After coming back from a youth conference on climate change, I excitedly described the event to a friend who responded, “Wow, that sounds cool, maybe I should be a hippie too.”
This prompted what can only be described as a rant.

The problem with the word hippie is that it no longer holds any meaning. Once reserved for long-haired, pot-smoking wanderers on Haight street, the word has come to be used on anyone who recycles or wears tie-dye or looks as if they haven’t showered for the past couple of days.

Defined as such, the word would likely encompass the majority of Whitman students. And yet, I would not consider the majority of Whitman students to be environmental activists.
On the other hand, there are quite a few environmental activists outside of Whitman that I doubt have ever been called hippies.

Take the U.S. Army for example. GreenBiz recently reported that the army is increasing the amount of renewable energy used on its bases. The idea is that if they can reduce their reliance on oil, they can also reduce the number of supply conveys. Since many of these conveys are currently being hit by improvised explosive devices (IEDs), this can only be a good thing.
The best part of this article was the discovery that “the Army wants to manufacture more environmentally friendly war machines.”

Clearly, ‘hippie’ cannot describe both a 1960s flower child and a soldier shooting enemy combatants from a biodiesel tank.

While the example appears to be a drastic one, if the fifteen Whitman students who went to the conference learned anything, it was that the youth climate movement looks very different than the environmental activism of the 1970s.

Many of the speakers at the conference were minorities. There were African Americans talking about how green jobs would create pathways out of poverty and Native Americans speaking about how the hot and windy lands they were pushed into are perfect for solar and wind energy. Other speakers included the head of the EPA and numerous politicians.

Instead of talking about peace and love, everyone was citing an alphabet soup of upcoming bills. In the place of tie-dyed shirts were suits we wore as we lobbied our representatives for a greener future.

While we were practicing for lobby day, one girl said she was going to tell her Senator to support a cap on carbon emissions because “we need to protect mother earth.”

The rest of the group glared at her and finally a different girl said, “Talk about the economic benefits of going green, all that mother earth crap is going to make them think we’re a bunch of hippies.”