Comments on: What’s Brown Before Green?? – Dirty Jobs

By: Shannon Marie

Shannon Marie — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 22:23:15 +0000

GO BROWN!

By: Scot Coon

Scot Coon — Sun, 15 May 2011 15:09:45 +0000

I think some people have missed the point. IT’s going to take real work to “save the environment”, not sitting at a computer all day. It’s like you’re testimony to congress. If everyone leaves a check on the counter and goes on with life, nothing will get done.

By: Joanna

Joanna — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 17:12:46 +0000

Wow, I couldn’t agree more. What can Brown do for you apparently everything. I could not have said it better. Brown before Green, like in the dictonary. Thanks for all you do. – 4-H leader Joanna

By: Jakob Danielsen

Jakob Danielsen — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:33:16 +0000

Great job. Thats the most important thing I’ve got to say. Obviously that means I’ve got critique, but first and foremost. Great job man
The second thing is sorry. I am from Denmark. I might not get your language perfectly right but I am trying

I don’t see the green movement getting anywhere, for real, without getting their hands dirty or I should probably say our hands.
However, the spot I am in feels rather uncomfortable. My father worked as a smith most of his life until it made him sick. Then he became a fisherman, because the fresh sea air was better for him. Even now at the age of 80 he keeps working.
I’m a college boy, but I was raised with physical work and I’ve seen how that is great way to stay in shape, rather than going to the gym.
Believe me when I say you don’t need a college degree or loads of money, to work for the enviroment.
Saving water is not a bad idea, it saves money too. I’ve never had a drivers license, I had a bike and public transportation. It’s not bad either and actually it’s cheaper than owning a car. I eat expensive organic food, as long as I find it sensible, that means as local as the food can get and… Organic fish is just crazy, so I just get fish from the fishers at the harbour if ever… and you know… sometimes, those organic food producers, have a way of making tastier food.
Unfortunatly, with the growing population in the world, theres a chance that inefficient food production must stop and that includes organic food production :/
Get this though… low energy appliances. GREAT way to save money by saving energy and I could go on…

I am sorry, I am one of the smart people, but I am not gonna dumb myself down to be less intimidating, but I am allso sorry if I don’t know how to speak like ordinary people, even though I am trying. Hey I AM danish as well as smart. How can I ever be expected to feel understood in english?
The point is that smart people sometimes get a little, I don’t know… aloof? We sometimes forget how to speak with ordinary people.
But even so, last I checked, being smart wasn’t stupid. Getting your kids an education to give them a chance to improve on their own lives wasn’t bad… and even though some problems seems overwhelming and difficult, it has never been a good idea to ignore them and hope they go away has it?
“Hey dad, the barn is on fire! Oh, just ignore it son, it’ll go away.”

So if by far, the largest population of scientists, say that we are in trouble, is there any good reason not to believe it?
USA have definatly had their own share of natural disasters, and they have increased in frequency during the lasts years and while they may not touch people individually, how are you going to argue, before the victims, that nothing is wrong?
Dare you ignore the possibility that the scientists are right and just keep up life as it has been the last 50 years?

Ok so your point is another than what I am saying here, but really I am just trying to illuminate the green issue here.
I don’t see why green and brown should in any way oppose each other and heck as far as I understand brown before green it sounds like a good idea.
Most great enviromental work is done by people getting their hands dirty and yes I DO agree that there’s an industry feeding of the green movement.
But heres the flash news…Theres people making money off dead people. Funeral homes. Some make money of sick people. Medical companies.
Some make money of promoting the green issue.
Some cheat people out of their money covering it up as the green issues, but swindlers are gonna do that everywhere they can and they’ll hide in any kinda suit that fits their scheme.
Should the hard working people, fighting for the green cause, be blamed because this cause, is a most excellent target for swindlers?

I am sorry I understand why people are fed up with the green movement, but the problem won’t disappear and even if we do tend to build up a bit of drama, it doesn’t change the facts.

Here’s what I would like though. Smart people using some of our smarts, to actually listen to other people than ourselves. We do tend to do that a lot, I admit.
I’d allso like ordinary people to actually take our warnings seriously.
We do put a lot of time and effort into understanding the problems. We don’t just guess and we don’t build our arguments around wishfull thinking, but around serious research.

Ofc the fearmongers in the green industry has got it a bit wrong. Thinking that we can change the world with fear is stupid.
We are not afraid of culling the overpopulation of animals, but we can’t find any kind of overpopulation like the one of humans. That doesn’t have to mean that we should cull the human population, but we have to consider what we do, to keep this huge human population, safe. Not even the most die hard fanatic can argue the the world isn’t overpopulated.
Being green isn’t about putting the world before humans. It’s about keeping the world safe for humans and the future is looking rather grim. That is if we ignore the problems.
I claim thatI am one of the smart people, but even though I know fear wont help, I fear the future I am leaving for my daughter. I want her world to be a better place than what I am offering to her now, but don’t fear the future, put on your brown gloves and start working.

Dirty jobs is a masterpiece in showing how ordinary people can make a great uhmm… brown effort for the enviroment and help us all to a better world and even though theres people trying to swindle us out of our hard earned money, we can see that there’s allso a lot of good ordinary people out there, doing a great job to make it a safer future.
It’s true that the best enviromental work is done by people getting their hands dirty, but please don’t resent the people who knows stuff. Knowing stuff isn’t bad

BTW I make absolutly NO money writing this. I do this for free in my spare time. I should probably be enjoying a beer and watching the handball worldcup games instead, but here it is

By: gail

gail — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 18:05:43 +0000

Love it! My husband is in the brown almost all day long. It’s only green when he gets to mow it or bale it, but brown is the color of what happens on a ranch! Thank you for speaking up for all us who wallow in it or have to wash it out of our husband’s or children’s clothes! You are a voice of reason in the otherwise shallow media that has turned its nose up when it comes to everyday working people and smell green (like you said — the color of money and greed and envy!)….good job, Mike! Farmers and ranchers everywhere thank you.

By: Monika

Monika — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:47:13 +0000

I believe that e-thing was brown b4 green. My mother starting composting grass clippings in black plastic bags over 40 years ago next to the garage on our 30ft-wide lot. We had the biggest cukes on the block. I continued that tradition ever since. I try to encourage people to recycle plastic bags (I’ll take them to the grocery store 4 u); paper ( i’ll take them to the Abitibi dumpster 4 u b-cuz they turn the money collected into helping poorer residents);I take the newspaper from the office to the animal welfare (u can guess why on that yourself);I joined the park district as a commissioner so we’d have more flowers in our parks (a calming influence I believe), which means I have to plant them if I want them (and I do). I believe in Earth Hour (can’t we do without lights in the house for 1 hr once a year?). Wonderful video. Thank you Mike.

By: Lil

Lil — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:57:51 +0000

My dad worked as a heavy equipment operator for 38 years in the physical plant department of a major university. If there was snow, then Dad got up at 1AM and went to run the machinery to clear the roads and parking lots on campus. In the summertime, he worked in the sweltering heat to run backhoes to expose pipes so plumbing could be repaired. Dad was deaf. He wore a hearing aid, but it didn’t do him much good. One time a reporter for the college paper made a snotty comment in the paper about the misfits such as old guys who couldn’t hear, working for the physical plant. That really hurt my dad’s feelings. Besides, with running heavy equipment, no one can hear anything and they have to use hand signals anyhow! That spoiled brat rich daddy’s kid college student had no appreciation or understanding of how without my dad’s work, the university would not have been able to function.

I give horseback riding lessons and I find that the parents of my students want their kids to help me with the dirty work of caring for the animals so that they’ll understand what it is like to be on the business end of a stall fork.

By: BackSplashBroad

BackSplashBroad — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:00:29 +0000

Mike–I’m with ‘ya. However, do we really need to be monochromatic? We can be brown and green and many other colors at the same time–even red and blue! What IS important while we are doing good and proud work is to be thoughtful, to make the right choices for our health here and now, and for the people and critters after us. There is a balance and I firmly believe despite all the corporate green-washing it is the tidal wave of the future and a new economy ripe for independent businesses.

A Fullfilled Tradeswoman in Mossy Seattle.

By: Alex Morris

Alex Morris — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:56:55 +0000

I have spent most of my life in the working of the soil. My early years I worked on a family farm/ranch. Later years as a grounds supervisor. In the ranching world I would sit around the campfire (sheep camp) and listen to the men around the pot of well cooked mutton stew. They were perplexed by the environmentalist jargon. Who were these people? Yes, they the rancher had learned the hard way that overgrazing costs the entire system, but they learned and fixed the problem and worked hard to restore and actually made the system better. No flags waving, this was their life, either they make the range productive of they lose their way of life. Notice I did not say living because most people know that the family farm seldom makes real money, most of the time it is just from one year to the next.

I will be watching and listening to your process, it seems as though you know that it is all about the hard working, barely scraping by people, but at the same time it is all worth it to be a part of the glue that holds this way of life together.

By: Katie

Katie — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 04:17:10 +0000

I am an FFA member from Wyoming and I cannot tell you how much I agree! This inspired me! I wrote a speech on this very topic!