Turning Green (Touchdown Edition)

Chapter 1: Green’s the New Pink

“Green is the new pink.” That’s a pretty catchy phrase, isn’t it?

Basically, it means that caring about the environment is a growing trend. From movie stars, to politicians, to the family next door, it seems like everyone is “going green” … and for the sake of our planet, we have to hope that it’s not just the newest fad.

What does it mean to be green? Well, green is the symbolic color of environmentalism. Living green means understanding that your actions have an effect on the environment—and then, with that information in hand, trying to live your life in a way that does as little damage as possible to the Earth. The simple choices all of us make every day are a big part of that.

Going green is a really important job because the stakes are so high: We have to save the world! Our planet is in great danger. We are facing threats in our air, in our water, on our land, and in the products we use every day. And not only is the Earth at risk, but every one of us is also personally under attack. The scary fact is that many of the products we use and the foods we eat every day are harmful to us and the environment.

So, are you living green? There are a lot of questions you can ask yourself to help figure it out: Do you use products that are made with all-natural ingredients? Do you frequently ride in gas-guzzling cars, buses, and planes? Do you eat organic foods? Do you wear clothes that, when they’re produced, emit harmful pollutants into the environment? Do you leave the water running while brushing your teeth? Do you recycle as much as possible? Do you leave lights on when you are not using them? Do you wear makeup that is harmful to the environment—and even your own face?

Most of us have mixed answers to these questions—some good, some bad. The trick is acting on your answers—and making some simple but possibly world-saving changes in your own life. From morning until night, every day, you make hundreds of choices that affect the environment. We all do. Together, if we make the right choices, we can make a big difference.

When former vice president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore started talking about global warming a few years ago, many people didn’t want to listen. (Global warming is a fancy way of saying that our planet is heating up.) The title of Mr. Gore’s documentary on global warming sums up the situation well: “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Sure, it’s easier to believe that there is no problem, or that someone else will take care of it. But the inconvenient truth is that global warming, and other environmental issues, affect all of us. After all, there is only one planet Earth.

The reason that global warming is happening is because of a process known as the “greenhouse effect.” This natural phenomenon gets its name from the way a greenhouse (a glass building plants are grown in) works.

Have you ever sat in a car with the windows rolled up on a sunny day? It gets hot in the car pretty fast, right? Well, that’s how a greenhouse works, too. Heat from the sun passes through the glass and warms up the ground inside the greenhouse (or the seats inside your car), which heats up the air above it. The warm air is trapped inside, keeping the greenhouse warm enough to grow plants all year long, even in places with really cold winters.

The greenhouse effect that’s happening to our planet is a similar process. Certain gases in our atmosphere trap energy from the sun, called radiation. (These gases act like the glass in a greenhouse, and we call them greenhouse gases. They include carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide.)

This energy from the sun is what warms the Earth, so having some amount of these gases is actually good for the Earth’s temperature. In fact, if these gases weren’t there at all, the sun’s radiation would bounce off the Earth and just go right back into space, making the Earth too cold for us to live on.

But now, we have way too much of these gases in our atmosphere. This is because over the last couple hundred years, humans have begun to build things that produce these gases as part of how they work. Cars, airplanes, power plants, and factories that make the products we use every day all give off greenhouse gases.

And that’s not all—there’s also a lot more of us humans now than there were even a few hundred years ago. That means more cars to drive us all around and more factories to make all the stuff we need. Add it all up, and those extra greenhouse gases are trapping a lot more of the sun’s radiation than our atmosphere used to. As a result, our planet is heating up: global warming.

Global warming affects more than just the temperatures around us, however. It can also change weather patterns. For example, warmer ocean water tends to produce bigger storms. We have recently seen the results of this phenomenon in the United States with powerful hurricanes like Katrina, Rita, and Wilma.

Our oceans are at the center of other frightening climate trends as well. In recent years, as oceans have become warmer, water levels have risen. This may be because, as the water warms due to global warming, the ice near the North and South Poles begins to melt, adding more water to the ocean. These deposits of ice, which are called the polar ice caps, are enormous. When chunks of them start to melt and collapse into the ocean, they can quickly disappear. Think of an ice cube in a glass of water—it will melt a lot faster if there are fewer ice cubes surrounding it.

In 2002, a giant chunk of ice (about 1,300 square miles in size, weighing 720 billion tons) collapsed into the ocean. This ice was said to have been stable for the past 12,000 years before breaking off! Some scientists fear that if warming continues, more and more of these giant chunks of ice will break off and melt into the ocean. If they do, many coastal areas will be flooded. This could be devastating to coastlines in states like Florida and California, and entire countries like Japan. If enough of the polar ice caps melt, millions of people living in coastal areas around the world could lose their homes, or worse—entire cities could be destroyed.

Some of the side effects of rising temperatures are less obvious than others. That’s because they are occurring below the surface of the ocean. Global warming is causing the destruction of thousands of miles of coral reefs, and we must protect them.

Coral reefs have often been referred to as “tropical rainforests of the ocean” because of the great number of plant and animal species they support. Reefs protect our shorelines, and are a key part of our oceans’ food chain. In one year (1998), 16 percent of the world’s reefs were lost! Can you imagine if we lose our reefs and beaches altogether? What would the side effects be on the rest of nature?

Despite the scary trends we are witnessing, there is some good news. We can help the coral reefs recover; we can stop the Earth from warming; we can help keep storms from growing stronger; and we can take control of the chemicals we put into our bodies, our water, and our air. In other words, we can save our planet if we each do our part!

There is no simple fix, however. It took the whole world to get us into this mess, and it will take every one of us to get us out. We’ve spent the last few hundred years turning the world into a polluted mess. Now we have to spend the next few hundred turning it green again.

Millions of individuals have already begun to do their part, and environmental groups from around the world have worked hard to spread the word. There are thousands of initiatives being put into effect by governments and organizations all over the world, from London to San Francisco to Tokyo to Vancouver. They include recycling projects, clean-air acts, the distribution of information about which consumer products are safe and which aren’t, and many other small steps toward saving planet Earth.

The Kyoto Protocol was the first real effort to begin reducing the production of greenhouse gases on a global scale. The Kyoto Protocol got its name because it was adopted at a United Nations meeting in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. (It is actually an update to a treaty first created by the United Nations in 1992. That first treaty said that the world needed to reduce greenhouse gases. But it didn’t set any limits on individual countries, and it didn’t give the United Nations any way to enforce the rules. That’s what makes the Kyoto Protocol so important—it is a much tougher set of rules.) Since 1997, 182 countries have agreed to the protocol, promising to monitor and reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions. (The United States has not yet agreed to the protocol.)

In addition to environmentalists and politicians, several celebrities have been key proponents of the green movement. They are using their exposure to help people understand that “going green” is more than just talk. Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the celebrities leading the way. In addition to producing the documentary “The 11th Hour,” he has also encouraged many celebrities to skip the limousines at the Oscars and arrive in hybrid cars instead.

GREEN INFO: Hybrid cars use about half the gas regular cars do, and they spit out 89 percent fewer harmful emissions. So when you drive a hybrid, fewer greenhouse gases are going into our atmosphere. Of course, when you walk or ride a bike, NO harmful chemicals are emitted!

Cameron Diaz and Chevy Chase were just two of the celebrities that readily joined in. Sheryl Crow went a step further and actually toured the country in a bus that was powered by vegetable oil. Fuel made from vegetable oils is called “biodiesel,” and it can be produced from leftover oil collected from fast food restaurants like McDonald’s. Crow thought her eco-friendly bus was fun to ride in, even though she said it smelled like french fries the entire way! Other celebrities like George Clooney, Ed Norton, Robert Redford, Cate Blanchett, and Tom Hanks are also doing their part to raise money and awareness for the green movement.

Sure, these are small steps. But when you multiply these small steps several billion times, they really add up. To turn the world green again, millions and millions of non-politicians and non-celebrities will have to do their part as well.

In the following pages, you’ll read about how the actions of young people, such as 17-year-old Jessica Assaf, can make a huge difference in saving the planet. For Jessica, becoming an active part of the green movement was personal and unexpected. After learning about some environmentally questionable practices occurring in the makeup industry, she stood up for herself … and for planet Earth.