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Monday, September 17, 2007

About being "green" just for the sake of it

I just finished reading this article on VentureBeat thanks to a post on PMarca where the following criticism about Prius owners appears :
It’s like wealthy investors giving money to “art museums instead of to starving people”
Why do I like this sentence ? Probably because I think that today a lot people cheer on ecology, making pseudo sacrifices for the planet ... But at the end of the day do so, more because it is a huge trend, than because of real personal conviction. By the way this sentence was issued by Vinod Khosla who is one of the most influent investor in Greeen Technology from the Silicon Valley... Just to show you that it's not coming from some Oil backed company's CEO like you may have imagined.

The other reason why I like this sentence is that people have a tendency to focus their vision on one detail, but don't really look into the big picture. Yes it hurts to see artists in the need and not being able to continue their passion. But what about those millions of people that just can't eat or drink everyday ?

It's of course an easy to take shortcut since things are far more complicated than that, but next time you speak about ecology, take a minute or two to see whether the action you are taking is really relevant, whether it's just a drop in the sea, or there's just something more important to do for your planet ...

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