When Green Became Cool

A few years ago, a Prius was a laughable posession. Today, there are waiting lists six months long just to drive off the lot at a much higher price. Aesthetically, today’s Prius is virtually indistinguishable from its predecessors, but rising gas prices and the increasingly trendy world of “go-green” advocates have changed the way people look at the machine that gives them 46MPG.

All over the world, people seem to suddenly have a rising interest in their own carbon footprints, the environmental effects of their governments, and what global warming is doing to the weather. Of course, these ideas are anything but new, but today they seem to be far ‘cooler’ than ever before.

Everywhere I go, I’ve started to notice these cloth reusable bags with eco-friendly messages printed on them. Retailers are even beginning to offer small discounts to customers in an effort to upgrade their image to keep up with the rising demand for environmentally-savvy products and companies.

Sure, it’s a start; but we’ve got a long way to go before we’re really ready to go-green. Luckily, technologies that will enable us to (essentially) maintain the lifestyles that we’re used to today while at the same time working to protect our environment are just around the corner. 

MIT engineers have been hard at work on new solar technologies that could put the power of the sun in the hands of consumers worldwide - and at a price that finally won’t break their budgets. Their breakthrough consists of a solar frame for windows that collects and later re-emits energy in the form of light. I won’t get in to the technical details, but feel free to read about them here.