The Green Suburbanite

Green is fashionable, it looks good on everybody, and as of the beginning of this decade will never go out of style. For those people who were waiting until being green became mainstream and sexy, time’s up. Vanity Fair put out its second annual “Green Issue” this month and it doesn’t get much more mainstream and sexy than that. The cover dons an intense Leonardo DiCaprio on location at the Jokulsarlon glacier lagoon in Iceland (whether or not the picture was worth the carbon emissions from the flight is up to you), and a baby polar bear named Knut (brought in digitally from the Berlin Zoo). Vanity Fair notes boldly and rather cheekily: “Yes, we know, there are no polar bears in Iceland. If current trends continue, there won’t be any in Canada either.” The cover itself is a display of the new seriousness given to environmental issues (last year’s had an elegant serenity about it), but to so bluntly state what the end of our current lifestyle has in store, especially for an internationally recognized publication, is bold and frightening. I say frightening because the serene, ‘hey, we should help the planet’ cover and thus attitude of yesteryear is gone; it has been replaced by a ‘we need to help the planet now’ attitude. This year’s cover is striking, complete with sex appeal, sternness, an adorable polar bear, and a reminder of what will be gone if we don’t change. And I’m not talking about Leo. The cover equals the magazine’s contents. Inside there are articles about water shortage and quality, severe pollution in the Amazon due to oil drilling, an article about Prince Charles’ green efforts, a sneak preview into up-and-coming eco-friendly cars, and that’s just the tip of the melting iceberg. Even many of the ads have gone green. To name a few: Levi’s is promoting their 100% organic cotton jeans, there is an ad for organic fair trade coffee, one from the Abundant Forests Alliance, an ad for Finlandia vodka which boasts “Environmentally Friendly Production,” and my favorite, the ‘global warming ready’ ads by Diesel (one of which shows a couple on a Manhattan (?) rooftop that is eerily close to the water, which is pictured ¾ the way to the top of the city’s skyscrapers). It’s brilliantly bold with enough cynical humor to appeal to the masses. The reason I chose to showcase Vanity Fair, which sounds so trite, is to show that the issues facing our world today are anything but trivial. The push toward green has finally flooded the bandwagon and this is one of the few times I will encourage everyone to grab their floaties (for those of you on the coast you may need them soon anyway) and jump on!