The State of the Green

Today’s NYTimes Sunday Magazine issue is devoted to all things green.

The issue opens with a great article by Michael Pollan entitled “Why Bother”.

This is the article to send to your naysaying, cynical, who-needs-to-be-bothered-with-all-this-sustainable-stuff-anyway friends.

This issue is sort of a “State of the Green in America” - I’m going to keep it somewhere safe where I can find it in a couple of years to chart how well we’re doing. Either things will be so bad that it will seem quaintly rose-tinted and naive or we’ll have discovered and implemented so many new technologies that we’ll wonder why each of these articles seem so isolated.

After “Why Bother”, the issue is organized along the following sections:

ACT: green things that people are doing.

EAT: green food-related articles.

INVENT: green things you probably never thought of (or heard of).

LEARN: green education related articles.

LIVE: green lifestyle issues.

MOVE: green transportation issues.

BUILD: green building issues

Mind you, I read a LOT about green stuff these days and have previously read about many of the issues included in this magazine but what impressed me was how the writers didn’t shy away from the current truths we all face…from the vagueness of actually evaluating our carbon footprint to the pros and cons inherent in the USGBC’s LEED accreditation system. One interesting article about eco-anxiety mentions a new ailment called “waking up syndrome” wherein people realize that governments alone can’t solve all of the environmental problems and that it comes down to an individual’s own behavior.

I read it cover to cover.