Happily Ever After?

Last night, I got the rare quiet moment to myself. Sitting on my neighbor's couch, while she went out and her husband went out somewhere else and her children played happily with mine upstairs, I leaned into the cushions and opened The Atlantic Monthly.

On page 56, I noticed Thomas Friedman, going on about the green revolution. And this is what he said...

This isn't a green revolution, friends. This is a party....Twenty years ago...we all talked here about the [information technology] revolution. Do you think that was pain free?.... Oh, everyone wasn't a winner in the IT revolution. There are a lot of old-legacy industries that didn't get it. And they got steam rolled....today the old-legacy indurstries, they control this story; they control that policy mechanism in Washington. They are tough, and they will fight dirty. They are not going anywhere.

And that's why we are having a green party, not a green revolution. Do not kid yourself for one second.

As I read this, I wasn't sure of Friedman's meaning. Did he mean to say our efforts are futile? Or did he mean to say that our efforts will be painful, have to get painful to bring about change?

In any case, there in my moment of quiet, I thought, "This sounds like a challenge to the average citizen. A challenge to take Friedman's breath away. A challenge to write the green story we want to see, behind the tough guys' backs."

We've done this before, in different sectors. Just think of how consumers forced industry to change their practice of CFC use. (Remember when you stopped buying aerosol cans? You brought about a revolution simply with your hairspray, bugspray abstinence.)

Happily-ever-after probably isn't pain free, as I think Friedman implies. But then again, it was never pain free in the fairy tales either.


Prince and Princess photo, by Sonia.


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