My generation didn't do the green thing.

I'm at the family get together for memorial day weekend. My dad showed me an email he received and it amazed me on how much sense it made. I thought I would share it with ATS. It seems it proves that there is always two sides to any discussion.

I will post the article in it's entirety it is rather long so the opening is short but it does express my feelings somewhat.

Being Green
Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.
The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this 'green thing' back in my earlier days."
The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future
generations."She was right -- our generation didn't have the 'green thing' in our day.Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over.
So they really were recycled.But we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day....

The highlighted part also expresses my opinion. Of course anyone that's interacted with me realizes that. Lol

source

I'm not doing a posting and run just a little busy today. I will catch up with my replies later.

LOL awesome and so true

a reply to: Greathouse
Your post makes me realize how much I miss my childhood in the 70's and the 80's.

This is right on the money.

I keep thinking about how my mom would have laughed herself to death if I had asked her to drive me around when I was a kid. She would tell me to get walking or ride my bike.

It it snowed or rained before school I bundled up or took an umbrella. There were no rides to school.

a reply to: Greathouse

Thanks for posting this. It's very true.
My first job was at a grocery store. This was back in the late 80's and we used paper bags. Not only did they hold up better but they're recyclable. Look how much plastic is in the oceans. I wonder how much of that is due to plastic bags. I miss paper. Also, the paper bags can be used for flooring.
There were also returnable bottles. I miss those, too. You could make a bit of money collecting them if you needed it. They're gone now. This brings us back to the whole plastic mess. How much of that junk is plastic bottles?
I went to a landfill once because I had to help clear a building out for a job. I was amazed at all the junk there. People need to go to one just to see how bad it is because of our throw away society. In the old days, if something broke most people would fix it; rather than throwing it away.

a reply to: Greathouse

The older generation designed and built the world of escalators, and waste that children live in today. Just because the old lady lived a less wasteful world as a child means nothing - because her generation grew up and designed this mechanical world of waste.

This is a very misleading message. The "green thing" is a last resort now that our world has been put on this 'development' path, it's the best our generation can do. How does the way the world existed before the older generation destroyed it justify her unwillingness to care about the environment now?

a reply to: Infinitis

If you say so. DDT was banned by the older generation, carbon tetrachloride has been banned, Pcb's and Freon were banned, lead when it was removed from the fuel it was done by the older generation, superfund for cleanup across the nation was instituted during the older generation. You need to realize that your generation is also at fault quit blaming everyone else.

a reply to: Greathouse

Cool story bro.

As a milllenial person on the other side of the fence however – I hope you can reflect on this email a little deeper, instead of turning it into some generational pissing contest.

The reason we don’t use things resourcefully like in the good old days, the reason nothing’s built to last like it used to be, the reason we live in a vapid, throwaway culture of planned obsolescence - where everyone’s conditioned to upgrade their iphone every 6 months, and worship materialism as a measure of “freedom” – is because such mindless consumerism is the foundation of so-called prosperity in the eyes of today’s establishment.

What it really is - is just a giant Ponzi scheme to make the people controlling these resources ever richer.

Yet so many “older” people around here don’t seem to get this AT ALL. Instead they laugh at how naïve the younguns supposedly are for preaching ideas like sustainability over profit.

They let these very shills – right wing charlatans and lobbyists from free market think tanks - convince them that issues like climate change are a big scientific hoax to “send our economy back to the stone age”.

They preach silly paranoid fantasies about carbon taxes - telling everyone to “follow the money”, but never stop to think about how much money is actually tied up in the ridiculously wasteful Ponzi system as it exists today, and how much money that establishment stands to actually LOSE by reverting to a more responsible, sustainable and truly conservative model.

If some people around here just stopped parroting political talking points all the time designed to completely derail this conversation - we might come to understand the ideals we all actually share – left, right, young, old, whatever.

a reply to: Greathouse
Thanks for the reminder of "days gone by". And I really like the "no green days'. I think people throw the "green" moniker around without knowing. Yes we used brown paper bags but there are very much biodegradable . More so than plastic.Also , I kinda wonder , do the young people know where the original "save the world" started and by what group ? I know I was one and out there with the peaceful sit-ins on industrial pollution . The days of the peaceful protests which led to a lot of regulations on pollution ? And to the start of the EPA ?

a reply to: mc_squared

I can understand your point yet you can also take your point and turn it right back around. The millennium generation preaches to us.

They want to blame everything on the older generation yet we were also ecologically aware. We were well aware of pollution we took steps to remedy it, ( The Cuyahoga River no longer catches fire)we were well aware of toxins we took steps to remedy it.

The vast majority of the millennium generation has not taken any steps. So like it or not and 30 years you will probably be posting a thread like this and somebody from the younger generation will have heap all the blame upon you instead of looking at their selves also. Apparently we did not do enough to satisfy future generations believe me you will be in the same boat at one point in the future.

a reply to: Skid Mark

Thanks SM.

I wish I would've had a little more time in my OP. A lot of people seem to think that I am casting blame about. I am not, I thought The OP was well written and shows that we also tried.

The problem is it's so much easier to blame your elders than actually research the subject and find out the truth. That is what I tried to point out with this thread.

"Green" is just another way to make money.

The modern world, full of all this "green" malarkey is just wasteful. We recycle to clear our conscience of the waste that has forced us to recycle.

a reply to: Greathouse

The older generation gets the blame because it was easier. Yes, there were mistakes but that doesn't mean that mistakes aren't still being made now. I should point out that when we were younger the rain forests weren't as thin as they are now. People want to gripe about CO2 but the solution to that is planting trees. A lot of trees.

That was great! Even your personal addendum!

We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss us off...especially from a tattooed, multiple pierced know it all who can't make change without the cash register telling them how much.

originally posted by: Gothmog
a reply to: Greathouse
Thanks for the reminder of "days gone by". And I really like the "no green days'. I think people throw the "green" moniker around without knowing. Yes we used brown paper bags but there are very much biodegradable . More so than plastic.Also , I kinda wonder , do the young people know where the original "save the world" started and by what group ? I know I was one and out there with the peaceful sit-ins on industrial pollution . The days of the peaceful protests which led to a lot of regulations on pollution ? And to the start of the EPA ?

I'm sure most young people don't realize that we also fought the battle. I say this all the time yet people get angry when I do. Before people form an opinion, they should realize the most informed opinions come from researching both sides of the issue.

It is far too easy in this day and age to only view one side of the issue. Google is actually a menace if not used properly. You get completely different results if you search " why the old generation is responsible for pollution" Page after page of biased views. If they would include a search such as ecology group it's in the 70s they would not be programmed and would actually be surprised at some of the information they come by.

Bottom line is you cannot make a informed decision on the past unless you've actually researched the past.

Moral of the thread. Humans just suck.

Regardless of when you were born.

What the younger generation doesn't realize is that they are caught up in a scheme. It's all scare tactics and control mechanisms, and blaming someone else, for a problem that isn't nearly as bad as they are led to believe.

In my day, people kept the parks clean. Today, younger people, kids and their young parents, trash every place they go.

In my day, we had a phone at home. Today, the younger folks seem to think they need not just a phone to carry around (which is handy), but a new one every time something cooler comes out.

In my day, we didn't have GPS, and used this odd little "gadget" called a map. No electricity required!

In my day, having a television was a really nice thing, and they were made to last. These days, people assume new is better, so they toss them out, and don't demand companies produce quality.

And, yes to so much in the OP. Handed down clothing was normal. Drying on the clothesline was common. Paper bags were the norm, not the non-biodegradable plastic all the "green" folks pushed some years back. "Save the trees", but pollute the rest of the world. Clever.....not!

Instead of video games, we played with toys, or, hey, outside!! Or board games or cards! People talked, and no one ever read something on a cell phone at dinner or a party.

Young people these days are spoiled.

a reply to: Skid Mark

That simplifies my responses thank you. Everybody makes mistakes, every generation has made mistakes and will make mistakes. A friend of mine used to say " there was only one guy that was ever perfect and they hung him from a cross" .

originally posted by: Metallicus
This is right on the money.

I keep thinking about how my mom would have laughed herself to death if I had asked her to drive me around when I was a kid. She would tell me to get walking or ride my bike.

It it snowed or rained before school I bundled up or took an umbrella. There were no rides to school.

Of course, for you and I, if someone saw us walking to school, even at the age of 5, or riding our bikes later on ... no one thought we were in danger and called the cops to turn our mothers in for child endangerment, either.

originally posted by: ketsuko

originally posted by: Metallicus
This is right on the money.

I keep thinking about how my mom would have laughed herself to death if I had asked her to drive me around when I was a kid. She would tell me to get walking or ride my bike.

It it snowed or rained before school I bundled up or took an umbrella. There were no rides to school.

Of course, for you and I, if someone saw us walking to school, even at the age of 5, or riding our bikes later on ... no one thought we were in danger and called the cops to turn our mothers in for child endangerment, either.

That's mind pollution and by my best recollection that came from the 90s.