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No sooner did I finish writing “It’s Not Easy Being Green,” when I started seeing articles about how you have to be green. And the more greenbacks you have, the greener you need to look.

First, Lewis Smith, Environmental Reporter for the UK Times offers the British take:

Flaunting your green credentials has taken over from buying a bigger car or installing the latest electronic gadget as the preferred means of getting one over on the neighbours.

Where once the chattering classes would have vied to demonstrate the most conspicuous consumption, now they are competing to be the greenest.

Such a shift has taken place in attitudes to the environment that conversation at dinner parties is more likely to turn to who had the most environmentally friendly holiday rather than who went to the most exotic location.

The pressure to be seen to be green is so strong that nine out of ten people admit telling “little green lies” to avoid being labelled an eco-vandal, a poll has found.

It seems a study by the Norwich Union found that more than half the UKers they interviewed found “unethical living” to be more socially unacceptable than driving drunk. And three-quarters of them found “ethical one-upmanship” is now a main topic of conversation while picking up kids from school or while eating with friends.

Smith continues:

Dr Peter Marsh, co-director of the Social Issues Research Council, said that the issue of being greener than the Joneses cropped up frequently during lifestyle studies. “You see it in cars. Yesterday you talked about brake horsepower, now people talk about carbon emissions from their car — even though it’s a 4×4 tractor,” he said.

“People are seeking to rationalise their choices at all times. People are getting almost anal about it.” The growing anxiety to appear to be green was a reflection of what is perceived to be socially acceptable, he added.

If only it were easy to be green. I mean really green. Green enough to ward off guilt. Green green.

A fifth of the 1,500 respondents said that they had little idea of what to do, and half said that they were too confused or had too little time to make their lifestyles greener.

Corinne Sweet, a psychologist, said: “We want to be ‘good’ but often are too busy, or it seems too complicated, so we cut corners, or forget altogether, and then feel guilty.

“This can lead people to lie about their environmental actions — or inactions — or even to give up trying altogether, as it all seems too much to pack into our already too-busy lives. People are feeling a great deal of anxiety, irritation and fear that what they are doing is not enough or is wrong.”

 

BMW Hydrogen 7 - Getty Images

Your imaginary BMW hydrogen car. The offsets you never purchased. The compost never composted.

Lewis Smith offers some small ways to green up your street cred:

 

— Walk, cycle or take public transport everywhere

— Grow own vegetables and flowers organically

— Time the family’s showers

— Put a brick in the cistern

— Insulate their home

— Collect rainwater in barrels in the garden

— Compost food waste

— Recycle other waste

— Use renewable energy

— Install solar panels or wind turbines

— Refuse to holiday abroad

— Use a manual lawnmower

— Use only long-life bulbs Buy locally produced food to cut food miles

— Turn off appliances instead of using standby

— Use only wood products from sustainable forests

— Ditch plastic bags

— Turn the heating down

— Be buried in a wood with a tree planted on top

And of course there’s always your basic clothesline.

So what about this side of the Atlantic? While the Brits are grappling with green guilt, the Robert Frank of the Wall Street Journal writes about “Living Large While Being Green.”

You know how a long time ago, the rich could buy the service of a poor guy to go off to war in his place, well Frank writes about “Rich Buy ‘Offsets’ For Wasteful Ways; Noble, or Guilt Fee?”It turns out the rich are in an even bigger bind than your ordinary Brit. Why? Well it seems that:

With their growing fleets of yachts, jets and cars, and their sprawling estates, today’s outsized wealthy have also become outsized polluters. There are now 10,000 private jets swarming American skies, all burning more than 15 times as much fuel per passenger as commercial planes. The summer seas are increasingly crowded with megayachts swallowing up to 80 gallons of fuel an hour.

Yet with the green movement in vogue, the rich are looking for ways to compensate for their carbon-dioxide generation, which is linked to global warming, without crimping their style. Some are buying carbon “offsets” for their private-jet flights, which help fund alternate-energy technologies such as windmills, or carbon dioxide-eating greenery such as trees. Others are installing ocean-monitoring equipment on their yachts. And a few are building green-certified mansions, complete with solar-heated indoor swimming pools.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water:

Well ponder that greengirls and greenboys! How Green Is Your Valley?

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