Survey: Is Green Consumerism a Pox on the Planet?
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 08. 2.07
George Monbiot says it is. "I am now drowning in a tide of ecojunk. Over the past six months, our coat pegs have become clogged with organic cotton bags, which - filled with packets of ginseng tea and jojoba oil bath salts - are now the obligatory gift at every environmental event." Ed Mayo disagrees; he helped found the FairTrade mark, and says "Correctly done, personal consumer action can add to, rather than subtract from, what is needed at a wider political level." but wait, hold the Mayo; Eamon O'Hara says "Ultimately, our problem is consumption, and the environment is not the only casualty." Commenters think otherwise.
Being green has become somewhat the latest fad so it seems that everyone is running out to replace all ther stuff with "green" stuff. IMHO the best wey to be green is sto simply stop buying stuff.
BTW, ads.treehugger.com/iframes/125button03.php locks up MSIE (I'm at work so I can't use anything else)
ANSWER: Yes
But of course I have been saying this for the 2 years I've been posting here. I usually get a nice email from Graham or Mike explaining that I'm too militant. You two finally starting to feel some pangs of guilt coupled with mild realization that this site might actually be part of the problem?
Just asking.
Now back to "Green Sex Toys".
:)
You two finally starting to feel some pangs of guilt coupled with mild realization that this site might actually be part of the problem?
I think $10 million will take the sting out of any of that.
I think this was a fairly predictable consequence of beating the drum for green living. I also think it was necessary, in a "two steps forward, one step back" sort of way. After all, the fastest path to the mainstream is through the trendy, and what do trendsetters need to prove they're "with it"? Accessories!
Now that that mission is about accomplished and green is going mainstream, the next step is to get the trendsetters to stop talking about all the green stuff they bought and start talking about the stuff they didn't buy. That's much more difficult, of course, because what accessories do you wear/drive/carry to show you bought nothing?
It will be much more difficult to take that next step, seeing as anti-consumerism will be difficult to sell to all the marketing companies whose bread and butter is consumerism. Still, it would be nice to see celebrities start riding public transit instead of buying Priuses, or start building more modest, energy-efficient homes (when they need to build at all) using local resources and recycled materials instead of plopping a few solar panels on top of a giant mansion. And I would love to see actresses start wearing the same dress repeatedly to one red-carpet event after another.
I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek, of course -- I don't seriously believe that our fates are in the hands of hipsters and celebrities -- but I think the underlying point is valid. We're on the right track, in my opinion, and I'm hoping the un-green overconsumption of green goods is just a bump in the road.