Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy going outside and seeing the birds and trees. I also enjoy having clean air and nice green grass to play backyard football on. However, the whole direction the green movement has taken is what I take issue with. No longer is it about using fewer resources and becoming more environmentally friendly. It has become a socialist movement bent on blaming private business and corporations and trying to get them shut down.

Whenever anyone talks about “going green” nowadays, it’s all about what we have to give up to save our planet earth.

“Drive less, walk more, stop eating meat, don’t turn your lights on as much.”

It’s understandable to not want to use more resources than we actually need, like turning off your lights when you don’t need them or turning your sink off when you brush your teeth, but there are better ways of going about trying to take care of our planet. I always thought the American way of improving was to make it better. A great example was the transistor in radios. Earlier radios had used big vacuum tubes that made them big, bulky and a drain of energy. When the transistor was invented, it not only drained less power, but also made radios smaller, portable and, best of all, cheaper.

Let’s make those more fuel efficient bulbs, hybrid cars, use more and safer nuclear energy, houses that are better insulated, and make recycling more efficient. That’s how we can truly help the environment, if we choose to, instead of making sacrifices that move us backward in civilization. Let’s move forward and innovate technology like we always have in the U.S.

However, you will never hear the environmentalists mention these solutions. They will talk about how we need to eat organic foods and blame environmental problems on big, greedy corporations. Never do they mention a common sense solution where we can still live like civilized people. They commonly talk about how the U.S. uses most of the resources of the world and how we must distribute these resources to be a fairer world. Frequently, they point to Africa and the poverty there. The problem in Africa is not that they don’t have enough resources. The problem is governments are so corrupt there that the wonders of capitalism and innovation cannot be experienced there. Look at what our system of capitalism has done to China and Hong Kong. Countries that were once some of the poorest in the world are now competing with the U.S. economically.

Why are we going to sacrifice our way of life that we the people of the United States have worked so hard for? Because a panel of scientists and a former politician (you know who I’m talking about) think that the world is going to be destroyed just because it’s warming up? People don’t realize there is another side that does say this global warming is not something to worry about, and some even say it will be good for us. We will have longer growing seasons for farmers and places formerly unlivable will now be livable.

In a nutshell, the green movement is no longer about preserving the environment. It has become a political agenda for those who oppose corporatism, capitalism and globalization. I am in no way against trying to make the world a better place. I am simply against doing it with another agenda in mind and lying about what you truly want to do.

Michael Lauck is a freshman broadcast journalism major from Houston.