Light Green is the New Black
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 05.15.06
Fie on the Oil Drum for getting that headline first. In the New York Times, it is "Greening Up With the Joneses", a far less accurate title for the article on how people are beginning to change their habits out of concern for sustainability. (and which contradicts the New York Times of three weeks ago). People, like David Brotherton of Seattle, are beginning to take steps. "The trick, Mr. Brotherton (pictured above) said, was not to give up nice things, but to buy nice things that were ecologically sound. "I don't even pretend to be a hard-core environmentalist," Mr. Brotherton explained. "But I do aspire to be a 'light green' kind of guy -- one who thinks carefully about the choices I make as a consumer and tries to tread as lightly on the planet as possible, within my chosen lifestyle."
Oil Drum says "If these people are merely "light greens", then what is a true environmentalist in this country? Do you have to live in a log cabin with no running water and no electricity? In fact, the people featured in this article are the paragon of treehuggers, if the new definition of treehuggers is defined by the lifestyle website that gets an awful lot of hits these days."
People on the more "serious" sites will say that making such changes is meaningless, but it's a start. ::New York TImes
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The people doing "big changes" now probably started by doing "small changes" at some point, and the people doing "small changes" now... It's the cycle of environmentalism!
Unfortunately, the "dark greens" often forget that they too, at some point, were discovering all that stuff and taking baby steps (unless they were raised super eco-conscious from birth, but that's a minority of people).
Can someone tell me what a "dark green" is, exactly? In fact, that was kind of the point of my post at The Oil Drum--how do we define environmentally conscious people? Is it fair to call the people in the NYT article "light greens" (it seems patronizing to me)? What ARE the characteristics and practices of the dark greens, because as I implied over there, I'll be damned if I know what one is supposed to do to be a true dark green environmentalist.
It's not _just_ that some people start small and gradually work to bigger changes though.
Some people realize that they have a debt problem and gradually start cutting costs and saving money, while some immediately get a financial planner and change their lives around, while still others go out to dinner to forget about it.
Similarly, when people hear that 90% of the large fish in the oceans are gone as a result of overfishing, or that we're in the middle of the highest rate of extinctions in known history, or that human influence on the carbon cycle could turn the earth's climate patterns upside down in a matter of years - there are a variety of reactions. Some buy more efficient vehicles, some lobby politicians, have earnest discussions with their friends that come to nothing, some go out for a beer, and so on...
For some useful insights into these questions, the book "Tipping Point" is a good reference: some of us are "connectors", some "mavens, and so on. A simple tri-chotomy of green, light green and dull trivializes the broad scale social movements underway.
I'm always afraid of scaring people away from the green movement by categorizing them as "less" in some way. I do believe that we are going to need to make some huge fundamental changes to how we live, but each individual has to realize this on his or her own and pick a starting place. When we immediately devalue their first steps, we risk alienating precisely the people we need to join us! We do we need titles and descriptors to feel good about the decisions we are making?
The problem is if you don't seize upon the labels and define them now, they'll be coopted the way the terms 'hybrid' or 'organic' have. I'd be less concerned with labelling people, since most people will label themselves anyway. (Afterall, how can we relate if we don't have tools to define ourselves?). Would you rather the 'green' community define itself, and in so doing give people outside the community a way to figure out where they stand, or would you rather commercial interests do it for you? (And keep in mind that their definitions are going to be less about environmentalism and sustainability, and more about demographics and marketing.)
What's funny is that these people aren't that light green. They are
gristers and a worsted witch!