It's Easy Not Being Green

I knew no one cared about the environment. I knew it because people keep telling me how much they care about the environment. Yet somehow members of Generation Y have convinced older people that they are really, seriously, totally going to clean up the mess they were rudely left. But children enjoy lecturing their parents about recycling for the same reason they like shaking their heads in disgust at smokers: the disempowered love to tell people in charge they're doing something wrong. It's why Rush Limbaugh calls people who get to have sex "sluts."

Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San...