For the Environment or For Creating New Businesses

For the Environment or For Creating New Businesses

What do you think of when someone talks about being for the environment or for creating new businesses? I know if I were asked that question the first thing that would come to my mind is the radical environmentalist. I tend to stereotype them into groups of tree huggers, protesters, members of Green Peace or the Sierra Club, and those that will only eat organic foods. On the other end of the spectrum is “Big Business” or those for the economy. When I think of these types of people I think of those that have no regard for the environment, they dump pollutants, and kill fish and birds. Their sole purpose in life is to make money regardless of the cost to the environment. In reality the two ends of the spectrum are melded together, one cannot survive without the other. Richard White in his writing, “Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living? Work and Nature,” he refers to how individuals have created a large separation between nature and work. White states that “most humans must work, and our work-all our work-inevitably embeds us in nature, including what we consider wild and pristine” (185).

On an episode of the Simpson’s Lisa falls in love with an environmentalist and helps him in his crusade to save the environment. The episode portrays the environmental group with all of the typically euphemisms associated with being for the environment. The leader of the group wears dreadlocks, Birkenstocks, and stages a protest of Krusty Burger and is arrested. In order to impress the leader Lisa takes on the fight to save the oldest living Sequoia from the Texas business tycoon. The Texan was portrayed as the big Texan with lots of money and no regard for the environment just build to make more money. Lisa becomes a “tree hugger” and lives in the tree as a protest to prevent cutting the tree down. In the end Lisa leaves the tree and it is struck by lightening and falls. The fallen tree rolls down the hill out of control. It destroys the Hemp store and wipes out a factory. The morale gathered from the story is that without a compromise between the environmentalist and the businessman there is devastation for both sides.

Part of the problem is the media exploits the two ends of the spectrum; it is either one way or another.