Apparently, everyone in the country is “going green”. You probably know what I mean by this. “Going Green” has become the slogan for everything environmentally safe and attached to the growing popularity of stopping global warming. Companies big and small, individuals, and sometimes whole states have sacrificed a certain aspect of their lives in lieu of global warming. At the end of the day, after all of the ads, at the end of all the programs, will it really matter or is it too late? I completely agree with being environmentally friendly. I believe that we have a responsibility to not only ourselves and the planet that provides for us everything we need to survive, but to the coming generations of people that will be affected by our actions forever. It makes perfect sense to conserve the resources we have, search for alternative, renewable, and less polluting forms of energy, and to be aware of our impact upon the Earth. I came across an ad for a powerful energy company recently. It stated that they were finding alternative fuels, creating less of an impact upon the Earth, and “going green”. On the surface, this looks great. Then I thought, “Why would they all of a sudden care so much about the environment?” It seems to me that if they were truly interested in the health of the planet and its peoples, they would have been doing this from the very start. I know, as companies, their main goal is to make a profit. I understand this. However, if being environmentally friendly is so expensive, why would they ever do it, unless it’s just a scheme to get people to buy their products or to improve their image as a “green” company? And if it is not hurting them financially and is cheap to go “green”, why haven’t they done it since the start? It seems to me that all these companies are jumping on the bandwagon of public fear and feeling over global warming. Quite literally, Captain Planet and the Planeteers talked about the being environmentally-friendly way back in the early nineties. And how long have people been telling you to “Please Recycle?” It just goes to show that these issues are not new. The theory of Global Warming (and it’s becoming more and more of a theory each time a polar icecap melts, much to the dismay of non-believers) has been around for quite some time now. It’s just that it took these ideas awhile to become popular. If companies really cared about the environment, they would have been at the forefront of modern environmentally-safe practices for years. If they really cared, they wouldn’t have needed the support of Americans everywhere to do the right thing. Instead, we have many companies jumping on the “cool” bandwagon of “going green”. It seems like a good idea, and they really might be sincere in their endeavors. However, it seems a bit suspicious. -Cheers