Will the Real Green Movement Please Stand Up?

Products and Services
Since the 1990’s, market forces were showing considerable promise for emerging sectors (both countries and industries) due to an integrated approach with the new economy. Globalization and capitalism were making people rich--and if green was to become a player in the brave new world, the green leaders would have push a pro-capitalists model. The start was slow. For example, green building didn’t take off overnight. The first legitimate green buildings were built in 1988 and 1989, the USGBC was started in the mid-1990’s and the places like New York offered incentives in early 2000, 2001. The last ten years have been for the risk-taking investors and thereby the rise of the eco-entrepreneur.

What on the surface is a green revolution is also the commercialization of green products and services for purchase. Green architecture is a service, green fashion is a product…green business strategy and media are both services and products. The outcome of this is obvious as you survey the green landscape to find 15 different types of bamboo flooring and an organic cotton line from every denim company. These products and services, however sustainable, is in-step with the larger societal obsession of investment banks, credit cards, home ownership and lack of savings. How many people justified the purchase of a home with fluctuating interest rates because it was green? Or how many people have green items that increased their credit card bills? Add to it that most green products and services have been more expensive than their non-green counterparts, and the reality of how green could have compounded the economic disaster is even more frightening.

The growth of the green movement has been in lock step with the growing economy. If tracked along the same timeline, it’s apparent that green building, and other green things like renewable energy, organic fashion and green media, grew during the same period. As the green world poo-pooed the idea of regulation – so to did other industries looking for ways to deregulate and call for less government. All the while, the argument was that the regulatory method for environmental change had not worked…or at least had not sustained itself over the long-term. Such people as the writers of the infamous paper The Death of Environmentalism championed capital markets as the sole and long-awaited savoir of the ecological world.

Will the Real Green Movement Please Stand Up
Now in the midst of an economic downturn, the theory of a green economy is being pushed as a way to solve the problems of an out-of-date capitalist’s monetary system – but there’s evidence that green has benefited the most by an uninterrupted advance of credit, construction loans and investments. The economic meltdown is a bubble on global proportions versus the type we are use to seeing such as the internet or the housing market. Consumer spending has insulated the United States from serious recessions since the 1980’s – green products and services have retooled, redesigned and redistributed themselves hundreds of times over to offer consumers [ not a different way to live ] but a way to continue consuming with less environmental impact by doing nothing different at all. The merit of green products and services isn’t the point of this article – the point is that green’s advance to its current social standing isn’t entirely due to its environmental-friendliness…but due to consumers living too much on credit and debt.

So what’s the future of green now that markets are receding, spending is being overtaken by thrift, and investment|credit is harder to come by? Time will tell us that. Green building has some examples that show operation cost reductions, less energy used and more productive employees. However, the basic components of the green economy are the same as the non-green economy. The return to prudence will hurt – three quarters of the economy is consumer spending and housing. People will need to continue to buy stuff and equity will need to be restored to homeownership. It’s that level of spending that’s helped recessions be shorter and shallower. The market-driven green movement is now facing its first real challenge – and it can’t simply weather the storm. Green will need to make good on its promise to be efficient and frugal while helping people learn to save versus spend.

More on Green and the Financial Stimulus Package
Barry Lehrman on A Green Lining to Our Financial Cloud
Obama's Economic Stimulus Plan
Economic Stimulus & Job Creation