The cost of going green.

Here we go again, with another thing that grinds my gears. People that are destroying the planet by going green. I know the concept behind going green is to help the planet, but we've been sold out. It's a corporate ploy to get us to buy more stuff in the name of the environment, even though it's doing harm.
Do you ever research the "green" products you buy? You can buy a million different products that claim to be green, or environmentally friendly, but are they? What standards do you need to meet to be "green"?
I'll give you some examples of why going green is harmful to our planet:
Energy efficient light bulbs. You know the ones that use 14 watts instead of 60. Everyone buys these now, because they are using less electricity, therefore polluting the environment less. Right? No. There are many problems with these bulbs. One is the fact that they all contain mercury. Mercury is REALLY bad for the environment. 1 gram of mercury is enough to contaminate a 20 acre lake. The mercury in a energy saving light bulb is in gas form. When it breaks, the gas is released and goes into the air, and then into our lakes and oceans. Airborne mercury is why all the fish in our lakes and oceans are contaminated. Problem 2, incandescent light bulbs generate a lot of heat. Energy efficient bulbs don't. In colder climates incandescent bulbs are actually helping to heat homes, meaning less natural gas burnt.  "If all homes in Quebec were required to switch from (incandescent) bulbs to CFLs, there would be an increase of almost 220,000 tonnes in CO₂ emissions in the province, equivalent to the annual emissions from more than 40,000 automobiles." Problem 3, how to get rid of them? They contain mercury and plastic. Meaning not only are they harmful to produce, but harmful to dispose of. They are supposed to get recycled, but how many of them do?
Another problem is hybrid cars. I've read many reports on hybrids. Most of them conclude that producing a hybrid car produces more pollution than a large SUV. This is probably made up for by consuming less fuel throughout the life of the hybrid, but what if you compair a hybrid car, to a non-hybrid car? On Top Gear, the British TV show, they drove a Prius at top speed, for ten laps around a test track, followed by a 350 hoursepower BMW M3 going the same speed as the Prius. The M3 got much better mileage than the Prius because the M3 wasn't working nearly as hard. If you want a bit of speed out of your car, you might consume a lot more fuel driving an under powered car.
The sad thing is, the government claims to be going green, but is pushing us in the other direction. They have programs like "recycle your ride". By recycle, they mean melt down the metal and send all the plastic, foam, rubber, mercury, fabric and fibreglass to the landfuil. The deal is, the government will send you money if you send your 15 year old, or older car to the scrap yard, and buy a new car. The theory is that, old cars put out more emisions than new cars, so why not take the old cars off the road? Countless studdies have proven that the greenhouse gases produced to make a new vehicle far outweigh the gases put out by an older car. So why did the government put this rediculous offer in place? To help bail out the car manufacturers. I heard countless adds on the radio of how you were harming the environment by driving an older model car. What does it say about where this planet is heading when our own government is spending our tax dollars, to play adds, guilting us into polluting? How many people traded in a perfectly good car, that they might only drive once a week, that was only polluting 10% more than a brand new car? Oh, and lets not forget the fact that the government collected lot of tax on that new car! Probably a lot more than they had to pay the person for taking part in the "recycling program".
I'm not even going to get into the BS that is "carbon credits". My point is that there is a lot of corruption when it comes to going green. We are lied to by corporations, producers and even our governments. Going green is just a new way to market things. The best way to go green is to stop buying new things. It used to be, Reduce, Recycle, Reuse. Now it's "buy more shit". How does buying anything help the environment? Recycle what you can, Reuse something if possible, but most of all Reduce the amout of stuff you buy. It takes energy and creates pollution to produce everything, and uses more energy and creates more pollution to get rid of it all. If you must buy something, don't assume it's green because it says it is. Do your homework. Buy things with less packaging. Buy things that will last longer. Use common sence, because if you rely on the manufacturer, or the government for info, they will sell you whatever you want to hear.