With 2009 upon us and its anticipated financial crises, meltdowns and other shorthands for disaster hogging the headlines, let’s not lose sight of that other crisis, the environmental one. Working out more and being more careful with money are great New Year resolutions for you, but what about the royal, interconnected, mutually dependent “us”?

So start composting, grow your own food, or offset your carbon footprint with credits, but do something: going green has never been so easy. And with environmentalism being among the most marketable buzzwords in the popular lexicon, it’s no surprise there are posers making green without really being green. The savvy folks at TreeHugger and The Huffington Post help us to cut through the noise pollution by exposing 5 Dangerous Green Myths.

• 1. Genetically modified (GM) crops have higher yields and help reduce poverty: we’ve known for a while now that big agricultural firms like Monsanto are pretty nearly pure evil, still their massive cash reserves make lawsuits rather ineffective. The best way to get us off these lower-yield, feed and fuel-destined, expensive and exploitative crops is to stop buying GM crop vegetables, meat that’s been fed GM crops, and use alternative energies not generated using GM-derived bio-fuel.

• 2. Clean coal technology will solve the coal pollution problem: this myth claims to solve one of many problems presented by coal plants. Clean coal technology pertains to greenhouse gases emitted by coal plant activities (and we don’t know yet how seriously it can curb these emissions), but does little to address the other dangerous substances sent into the atmosphere by coal mining and plants (like, say, mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide).

• 3. Developing nations need to stop having babies: As TreeHugger’s Matthew McDermott points out, the real problem is not overpopulation so much as over-consumption. Sure, birth rates in many developing nations are incredibly high, but unsustainable consumption patterns in developed nations are equally problematic and simpler to fix. The solution to this myth, ultimately, is for developing nations to curb birth rates and never adopt the grotesque consumption habits of supposedly developed nations.

• 4. Wind turbines are a serious threat to birds: we laughed really hard the first time we heard this retort a few years back, then laughed more awkwardly when we realized our interlocutor was being serious. While early wind turbines did kill birds in some poorly-chosen locations, new designs have minimized their impact on surrounding bird populations. Regardless, wind turbines never had anything near the deadly impact of, say, pet cats or skyscrapers.

• 5. Small green steps won’t make a big difference: Obviously, we can’t all speedboat out to oil rigs with Greenpeace to protest off-shore drilling (though we can support their doing so), but we can all switch to Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs (CFLs), eat only local and/or vegetarian foods, save water and bike to work.