Pedersen

After seeing “The Green Hornet,” I started to wonder who was the cooler hornet, the guy in the movie or Corky? Now, the Green Hornet may have guns, kung-fu, comedy and a copious amount of car-based explosions, but Corky has something that the movie doesn’t – class.

It is not a bad movie to say the least, it has plenty of crude, witty humor and kick-ass action that today’s audience craves. But for having such a talented group of people work on it, the movie is lacking.

“The Green Hornet” starts off innocently enough, with immature party-animal Britt Reid (Seth Rogen), hopelessly poised to take over his father’s newspaper business. After an accidental rescue of civilians, he decides crime-fighting is the life for him.

Then come the fight and chase scenes which seem ridiculous and utterly laughable while watching, but you do leave the scene feeling somewhat impressed by what you saw. I would credit that to the brilliant eye of Michael Gondry, who also directed “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Be Kind Rewind.”

Rogen does a fairly good job acting, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before except that he throws a few punches. He is still the goofy, overgrown man-boy he always is, saying things like, “shit yeah,” all of the time – and it’s still hard to take him seriously.

Rogen also wrote the movie with Evan Goldberg, which is surprising considering they also wrote “Superbad” and “Pineapple Express.” But then again, Rogen also was one of the writers of “Drillbit Taylor.”

The best actor in the film is, without a doubt, Christoph Waltz, who plays the disturbingly funny antagonist, Chudnofsky. You might recognize Waltz from “Inglorious Basterds,” in which he played Col. Han Landa and, although he isn’t as creepy in this film, he is just as scary and perhaps a little more demented.

Then, of course, there is the series of funny little cameos from actors such as James Franco and Edward Furlong that actually make sure your attention is held. Cameron Diaz is supposed to serve that same purpose, but she doesn’t do it well. I forgot she was even in the film for most of it.

The worst part of the movie is its weak character development. Of course there is the inevitable power struggle between Kato, played by Jay Chou, and Britt Reid which, once resolved, brings them closer in the end, but that resolution is unexplained and forced.

All in all, “The Green Hornet” is great if all you care about from a movie is fighting, suits, explosions and a few laughs, but it lacks any depth and can only be considered a very brief footnote in the annals of history.

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Pedersen

I have been attending Emporia State for a long time. In fact, I am finishing my fifth year here and therefore have the lovely title of “super senior.”

Despite the word “super” being in there, it’s not a very illustrious title. It says to the world that I wasn’t either smart enough or dedicated enough to be done with college in four years. While one, or perhaps both, of those statements may be true, I think that I am judged against outdated standards.

Very few people that I know have graduated in four years. In fact, five or six years seem to be the standard amount of years it takes to graduate. I wonder to myself, why?

Is it because of a lack of motivation in our generation to finish? Apprehension of the great unknown after schooling? Are we becoming more stupid?

All of those could be factors in this trend, but I think one of the most impacting factors is that schools simply do not want us to finish in four years.

This is not to say that schools want us to fail every class, they would be out of business if that were their philosophy. However, we must remember that every school is a business and therefore their biggest goal is to get money and they do this by having us enroll in classes.

The more classes we are in, the more money they make and it’s double the money if a student fails and has to retake a class.

Take for example lab classes. I failed my chemistry lab class due to attendance and now must retake not only the lab, but the class itself.

Attendance policies also can work against you. You can be doing very well in a class and understand all of the material but if you miss one too many classes, you must take the entire course over again.

And, of course, let us not forget about the overwhelming amounts of (mostly) useless General Education classes.

The only solution to this problem, sadly, lies in us students. How we feel about this deception doesn’t matter, we aren’t the ones who write requirements for degrees. They are making the rules, we’re just playing the game.

So it’s up to us to play it to the best of our abilities. Make a graduation plan, have notes on your attendance in a class instead of just guessing, plan for an alarm to go off on finals week and get to sleep early.

We can only hope that these oppressive policies eventually change, but for now, we must do the best that we can with the circumstances we’re given.

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Alex Pedersen

Emporia State University is a great school.

I respect and love this place and I have been enjoying going to school here for years. I love the teachers, the classes, the architecture, the history and, of course, all of my peers. The campus is beautiful and I am genuinely happy I chose ESU.

ESU may be fairly small, but it is moving forward, trying to become bigger as we can see with things like the Union renovation. Despite its size, ESU seems to be as open-minded and progressive as any larger school.

But we have a single designated “free speech zone” on our campus.

Ridiculous.

The entire campus should be a free speech zone, there should be absolutely no censorship on the campus.

Now, that is not to say that microphones are listening in on your conversations, waiting to hear you insult a teacher outside of the zone. It does mean that a recognized student organization, or any organization for that matter, can only proliferate propaganda on one small part of the school.

The rules are that an RSO can use chalk to advertise for something anywhere on the sidewalk on campus, but they can only write political and persuasive messages in the confines of the Union Square. Also, offensive messages are disallowed. These rules also apply for any public demonstration, like the protest against the Iraq war a few years ago.

I can understand that ESU would not want spray paint on their sidewalks or buildings, although a college that had an open graffiti policy would probably be the coolest looking school possible.

I can also see the argument against a campus-wide free speech zone. We are already bombarded with so many messages, it will only create clutter and the school could be held responsible for any offensive messages.

But we are all adults. If you ever watch more than 30 minutes of television, then you can see how you are already bombarded with persuasive messages. Every single advertisement and TV show you watch is filled with various messages on what to buy, who to believe, what to do.

I would say that it takes at least a certain amount of intelligence to come to school, so it’s safe to reason that every single student at ESU is smart enough to interpret and evaluate any message they see. If students saw the message, “do not go to class today,” it is likely that most would still go to class because we can think rationally. We are able to disagree and not follow a message’s command if we do not want to, we are all mentally competent.

So why is the school treating us like they are an overbearing parent, like we are stupid? Why do they want to censor anything that could be controversial? Why are they forcing anything with any passion into the choke hold of the Union Square?

The answer is fear. They give us the chalkboard of the Union Square because they don’t want us to write on the wall with our crayons.

It is odd that the school chose the Union Square to be its free speech zone, as it is at the heart of the school. But it is also tucked away and a very small area, it would be hard to get more than 100 people in the Square comfortably. I am reminded of a singer with a beautiful, powerful, strong voice that is forced to wear a muzzle.

A University is naturally a hub for ideas and knowledge, an exchange point for brilliance. Each day we go to class, we are trading intelligence and learning from each other. There is no need to censor us to any degree because we are all able to judge for ourselves what we believe or do not.

Fuck Censorship.

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Alex Pedersen

I met a new friend today.

I was sitting in the hallway of Roosevelt Hall before a class, bored and anxious for the class to begin. One of my classmates, a Korean guy, was sitting near me and was talking to a Korean friend of his in their native tongue.

And then a thought struck me. Not a profound one, not an unusual one. In fact, it’s so mundane that I don’t even usually realize that I think it: I wanted to meet someone. I wanted to talk to someone I’ve never talked to before, to build a connection with someone for the first time.

So I followed my whim and struck up a conversation with the two about the few Korean words I knew. Unfortunately, all of them were dirty words I could barely pronounce taught to me by a Korean-American friend of mine, but I connected anyhow. The new friend and I exchanged our names and she taught me how to say, “nice to meet you,” in Korean.

College is naturally a time of meeting new people, and we need to squeeze that social tangerine for all of its friendly juices. Emporia may not be a big school, but it is almost impossible to know everyone on campus. During this point in our lives, it is important to be bold and meet as many friends as you can.

This doesn’t mean that we have to try to become the most popular person on campus, but that we should not be scared of meeting new people.

After meeting a new friend today, I walked away feeling happy to make a new friendship and feeling accomplished, as if it’s something that doesn’t happen every day.

And that is because it doesn’t. Many people, including myself, live in a bubble of individualism. We don’t need to talk to people we don’t know and they don’t need to talk to us, so we don’t want to go out of our way.

Unfortunately, that is a silly way to think. If someone thought that way their entire life, they wouldn’t make any friends at all, so why think like that for even a second? There is so much we can learn from each other, but it is impossible to learn if you never meet the teacher.

It is also a great thing that our school has such a large number of international students. Meeting international students allows for sharing of cultures from both the international student and the American student, and that is never a bad thing. We have come to college to learn to be worldly and learning about other cultures is just that. We must have the courage to burst our ethnocentric bubble.

I’ve made hundreds of friends in college, and I think I will only make more. I also think that I will hold on to some of those friends I have met in college well into my adult life.

After college, meeting friends will be totally different. Depending on your job, you may end up working with the same people in the same department every day. It’s hard to find new friends when you’re stuck in an office doing work for several hours a day.

But we are in college, the most sociable learning institution possible. I, for example, have classes where I don’t know all of my peers. I don’t even know all of the people in my major. Although the school is small, there are always more people that we can get to know. All you need is a smile and a friendly demeanor.

So the next time that you are sitting in a hallway alone, bored and wanting to talk to someone, do it. The odds are that they will talk back to you, you’ll find out you have something in common, and you will make a new friend.

Like Benjamin Franklin never said, a friend found is a friend earned.

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We are a generation of electricity junkies.
Every time I go into the library, I see at least a few people surfing Facebook, writing messages to their friends and stalking for potential ones. I see people reading news and playing games online. Even today before writing this article, I took a test online.
The internet is all around us and can be incorporated in nearly everything we do. Our generation will “Google” something before they will use a book to research it. Hell, even the capitol of our state was named Google for a month.
And, as with any new dominant form of media, it has changed our view of the world. Our use of the Internet has shaped our generation into something quite different than any before. The Internet has made us lazier, more prone to distraction and more self-absorbed.
It should be remembered that the Internet has affected more than our generation, but ours is the one that has latched onto and revolutionized it. Younger generations will be the same, but they may even have their own technological advancement that trumps ours.
To analyze the importance of the Internet to society, we first have to look at the past. Marshall McLuhan was an English professor at the University of Toronto who came up with the theory of media ecology.
Media ecology is the idea that all of human history is divided into four ages, or epochs, that are determined by what is the dominant medium is the time. The dominant media then affects how we view the world. He coined the term, “the medium is the message” to sum this idea up.
The four ages are the tribal age, the literate age, the print age and the electronic age. The according dominant mediums of the ages were acoustic music, written word for the few, print word for the masses and finally radio and television.
McLuhan died before the debut of the Internet, so we can only guess what he would have thought of it. Some who have studied his work would say the internet would create a new age and others would lump it into the electronic age.

I personally think that while the internet isn’t the dawn of a new age, it is a stepping stone between two. We are, at the very least, exiting the electronic age and entering the digital age.
So what does that mean? To me, it shows a dangerous future. McLuhan himself said that the electronic age is a part of society’s push to go back to the tribal age, saying that we have become a global village. This is because of the instant communication available to us allows us to communicate across the globe before you could even hand write it.
What it really has done is allowed us total personalization to a completely unnecessary degree. It has increased our overall inflated idea of individuality to make us narcissistic. This is evident by looking at most of our peers’ Facebook pages and at every single old abandoned MySpace page.
The very nature of the internet tends to make us flighty and unfocused. It isn’t very easy to concentrate on writing or researching when your favorite tower defense game or any number of random YouTube clips is just a click away. And that ease also leads to procrastination, a disease that plagues us college students all of the time.
If we keep going on this road, we will only become more and more absorbed into the digital world. We already text things to people who are with us in the room, how long will it be before we text message someone instead of physically talking to them all of the time? Our drive for closeness to others only leads us to go through the easiest possible route, which is a path of depersonalization.
So perhaps the next time you’re checking your Facebook, maybe you’ll think to put your face in a book instead.

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Alex Pedersen

There has been a buzz, pardon the pun, around campus recently about a potential new recognized student organization which advocates pro-life legislation and action.

            In the Feb. 18 issue of The Bulletin, Lauren Walbridge wrote a story on Students for Life and their struggle for RSO status. They are hoping to get the three things they need to gain status, which are enough signatures to fill a petition, an advisor and approval from ASG.

            I respect their beliefs and fully support their vying for RSO status and would even agree with giving them allocation money, but I think they are outright wrong. If you believe that abortion is wrong, then don’t get an abortion. But it is arrogant to try to take away free choice based on a religious belief and, in this Midwest hotbed of heaven-hungry activity, we must keep that in mind at all times.

            I understand that being pro-life is typically a religious belief and those are hard to change, but I find it wrong in any situation to justify forcing others to do or not do things based on a belief that they may not share.

            Back to Students for Life, I will give a hearty thumbs-up to any group trying to become an RSO because it increases cohesion in our university. Like-minded people tend to gravitate towards each other anyway, and by allowing them to meet on campus and have a more official, professional setting, it allows students to find more interests that maybe they didn’t know they had, meet new friends and practice group communication skills they will undoubtedly have to use in the future.

            As for funding, that is for ASG to decide. I think that every group should receive equal funding, regardless of their goals. Every student organization, even RSO’s that are based around a hobby, is persuasive in nature: they try to get you to join whatever they are doing, attend their events etc.

            We shouldn’t tell ASG to cut funding from one organization because they have a religious message if we have another that is based on a political view, culture, or hobby. As long as it is for learning purposes, ASG should allocate money to it properly because that’s what the money is there for.

            I can understand the pro-life argument, that it should be a higher power’s choice when, where and how each person should die. That from the moment of conception or heart-beating or whatever you define it as, it is a living creature and should be treated as such.

            But there are many instances that this ideal does not quite work in. Should a woman be allowed to abort a child if she was raped? What if having the child could endanger the mother’s life? What if the child would die in a short amount of time anyway? These are finer points which are not addressed with a simple, “abortion is wrong,” outlook.

            If one argues any of these by saying, “God planned for this child to be in the woman, rape (or what have you) aside,” then it could easily be retorted by proposing that God then planned for the woman to have an abortion. This gets into the free will argument, and, again, I’m not trying to argue religious beliefs in this.

            There is also the outlook that abortion is torturous for the fetus but, given the choice, I would much rather be an aborted fetus and have a few minutes of pain than something that is a socially acceptable tortured creature, such as a veal calf.

            And say pro-life legislation was passed, what would happen? Women won’t stop getting abortions if they choose to have one. How many fatalities would back-alley abortions cause?           What would be the punishment of those caught receiving an illegal abortion?

            The issue raises a lot of questions, but I think that the viewpoint that abortion is downright immoral is far from a proper one for a civilized society to have.

            So, Students for Life, I dig your fight and I wish you the best of luck, but I think you need to separate yourself from your religious ideals for a moment and ponder what this could mean for women and society altogether.

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Alex Pedersen

The holiday brings up many iconic images – red paper hearts, the colorful Valentine’s Day cards we shared as children, the disgusting, chalk-flavored candy hearts, flowers, Cupid, etc. It has been touted as the most romantic holiday and has been shunned as a practice of materialism. Whatever it is, one can see its presence all over, even on our own campus.
            It seems that most of the people who do not like Valentine’s Day feel the way they do because they don’t want to spend money on a meaningless day just because it’s a social norm or because they don’t have anyone to share the day with.
            But Valentine’s Day should not be a day in which we begrudgingly buys gifts and dinner for someone else or a day when we stay at home and watch sad movies all night. It should be a day for enjoying love and life and being happy that we have what we have.
            If you have a significant other, or “lover,” you know that Valentine’s Day can be an expensive endeavor. We Americans have a tendency to show our love towards each other with material goods, it’s only normal in our culture. But where is the love in buying a box of candies made on an assembly line? Where is the romance in taking out a loan for flowers that will die in a week or a mass-produced card?
            When you feel the materialist blues, simply don’t buy into them. Talk to your partner about having a buy-free Valentine’s Day. Any rational lover would appreciate a hand-made gift that required time and effort over a store-bought one. Cooking a meal together is much more romantic than going out to an expensive restaurant. But I stress talking to your lover first, or you may end up embarrassed.
            Then of course, there is the gloom of facing a Valentine’s Day single. Staying at home in a puddle of self-pity and various movies can be trying on a soul. Although I can understand that this is a very frightening prospect, I see it as a boon instead.
            A single person can enjoy a completely buy-free Valentine’s Day, if they want. Even if they don’t want to be alone, they do not have to spend a single cent on anyone else if they do not want to. Union Activities Council is having a free two-minute speed dating session that night from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Memorial Union Ballroom. They also have the opportunity to hook up with others who are single in a bar, since there are less couples diluting the concentration of singles on Valentine’s Day.
            All in all, Valentine’s Day is a wonderful day. It is the official day of our culture to celebrate romance and no one should cry or whine about the day, as it is in their power to make it better. If you do not want to spend money, then work out a cheap date. If you become depressed because you are single, think of all of the reasons why it is good to be single. Do not let this celebration of love pass by you because you are scared.
            Because, as some wise sages once said, “Love is all you need.”

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While meandering through our campus the other day, a thought struck me: there are a lot of Asians on campus.

This is nothing new to me, I have been attending school here for years and I am proud of our student exchange program and all the work that they do. I also love meeting the Asian students and I am friends with several. I am also taking my second semester of Chinese here at Emporia State, so I particularly enjoy talking to Chinese people.

Talking to Chinese exchange students and my Chinese teacher, I have heard stories of the Chinese government that have shocked, confused and intrigued me. Of course, China is not the country it was under Mao Zedong. It has changed into a more capitalist country in many ways, at the very least economically.

But, despite economic reform, China still clutches on to the remnants of social totalitarianism that occurs in modern communism and, for the sake of China’s future, they need to drop it.

Deng Xiaoping developed the Social Market economic system that China now uses, which relies on the private sector to survive. This makes the nature of their economy very capitalistic, and it has served China well. They have the fourth highest Gross Domestic Product, according to the CIA World Handbook.

And, according to BBC News, China overtook Germany as the world’s largest exporter last month. It is undeniable that China’s economy is growing strong. So for such a modern country, it is odd to see all of the things that the Chinese government has been doing to control its people.

Since China was ruled by emperors, the government was always seen as an overbearing and stern, although wise, father figure. This is one explanation of why the Chinese go along with the government, but I don’t think it’s an excuse for what the government does.

Of course, there is the Google incident. Google refused to censor information and they were hacked, supposedly by the Chinese government, Google refused to release two android phones in China and the fight goes on, like a quarrel between two bratty children.

I am against all forms of government-mandated censorship and I feel that China has gone too far.  I believe it is the government’s responsibility to, in fact, make information as available as possible.

And it is not just through information censorship that China is showing its despotic side. Just last Friday, according to a Global Post article by Dinah Gardner, China’s first gay beauty pageant was broken up by police. The police told the organizer that there problem wasn’t with the homosexuality, but that a show with singing and dancing required certain procedures which they had not followed.

The organizers did not believe them, but they were no match for eight armed police officers. While homosexuality is becoming more accepted, high-profile events such as this are still antagonized by the government.

China is well on its way to becoming the next world super power, but it is restrained by its government. While they have made steps in the right direction, the government still uses its authority to control the masses.

Hopefully, with the patience and wisdom that the Chinese are known for, such closed-mindedness will recede and the government will realize that the Chinese people and culture are not to be policed, but nourished, encouraged and proudly displayed.

Deng Xiaoping once said, “When our thousands of Chinese students abroad return home, you will see how China will transform itself,” and I certainly hope that he was correct.

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Alex Pedersen

In a mere two days, it will be Halloween.

It is a time that has always left excitement in the core of my being. There is just something about the sight of flame colored leaves falling and plastic Frankenstein’s monsters that get me pumped for dressing up like Mr. White from “Reservoir Dogs” and getting hammered off of trash can punch.
Even in a small college town like Emporia, this weirdly wonderful freak-fest of a holiday is always an interesting one. There are bands playing, constant trick-or-treating, parties and, of course, the Haunted Homecoming.
But it saddens me when I ask someone what they are going to be for Halloween, and they reply with apathy. “Meh, I don’t care. I don’t like dressing up. Halloween isn’t a big deal to me.”

I simply do not understand how people can dislike Halloween because, to me, it is a holiday that is not only a socially healthy night of catharsis, but is a wild jumble of historic traditions from every culture associated with it, even Christianity.
Halloween was originally a Celtic holiday celebrated on Nov. 1 called Samhain (which, for some Celtic reason, was pronounced sow-in) which marked the end of summer and the beginning of winter and the new year, according to a Washington Post article.
The Celts believed that spirits could enter the living world during this time to both plague and bless the living. They would offer food and drink outside of their house to appease the spirits and wear costumes, usually made of animal skins, to hide their identity from spirits who would hurt them, according to an article by Bettina Arnold, co-director for the Center for Celtic Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
The Roman Catholic Church, partially in an effort to stop pagan rituals, created All Saints’ Day, or All Hallows Day, on Nov. 1, which was celebrated by dressing up as saints, angels and demons. Oct. 31 then became known as “All Hallow’s Eve,” according to The History Channel.
Native American culture also influenced modern-day Halloween. The pumpkin was unknown to Europeans before they came to America, so original Jack-o-Lanterns were carved out of turnips, according to The Washington Post article.
In America, many initial settlers did not celebrate Halloween very much, but immigrants from Ireland popularized it and, by the 1930s, it had become secular and community based, but was synonymous with vandalism, according to the History Channel. In the 1950s, it became aimed towards young children and now, it is a celebration for both young and old.
Apart from trick-or-treating, getting drunk and wearing slutty costumes, Halloween is sociologically healthy for us. It allows people to partially break social norms, as long as those straying are within other social norms. For instance, only during Halloween is it acceptable to dress as Michael Myers, but it is still not acceptable to actually stab people.
This is obviously an extreme example, but it shows how we can let ourselves go a little bit into a fantasy, but still go back to life as usual the next day. The Washington Post article calls this “ritual reversal” and basically says that it is a designated time to bring up dark issues in a fairly controlled and public manner. All human beings do this and Halloween is just our culture’s version.
So you still have two days. You can be lazy and show up to a party in your everyday clothes, or you can participate in the bonanza of the bizarre and revel in life a bit, before we end up like the ghosts and skeletons we dress up as.
Happy Halloween, bitches.

Alex Pedersen/The Bulletin

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Alex Pedersen

Picture yourself on your way to class in a few years, strolling through the newly renovated Memorial Union. You pass the Veteran’s Hall of Honor and you notice that something is off. Above the sign, there is a very familiar blue and red circular symbol.

That’s when you remember that you’re walking in the new marketing-friendly, corporately-sponsored Memorial Union.

No, Pepsi Cola hasn’t made any bids yet, but this future is a possibility. That’s right, the naming rights to the soon-to-be renovated Memorial Union are now for sale for $10 million, not to mention several areas within it which vary in price from $5,000 to $1 million.

The administrators are doubtful that anyone will honestly take up the bid. Dave Hendricks, director of the Memorial Union, said to The Bulletin in a story published Aug. 20, “We’re always going to be the Memorial Union. I don’t imagine there is anyone out there who has the money it would take to change the name. It takes a lot of money to do that.”

Although $10 million is indeed a lot of money and, odds are, no one will take us up on it, why do we need to take the chance? Hendricks said the goal was around $2.5 million which was supposed to come from selling the names of said offices and go completely towards renovating those offices. So why do we need so much more?

To sell of naming rights of both the Memorial Union and its offices seems ridiculous and is a disgrace to those it honors.

Now most likely, the words, “Memorial Union” will still be in the name and students will still refer to it in their every day vernacular as “the Union,” but why do we need to sell out so much?

To me, this is a question of pride and respect. The Memorial Union is named to be a monument to those who have fought and died for this country and, by tagging a sponsor to it, we are defacing and disrespecting the memory of those heroes.

As for the offices, many were named for individuals who contributed to Emporia State University and, now that we need some cash, we toss aside their name plaques and portraits and put up a corporate logo.

It seems that money is a more important factor than honor when it comes to the renovation. But even so, say we sell the names of offices in order to make them nicer, then why do we need the $10 million? The Center for International Education alone is going for $1 million and, when combined with only three of the most expensive areas, we would have our $2.5 million.

If we don’t sell any office names, then the naming rights to the union itself would easily pay for the remaining goal, but then what is the plan for the excess $7.5 million?

If we absolutely must sell out, then we should not sell out superfluously. We should choose to deface either the offices or the entire union with marketing propaganda, but to rename both is just unnecessary.

I don’t know about you, but I would feel uncomfortable having to walk through the Axe Body Spray Memorial Union every day to get to the Verizon Wireless Cafeteria and for the student body to not even have a choice in the matter is depressing. If you agree or disagree, then make your disdain or support heard. That’s what we have an Associated Student Government for.

But, if you don’t, there are boons too. In just a few years, we could be the proud owners of the Trojan Brand Condoms Main Street Lounge Space.

M.U. stands for Memorial Union, not Marketing Us.

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“Going green” is a trend that has gone far past the simple ads from the old days of a crying Native American.
In the ‘90s, it was all about recycling and there were plenty of public service announcements to remind you. Now, recycling is taken as a given if one “goes green” and the focus has shifted to buying goods made from recycled materials or other things that are essentially less harmful to the environment than their predecessors, such as hybrid cars replacing traditional vehicles.
Although the movement has almost become more of a fashion statement than an ecological statement, it has the potential to change the world.
On an individual level, there are always opportunities to be ecologically conscious. For a while now we’ve been able to recycle things such as paper, glass bottles and cans, but now we are even able to throw away what can’t be recycled into trash bags made mostly of recycled plastic which are available at even Wal-Mart.
In addition to recycling, food localization is ecologically conscious on an individual scale. Emporia is fortunate to have not only a strong Farmer’s Market, but a community garden at Flint Hills Technical College and possibly one in the works on our very own campus.
Thanks to Bill Hanlon of FHTC, Emporians are also able to take classes where we can learn to build an ecologically conscious house and even solar powered window heaters.
Of course, to change something as big as the world, it takes the combined effort of not only individuals, but governments as well. And, contrary to popular belief, it is actually possible for governments of various levels to actually help with something they are involved in.
For instance, in the Hebei province in China the city of Baoding has become the world’s first carbon-positive city, according to ABC News.
“The carbon saved annually worldwide through the use of equipment made here outweighs the city’s own emissions,” said the ABC News article. In other words, the products they export save more carbon than they used to create them.
Baoding started becoming ecologically conscious when thousands of their local fish started mysteriously dying. So their mayor, Yu Qun, shut down several hundred pollution producing factories and opened up factories that made things such as propellers for energy windmills in Texas and solar panels for the biggest solar power station in the world, all the way in Portugal.
Shutting down the old factories initially hurt their economy by two percentage points in annual economic growth, according to ABC News, but the new factories have since quadrupled their business and now the city holds close to 200 renewable energy companies.
While I’m not suggesting that every city in the world become a Baoding, I think it is an example of how the industry can grow if proper legislation is coupled with it, which is usually only done properly upon the insistence of the people.
So the time to act is now. You may be thinking, “I have heard that before and I didn’t act then, so obviously that’s a lie,” but it’s not because it is always the time to act, so it was true every time you heard and will continue to be true every time you hear it now.
If you woke up one day and found your dorm, house or apartment to be a complete mess and you planned on living there for a while, you would clean it. The Earth is no different and, thanks to the trend of “going green,” we can do it in style.

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