When did we start and stop being green?

So what does Go Green mean?

According to the Urban dictionary Go Green means: to adopt an environmentally friendly lifestyle by recycling, buying local, reusing, minimizing driving, etc.

The above Urban dictionary definition is from 2008.

So we haven’t been going green for long.

We haven’t had to.

Human beings are highly intelligent, very smart. We’ve lived sustainably on this planet for ages.

When we started being green

The idea of sustainability dates back to the dawn of civilization.

The colour green has long been associated with nature and the environment.

• In Ancient Egypt, green was considered the colour of regeneration and rebirth.
• For the Romans, green was the colour of Venus, the goddess of gardens, vegetables and vineyards. 
• Henry David Thoreau wrote about living a “green” life in the 19th century. 

When we started going green

• Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962 on the effect of pesticides on the natural world.
• Greenpeace was set up as the Don’t Make A Wave Committee in 1970, to stop a nuclear test at Amchitka Island. 
• Green political parties started flying the flag of environmentalism in the 1980s.
• Environmentalist Jay Westerveld coined the term “greenwashing” in 1986.
• Jill Buck set up the Go Green Initiative in 2002. She did so because of the amount of waste being generated at her children’s schools, and the pesticides used near playgrounds.

So, considering how long humans have been around, we’ve actually been green much longer than we’ve been going green.

We’ve survived and been so successful as a species on this planet precisely because we have always (until recently) realised the importance of respecting the environment as the place we live, and the ecosystem that sustains our life.

It’s only recently that we’ve forgotten how to live sustainably.

When we stopped being green

Pollution in cities from burning coal became a problem in the 13^th/14^th century.

During the industrial revolution in the 1800-1900s we started burning major quantities of coal in homes and factories, and began polluting the world on an industrial scale.

Then in the 20^th century we turned into consumers.

Pollution timeline

• 1850: acid rain erodes stone, kills fish in lakes, damages millions of acres of forest.
• 1920: humans become consumers
• 1930: we begin using synthetic pesticides
• 1950: industrial mass-production of 2 million tons of plastic
• 1952: the Great Smog kills 4,000 people in London in one week
• 1960: we begin factory farming
• 1980: sulphur dioxide (SO2) pollution peaks in Europe and America
• 2006: SO2 pollution peaks in China
• 2015: industrial mass-production of 380 million tons of plastic
• 2019: global temperatures continue to rise along with PPM emissions
• 2021: SO2 pollution in India and Africa still increasing

Plastic production and farm production increased to meet consumer demand.

Disclaimer: I am part of the problem, I can be part of the solution.

Human beings are highly intelligent, very smart. We’ve always known it’s not clever to destroy where we live, the environment that sustains life.

This is our home after all, where the food we eat and the air we breathe, come from.

Perhaps the word “destroy” is a bit strong.

Let’s have a look at another definition.

A world of consumption

What does the word “consume” mean?

The first definition of consume in the Merriam Webster Dictionary is:

1: to do away with completely : DESTROY (Fire consumed several buildings.)

The second definition is:

2: to spend wastefully : SQUANDER

Why would we want to do either?

Even today in our plastic-wrapped, fast-food consumer society where everything is urgent it just doesn’t make business sense to burn your customer’s homes down, turn their fields into deserts, swamp their towns with floods or blow them down with raging winds, making their lives unsustainable, and the planet they (and you) live on unliveable. Who are you going to sell your consumer goodies too, when all your consumers are good and gone?

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It should be easy for us to go green.

We already know how to do this eco-sustainability thing. We’ve been doing it for much longer than we’ve been on our “consume” the world binge.

So what does Go Green mean?

Perhaps, think and remember.

Remember we already know how to live sustainably, and why it’s important.

The future is bright.

Human beings are highly intelligent, very smart. We’ve always known…

…but have just forgotten how, and why.

If you’ve got an article about how you’re going green, or a project you want content written for