made of post-consumer recycled content came crashing down. Climategate has certainly posed a challenge to Captain Planet poster children, most notably Al Gore. The e-mail scandal turned out to be quite the inconvenient truth that has kept the frontrunner less than vocal. It seems that there isn't even time for damage control as the invitation to be a guest on John Stossel's new FOX show was turned down due to a busy schedule of self-evaluating guilt by association.

Listening to key note speaker Al Gore's speech in January, he used the idea of a "common thread running through the climate crisis, the economic crisis and the national security crisis", the connection being the "overdependence on carbon-based fuels." After his speech, a 10-minute question and answer session was conducted during which Gore relied on his refrains about the power of the youth (reminiscent of "only you can prevent forest fires!") and whatever other inspirational jargon floated into his head. But when he was asked how America could ensure friendly relations with Middle Eastern countries if the American oil market withdrew its business, he had no definitive answer. In fact, a nervous laugh and major bush beating was all that was accomplished.

Ensuring responsible use of the environment and curbing rapacious exploitation of natural resources are important measures. But making the process of hugging a tree a political gambit is leaking too much hot air into society's atmosphere.