It's TIME, Vanity is Green

While you're searching out news on how the US is turning Green as the new Red, White, and Blue, and whether that Green is gangrene or a fresh sprig of spring, one of the sources one doesn't usually turn to is Vanity Fair. Sure, Redbook or Ladies Home Journal may have the obligatory trend article of "10 Costless Effortless Green Things You Can Do To Save The Planet Immediately" starting with changing your light bulbs. But Vanity Fair? Well, for a finger on the pulse of America's not-as-self-absorbed-as-you-would-have-thought, you've got to check out their May 2008 Green Issue.

After getting past the Madonna cover (Hannah who?), there's Robert Kennedy Jr., the Artic Oil Rush, saving 71% of the planet (the oceans), the politics of destroying polar bear habitats for an oil lease, Architect William McDonough on redesigning "the way we live, preaching a nontoxic, waste-free, no-guilt gospel that has brought such heavy hitters as Wal-Mart, Google, and NASA to his door." Any environmental magazine would be proud to come out with that content.

TIME magazine has an article entitle The Rules of Disengagement. In it, Senator Leiberman "told TIME he will introduce legislation to give all TSP participants the option to disinvest in companies that do business in or with countries labeled by the U.S. as state sponsors of terrorism." In a discussion of the ramifications of this, it touched upon divesting from terrorist oil producers. This is similar to the previous movements started in colleges to divest from apartheid South Africa, divest from polluters, buying green stocks. In short, capitalism has a way to put it's money where the U.S. says it's principles are.

One of the reasons the green movement of the original Earth Day couldn't build into a mass movement, but the resurgent Green Movement has a chance of bring permanent change, was the inability at that time to link a widely scattered population. One million people is a lot, but not relative to 365 million. But one million organized and persistent, as through the internet, is a lot more powerful.

It really could be a new dawn in America, springing Green.