I’ve been vitally interested in bridging the gap between right and left since in childhood I grew up with mainly rightwing friends and my father was definitely tied into the military industrial complex that he did well so with. I was never a lefty. I was always tending to conservative, even when it cost me dearly, personally. 

 

That was why in 2004 and 2005 at the depths of the green movement when Bush politics had essentially washed away anything having to do with a progressive green agenda I began to see that he was going way too far in one direction and he needed to be countered. The Bush environmental policies did not make sense for America. Before you say that I am a lefty, like I said, I’m not. I voted for Ronald Reagan. Twice. I am, I hope, like you an ordinary guy, trying to be a patriot. It’s the duty of every citizen to serve somehow. We all have different ways. The important thing is to get to the concept that we must serve a greater whole. I wanted to serve both God and my country. 

(On a personal note, since I am writing about this anyway:  I had nothing left to lose. Patriotism was a refuge. But sometimes you come to love the love in whose arms you take refuge even though you don’t know what you are getting into until you get into it.)

 

But, like I said, I was trying to bridge different groups. I understood the role of business and largely distrusted corporations to do what was right or government to do much in order to really effect change so I was looking for individuals who could go faster than government. Business was also moving very fast in a green direction. GE was coining ecoimagination. Waste Management, the largest refuse collector in the nation, was going green. Solar was growing, too. Everyone was talking green at a time when we were making key decisions globally based on terror and oil. I wanted to find a way to strengthen our country. I had three kids. I was ground zero for making the change. I wasn’t doing very well at it. I was a struggling pilgrim, but I longed to break through into the big wild green, and I kept talking to people, trying to find the inspiration for my own life, and I kept coming back to how this was good for America no matter what you thought about global warming, so I kept harping on this notion of loving this nation and trying to do something that was good for it, and that was how, sitting near the Pentagon, I came up with it: green patriot. I was a green patriot. That day, visiting one of the sites of Ground Zero, talking with someone who had been there at length, about it all, I loved America. I understood it. I understood its people. I believed in America. Sodden as we are. I love our tolerance. We needed resolve. We had troops fighting the hot war. We had to fight the other war to be strong and support our troops with what we could do. I got back on the subway and went back into Washington, D.C., and that night I had dinner with my lovely sister and her boyfriend and she brought her own take out container because she was tired of the stupid idea of styrene. She was a hero right then and there. Doing something unique, different, expressing herself herself and not waiting for Congress or the howl of the wolf to tell her to do what we needed to do and what was obvious: turn oil into salt. (This is a term that James Woolsey, former director of the CIA and a coauthor, used in one of their essays.) 

 

People were doing it everywhere. I was traveling everywhere. I was becoming a single father, God help me. I was living out a slight variation on Revolutionary Road. I began to see so many changes that now five years later we have already embedded green into our living styles. It happened. A lot of Republicans think it is silly Hollywood la la stuff and they have a good point, but it’s there, and it’s real, and it’s probably our best chance turning oil into salt, and who doesn’t want that?