I don't think that caring about the planet is just for hippies, I just think that at this point in history, environmentalism has become corrupt and that unfortunately most people are jumping on the bandwagon because it's trendy, and that they're going about it the wrong way.
Take the recent Climate Change Conference in Paris. The media made a huge deal out of that, and everybody jumped on board with it. Any scientists who said they doubted global warming being man-made, whether they're really right or wrong, were labeled as "religious nutcases" on social media. Meanwhile, just a few years ago, my father was doing military work fighting overseas, and he brought a film camera with him to take pictures of some of the attractions on the way. When he got back to Nova Scotia, his camera was full of pictures unlike anything I'd ever seen before. Massive piles of trash, "E-waste" (old cell phones, laptops, tablets, etc.), and there were children picking apart lithium batteries with their bare hands, women taking cadmium and mercury out of cell phones - I've read backed up articles from Canada, America, Britain, Sweden, and I hardly found a single article on this problem. Environmentalism isn't a problem, but first-world environmentalists, who incessantly consume and then send the leftovers to third-world countries, only care about pollution when it's in their own backyard. If they're told that over in Afghanistan children are being exposed to heavy metals every day, the odd one or two might care, but if they're told that here in North America, a coal mine is causing global warming, which could affect them right where they are, assuming that it's real, they'll fully support the mine's closure, if they're attention-seekers they'll post about it on Facebook and Twitter, they'll comment on news articles, they'll make Youtube videos about it, they'll protest against mines until they shut down, they'll write a blog about it because it's trendy - on the latest digital tech that they think they've got to have, which they update every few months so that they can stay on top of the modern stuff - and they'll just toss out their old electronics to be shipped on a garbage barge to some poverty-stricken war-torn country where people will pick out anything salvageable, from lead to broken glass to toxic chemicals just so they can sell it to earn money. Digital tech isn't necessarily bad in moderation, but it's only caused more trouble than it's worth. As for the whole global warming thing, I'm no expert, I can't say whether it's real or a hoax or an impending apocalypse or a lie or whatever, but in my opinion, real or not, it's not nearly as big of a threat as what's on the ground. In the United States the amount of Superfund sites just sitting there right next to communities is overwhelming, and in Canada, despite the country's "green" image it tries to portray to tourists, right down the street from my house there's an old illegal dump about as big as a small pond, including old paint cans and CRT televisions, and nobody is doing anything to remove it all properly. In the neighboring town of Pictou, the water has become a pool of hazardous waste from the old paper mill. When I was a kid, I lived on an army base in Gagetown, New Brunswick, and there weren't any trees in several areas, except for dead ones that had all just mysteriously fallen down back in the sixties and seventies. It turns out that a chemical defoliant called Agent Orange had been sprayed on the base and that it had killed huge patches of trees and had been dumped in areas where my friends and I would play when we were children. If global warming is real, than it's the least of the world's problems, but you'll never hear about Canada's polluted small towns or Afghanistan's trash mountains or Iraq's sewage ponds or the St. Lawrence River being polluted with several tonnes of sewage from Quebec or CFC's being found up in Nunavut or prescription drugs like Prozac being found in Ontario's water supply - because global warming is a popular topic and it makes anyone who agrees that it's real look good, whether they truly care about the planet or whether they're just looking to build up their image online or on the market. It's actually pretty sad that people are so backwards, because if they all focused on more than one issue and actually tried to raise awareness about it, whether it's just a local issue or a worldwide issue, a lot more could be accomplished. I'm not saying that the planet should be polluted on purpose, I'm saying that people should enjoy themselves and try to make a real difference instead of pretending to, because life is too short to spend a bunch of time worrying about climate change up in the sky, when down on the ground it's hardly safe to let a child play outside on their own anymore because of what kinds of things have just been dumped out in the woods or farms or fields for no reason. 
Another problem these days is the way environmentalism is being taught to younger generations. When I started going to high school in grade 10, my global geography class was shown a VHS tape of Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth', which discussed the effects climate change could have on the planet. Sure, there wasn't really anything wrong with the message, if you agree you agree, if not, than no, but after school I looked up the self-righteous Al Gore who my generation was supposed to be idolizing and following. Mr. Gore has a coal-heated huge house, a private jet that pollutes the sky every time it flies, a huge amount of energy-sucking lightbulbs, a heated pool with electric settings, an SUV, and somehow I doubt that this rich guy is taking time to buy organic food or recycle, not when he eats steaks from factory farms and has a dump truck coming by every day to whisk his trash away as if it were never there. Oh yeah, and there's also his habit of drinking bottled water from Nestle, the Nestle that's been draining water from Michigan and processing it to sell to people. How can younger generations take environmentalism seriously when the adults representing the cause are hypocrites and phonies like Al Gore and Drew Barrymore and David Suzuki and Leonardo DiCaprio? These celebrity environmentalists talk big, but they don't practice what they preach and then they try to cover that up. There's no honest role models to teach kids nowadays the importance of helping out the planet. At this point in time, for most people environmentalism is just a money grab and a do-gooder act. 😞
Canada, eh? 🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦 :)
"The 21st century is all flash but no substance." ~ Smog City
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