Galactic Green: How Environmental is The Empire Strikes Back?

After the commenters here and on Digg gave us a world-class education in Star Wars trivia, we really felt like there was no choice- if we were going to explore the green cred of one movie, we had better get all three (remember, Eps 1-3 don’t count).

As you might expect, a film so thoroughly dominated by the Empire doesn’t have too many opportunities for tree hugging–and even the rebels drop the green ball a few times, wearing fur-lined parkas, mining gas on Bespin (ok, so technically that was Lando), and yes, Artoo gets plugged in– but we did our best.

Here are five Green things in The Empire Strikes Back.

1) Tauntauns

Tauntauns are used by the Rebels on the ice planet of Hoth because their speeders haven’t been modified to handle the cold yet. This ice-friendly cavalry horse is a sustainable method of transportation on the icy world it inhabits. Better than that, even if they’re a little less than carbon neutral–see our own horrible experience with cows–Hoth might be the one place that global warming would be welcomed with open arms.

2) Echo Base

Those Rebels. They’re seriously chasing a LEED-certified revolt, what with the re-purposed base on Yavin, and a naturally-insulated base on Hoth. Even when (or maybe because) they’re running for their lives from the Empire, they’re able to take the time to squeeze every advantage out of their surroundings. Ask the Inuits, ice and snow makes a great insulator.

3) Solar Tie Fighters

Yeah, we know. They’re in all three films, and the commenters (once again proving they’re smarter than us) pointed it out right away, but the Empire has green death machines at their disposal. Maybe we were thrown off by the seeming lack of light that the Star Wars universe provides for them to function on?

Yeah, we wouldn’t buy it either. But look at the size of those panels! They have to be way more efficient than what we’re rolling, even if it was a long, long time ago. Gimmeh.

4) Escaping In The Trash

This isn’t positive green so much as it is “gee, empire, if you’d recycle more maybe you would have caught Han and Leia and would win the damn war.” Dumping giant chunks of garbage–which look suspiciously like structural steel (where to use that on a spaceship? MAYBE KEEPING THE KILLER COLD VACUUM AWAY FROM YOU WITH BIG STRONG WALLS)–allows the Millennium Falcon to just drift away from several thousand people bent of capturing or destroying it. The Empire needs to read Cradle to Cradle.

5) Everything About Yoda

He lives in a tree. When he needs a weapon against R2-D2 he uses a stick. Those are clearly some organic threads. He picks up that starship that Luke just seemed content to litter Dagobah with. And oh yeah- HE’S FSCKING GREEN, literally.

We get it, Frank Oz. Yoda is the most badass hippie treehugger ever.

All praise Yoda.

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Galactic Green: How Eco-Friendly Is The Return Of The Jedi?
Galactic Green Cred: The Environmentalism of Star Wars
Japanese Hybrid Engineer Died from Too Much Work
Tree-Dwelling Environmental Activists Finally Come Down
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