Revaluing Nature Writing: Toward Love and Flower Power
1.
What do Super Bowl Sunday, Ford Motor Company, and Kermit the Frog have in common? Environmentalism. It’s true! During the second quarter of Super Bowl XL, a thirty-second commercial aired with Kermit the Frog—a frog, for crying out loud—unable to appreciate nature. A year later, this commercial is most frequently aired after “Nature” specials on PBS, and viewers are forced to bear witness to Kermit the Frog mountain biking, kayaking and rock climbing, all the while lamenting, “It’s Not Easy Being Green.” When he stumbles upon the Ford Escape hybrid, he declares, in utter amazement, “It must be easy being green, after all.” What this indicates about our mainstream culture’s idea of and relationship to nature is sad indeed. For even in an environmental awareness-promoting advertisement, nature is presented as something which exists solely for our pleasure, a place from where we can escape the drudgery of our daily lives, a place which will inevitably let us down. Let’s face it: why else would Kermit the Frog be happy to discover the Ford Escape other than that he has the ability to escape from nature, after having been dissatisfied with his escape to nature?
Still, I have to admit: Kermit the Frog has done us a remarkable favor, has taken one small step for man, one great leap for our environment—regardless of the fact that his foot is solidly planted on a gas pedal. Kermit the Frog has made environmentalism something to be unapologetic for; suddenly, it is not just easy, but it is downright conscientious, to be green. Peruse the April 16, 2007, Newsweek subtitled “Save the Planet—Or Else” or the May 2007 “Green Issue” of Vanity Fair, and you will find green-friendly advertisements for Waste Management, Inc., Microsoft, Intel, the Home Depot, Chevrolet, Lexus, Honda, the Sundance Channel, Dillard’s, Clinique, Aveeno, Simple shoes, Levi’s and, my personal favorite, Diesel’s “Global Warming Ready” campaign that promotes their current line while in each and every background the world as we know it is under water and tropical. Here is ironic labeling at its best, for it seems even our advertisers are ready to reinforce the notion, whether we like it or not, that green is the new black, and the age of eco-consciousness is now.
We seem to agree that we have an environmental crisis on our hands, but rather than beat to death the obvious concerns (climate change, the destruction of our rain forests and exhausting of our natural resources, the polluting and over-fishing of our oceans, etc.) I argue that a new and equally urgent crisis has come into view. I believe that the current trendiness of all things green, if continually promoted, advertised, and sold in these ill-informed ways will soon become a fad. Once it passes, we will have been fooled into believing that either we are global warming ready or that the environmental crisis has been averted; and we will, like Kermit the Frog, be no closer to nature other than that we will be organically attired, hybrid-driving green puppets. This is unacceptable, and so we are faced now with the challenge of rediscovering human nature’s place in nature—a place where, I propose, neither eco-consciousness nor ego-consciousness should be privileged over the other.
