I hate “green initiatives.”

Now, before the believers start warming the tar and gathering the feathers, let me explain myself. The problem is, these so-called initiatives are seldom truly “green” and are often just a way of making us feel better about our habits. Many of these feel-good solutions actually do more harm than good in the long run.

Take, for example, biodegradable shopping bags. They sound like a great idea, but they actually produce harm in a three-fold manner.

First, they break down slowly, which means (when scattered into nature) they provide similar risks as non-degradable bags — such as choking animals. Secondly, while a plastic shopping bag can be recycled and turned into a new shopping bag (or into a plastic-based piece of clothing, like a fleece I have), how many people actually compost their biodegradable shopping bags?

By adding a biodegradable element to shopping bags, they must go to the landfill if they are not composted. They cannot be recycled, nor do they compost easily. Where is the benefit? Finally, biodegradable shopping bags are made using corn derivatives. This forces us to use food to produce shopping bags in a world where people are starving — talk about an irresponsible action.

The biodegradable nature of these bags makes no difference, ecologically or functionally — but the term makes us sleep better at night.

We could also look at the “green” car solutions. Take a hybrid: it uses electricity and produces fewer green house gas emissions — hooray! It also uses big batteries, full of lead and hydrochloric acid, to store that electricity. The batteries get dumped into landfills and leach into the soil. A hybrid cuts down on greenhouse gas emissions, sure, but it’s at the expense of increasing the end-of-life cost.

Bio-diesel seems a bit better, but it’s not. Ignoring the food-into-fuel issue, the impact of commercial farming is huge. In order to grow a crop of corn (a common bio-diesel fuel source), monster tractors, combines and harvesters are used — all powered by diesel, and all belching greenhouse gasses into the air. Let’s not forget that pesticides and herbicides are sprayed across the corn, causing nitrates to leach into the water which causes algae blooms and “dead zones” in the oceans. So, bio-fuels cause serious environmental issues too.

If the truth be told, there are no easy green solutions; there is no “quick fix” to climate change. Planting a tree will not make up for your air travel — it takes years for a tree to filter out the carbon dioxide you dump directly into the atmosphere in just a few hours in that jumbo jet.

The effect occurs now, the solution later. That’s like the old, hoary adage about the farmer who closes the barn door after his cows escape: sure the problem’s solved, but the damage cannot be undone.

Perhaps the best solutions for climate change are the simple and oft-said ones: get out of your car and walk, bike and take public transit. Compost your food scraps. These may not be the miracle solutions we’re looking for, and they might be inconvenient, but they work.

So next time you decide to jump on the “green” bandwagon, take a second look: is it really a solution, or is it just a change of problem?