Call me a green conservative...perhaps a green capitalist.  I don’t think I took the well-worn path to  supporting a more eco-friendly lifestyle.  In fact, I still kind of bristle when I use that term.

My conversion started in earnest a little over two years ago when I moved from one Pennsylvania community to another about 20 miles south.  In Kingston, where I had been since the mid ’80’s, there is a tight lid on garbage collection.  Residents have to purchase stickers for each garbage bag they put on the curb at a rate of $1.50 per bag.  When the cost hits you in the face every week, you tend to examine your habits a bit more closely.  Further, everything had to be in a bag.  No loose garbage or large items were allowed.

Along with this controlled system of waste collection, Kingston has a curbside recycling program.  The best part of the program was that it is co-mingled.  Residents do not have to separate glass, plastic and aluminum. They can simply put it all in one container that the municipality provides to each household and set it out on the curb on recycling day. Easy.

A little over two years ago, I moved to a community that has no such restrictions on garbage and no curbside recycling program.  My first couple weeks here were a real eye-opener.  Piles upon piles of garbage and large items were visible on garbage collection day here and still are.  Some in bags, some in those large plastic containers and some in the form of free-standing items like old furniture, mattresses, broken appliances and various other stuff you’d see when someone cleans out their garage after 15 years.

At first, I have to admit I was thrilled.  I happily joined my neighbors in throwing out just about anything I could find.  If I hadn’t used an item in the last six hours, it was gone.  I scoured the house every Monday morning looking for items I could toss on the heap just for the sake of tossing them on the heap.

Then, while driving through the development on a particular Monday and seeing all this garbage, it finally dawned on me.  Where is all this stuff going?  I mean, there are about 925 homes in this development.  If each of them is purging their home of this much garbage on a weekly basis, where is it going?  And that’s only 925 homes out of how many millions?  Where is all this stuff going?

That led me to thinking about other normal every day events like grocery shopping.  After a normal trip to the store, we come home with a dozen or more of those ridiculous plastic shopping bags.  Now, you figure two of those trips per week multiplied by 12 bags, then multiplied by 112 million households in America, and that’s 2.7 BILLION bags per week!  Every week, over 2 billion of those bags are going to a landfill.  The other 700 million are at my parents’ house just in case they need them for something.

I had always looked askance at the hippies bringing their canvas bags to the store.  But after considering the waste, image be damned, I thought.  We’re using canvas bags from now on.  In addition to putting fewer plastic bags into the landfill, canvas bags have more room, so fewer trips from the car to the house are required, they stand up in the car, so your groceries aren’t flying around your back seat or trunk, and they are far sturdier than those plastic pieces of ...well, you know.  Now, if I could just remember to bring those damn bags with me when we go to the store.

Now I’m sure the lifelong, committed environmentalists reading this are thinking “Well, duh.  What took you so long?”  And that’s what leads to this blog entry.

Why did it take me so long?  Why was the message being lost?  Why was communication of these issues failing to reach me?

So, I started examining it from my perspective as a conservative and I came up with six reasons why the green movement is having a “failure to communicate”.

1. Stop trotting out celebrities

We conservatives have so little regard for Hollywood and celebrity culture that any association with it and its human products is grounds for immediate dismissal from the arena of ideas.  We view the vast majority of these people as empty-headed hypocrites that have no idea what they are talking about and just riding the latest pop-culture trend to promote themselves.

Let’s take a look at a few examples.

Laurie David, the vapid, parasitic wife of Seinfeld co-creator, Larry David, gleefully tells the public that she puts tickets on Hummers chastising the owners for ruining the planet with gas-guzzling vehicles.  She probably performed these self-righteous acts on her way to the airport to board a flight on her husband’s private jet, conveniently ignoring the fact that one coast-to-coast trip on such a jet burns more fossil fuel than a Hummer burns in an entire year.  We haven’t heard much from this mental midget since then other than whispering the standard Al Gore line that the debate is over.

Then there’s musician Sheryl Crow.  Ms. Crow sees the process of armageddon for our planet beginning with toilet paper.  Crow embarrassed herself on the talk show circuit by campaigning against the excessive use of toilet paper.  She implored the audience to use no more than one or two squares of toilet paper.  

Really?  This is what the “All I Wanna Do Is Have Some Fun” girl wants us to think about her?  Squatting on the toilet with one small square of toilet paper between her and human excrement?  I guess when she’s in a public stall somewhere with no toilet paper and she asks Elaine Benes to “spare a square”, she really means it.  Does she think people are honestly going to use less toilet paper -- just one or two squares at that?  No, all she really taught us was not to shake hands with Sheryl Crow.

But the worst part of celebrity endorsement of the movement is the arrogance, the pretending-to-be-smart condescending approach of these fairly useless individuals who do little more than read a paragraph somewhere and listen to a factoid at a party and suddenly assume the status of experts cajoling and chastising their fans to “save mother earth”, while the very lifestyles they lead do more damage than all of their fans and detractors could do combined.  

Please, to all of you committed green activists, if you want your movement to succeed, tell Hollywood what America tells Paula Abdul every week, “Sit down and shut up.”

2. Tie the benefits of being green to the wallet

Look, we’re capitalists.  We’re realists.  Talk to us in our language.  We find your science questionable and self-serving, so you will never motivate us with pleas to save the planet from impending doom.

But, tell us that we will save money on our electric bill with those curly light bulbs?  We’re there.  Show us ways to cut our water bill without sacrificing anything tangible?  We’re there.

Deliver hard evidence and math to show us how we will run out of landfill space?  You got us.

3.  Anecdote to terrorism

We are fiercely patriotic beings.  T. Boone Pickens touched a nerve when he reminded us that our dependence on foreign oil is helping to fuel the very terrorists who have wreaked so much havoc on our lives and psyche.

If you want to see less oil used, then hammer this point home, over and over again.  At the same time, though, we can’t go  cold turkey.  Stop fighting the exploration near our shores and on our own land.  Let’s get off foreign oil through domestic production and alternative fuels at the same time.

4. Promote the American midwest as the Middle east of wind power

This goes hand-in-hand with #3.  Why should they get all our money, regardless of whether its supporting terrorism or not?  If we can use our own land to produce the energy we need, and provide jobs to our own people, then we are all in favor.

Converting some of that unused farmland into wind farms helps family-owned farms, provides jobs, and helps generate revenue and create jobs right here in America.  That’s a win-win all the way around.

5. Tell Al Gore to debate

Your hero, Al Gore, has a nasty habit of not allowing dissension.  Whatever he says is supposed to be taken as gospel and if anyone disagrees with him they are labeled idiots or have some sort of agenda.

The planet has a fever?  Well, my kids sometimes have fevers and they go away.  So, Al, you’re saying what thousands of scientists who disagree with you are already saying and that is that global warming is a normal, natural phenomenon and temperatures will be coming down eventually?

Look, we know this dullard is your darling, but we see through him.  We know him as the political animal he is.  The more you sing his praises and bestow upon him your ridiculous awards, the more credibility you lose.  We will not be part of this hero worship.

The more he avoids debating those thousands of scientists who dispute his alarmist claims, the more we are convinced he has no idea what he’s talking about and is simply another politician exploiting an issue for personal gain.

Al Gore needs to stop saying the debate is over in order to avoid debating.  If he feels strongly that he is right, then he should be anxious to prove it.  If he had the facts, he shouldn’t be afraid.  His reaction to the debate invitations, however, raise more concerns and in our minds prove that he is just another empty-suited politician.

6. Adjust to the consumer.  Don’t make the consumer adjust to you.

Look, we like to do the right thing.  If you can give us products that do the same thing the ones we currently using can, and can deliver them at the same cost, we will buy them.  We will tell our friends to buy them.

But we will not change the way we do things just for the sake of it.  Your stories of the planet burning will not change our habits.  You have to create the products that will not disrupt our lives or lighten our wallets if you want to lessen our impact on the environment.

You have two hits on your hands with the CFL bulbs and the Energy Star rating for appliances.  They both save us money. Learn from these successes.

We conservatives are not blind to the problems with the environment.  But we will simply not be part of the arrogance that dictates that we can destroy the planet.  Earth is far bigger and more resilient than is the human race.  An all-out nuclear war notwithstanding, we cannot destroy this planet and we will not create global warming.

We are here to help and do the right thing.  Help us do it in a way we can live with.