It's Hip to Be Green

Along with lifestyle experts, the new environmental movement has spawned its own online magazines dedicated to green living. Lime.com, started by former Oxygen Media executive C. J. Kettler, attracts young people with a fresh combination of short videos, blogs about such things as green renovations and finding the best organic baby food, and funny news items about celebrities' efforts to be eco-friendly. "Historically, the image of the environmentalist in this country has been something of a scold—preachy and self-righteous," says Chip Giller, 36, founder of the environmental news site Grist.org. "We try to remind people that [environmentalism] isn't all about punitive things. It's not all about a reduction in your lifestyle." Grist, with a readership of 800,000, is often called "The Daily Show" of the green space because it uses clever writing and wit to get younger people involved. One of the group's claims to fame is turning a Chevy Tahoe ad campaign on its head. After Chevy asked the public to create and post their own commercials for the new car on Chevy's Web site last spring, Grist posted its irreverent take on the ad, inspiring hundreds of readers to do the same. Soon the Chevy site was overwhelmed with videos bearing slogans like "Don't Let All Those Deaths Go to Waste" (the cynical meaning: soldiers are dying for oil in Iraq, so you might as well fill up your tank). "We use humor as a way to get through the jadedness that some people have about this issue," says Giller.

That's not to say the movement doesn't have its more traditional activist side. Duval's Sierra Student Coalition is now active on more than 300 campuses across the country, where students are pushing their universities to reduce their global-warming pollution to zero by conserving energy and getting power from clean, renewable sources like wind and solar. One student Duval is working with is Lauren Stuart, a Louisiana State University junior. After seeing her campus nearly wiped out by Hurricane Katrina, Stuart founded the first environmental group at her conservative school. So far, she has won a pledge from LSU's administration to build more bike routes and shut a large part of its campus to automobiles by August.

Other activists have turned to money to exert pressure. Mark Orlowski, a 2004 graduate of Williams College, founded the Sustain-able Endowments Institute in Cambridge, Mass. In January the group put out its first annual College Sustainability Report Card, in which it gave grades to the 100 largest-endowed schools based on such indicators as green buildings, recycling, availability of local or organic food and how ecofriendly their investments are. But the group's main mission is to get universities to use their power as big investors to urge companies to implement more sustainable business practices.

Some are critical of this softer approach. Fred Meyerson, a professor of demography, ecology and environmental policy at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, says that many groups have started to shy away from important environmental issues like population control because they've deemed them too contentious. "They don't really push the envelope the way people did in the '70s and '80s." And, whatever the approach, even the most optimistic of Gen-Xers aren't convinced that environmentalism is here to stay. "We need to make sure this environment boom isn't just a two-year trendy thing, but that green becomes embedded in our culture," says Grist.org's Giller. No matter how it gets done.

With Catharine Skipp in Winston-Salem, N.C., and Heidi Richter

© 2007