Consumerism "Greened up"

[Nellie]

"Green is the new black. No buzz-phrase better sums up both the excitement many of us feel about the blooming environmental and social consciousness around us and the essential hollowness of the answers being promoted by many new-fangled eco-pundits.

The flood of environmental magazine cover stories, documentaries and advertisements has pushed us over a public-opinion threshold, which is great. But the solutions being touted by many of our new-found allies are themselves creating a new kind of problem by selling a confused, style-over-substance, "Luke warm green" environmentalism at a time when we need to be rebuilding our civilization to avoid disaster. To be blunt, we're being sold out.

People are being told to buy organic cotton T-shirts, keep their tires inflated and recycle their beer bottles. But the reality of the situation is that the impacts of these sorts of actions are totally out of step with the magnitude of the planetary problems bearing down upon us. Those of us who care about the future of the planet need to reclaim this moment from those who would have people think that our biggest challenge is picking the most stylish vegan shoes.

With every passing day, we are discovering that things are worse than we thought. Our climate is ripping apart at the seams at a rate that's surprising even the so-called alarmists. Natural systems are collapsing. The ocean seems headed towards a series of catastrophic tipping points. Economic inequity is producing a planet of billionaires and a billion desperate people. Our political systems are suffering a massive crisis of legitimacy, while insane fundamentalists, violent criminals and two-bit dictators (wearing both uniforms and Armani suits) are stealing or destroying everything they can get their hands on. Everywhere on the planet we find an empty consumer culture so accepted we barely speak of it, except perhaps to make an ironic joke. We have placed a Great Wager on the future of humanity, and the odds are getting worse.

In the face of this reality, recycling a bottle is an act so insignificant as to be merely totemic. Paper or plastic? Who the hell cares?

In the developed world, few of us, essentially none of us, currently live a "one-planet life." The vast majority of us, even of those of us who have committed ourselves to change, consume more resources and energy than our sustainable share: indeed, it is very, very difficult to live an individually sustainable life, because the very systems in which we are enmeshed -- which enfold and make possible our lifestyles -- are themselves insanely unsustainable. We're driving our hybrid cars down the highway to the Collapse.

Most of the harm we cause in the world is done far from our sight, created through the workings of vast systems whose workings are often intentionally hidden from us, and over which we have very little influence as single individuals. Alone, we are essentially powerless to change anything that matters. We can't shop our way to sustainability.

I believe we are bombarded with messages encouraging us to take the "small steps" precisely because those steps are a threat to no one. They don't depress sales of fashionable trash we don't need. They don't bring people into the streets or sweep corrupt politicians from office. They certainly don't threaten the powerful, entrenched interests who are growing fantastically rich off keeping us locked into the systems that make our lives such a burden on the planet and impoverish our fellow citizens elsewhere.

Buying a hemp hoodie is not a blow for better world; it's at best a mere gesture towards the idea that the world ought to be better. And, here in the Green Spring of 2006, we must finally admit to ourselves that gestures are no longer enough. That to be focused on lifestyle tweaks and attitudinal adjustments at this moment in history is like showing up with a teaspoon to help bail out a sinking ship. If the New Green degenerates into handing out more stylish spoons, we're screwed.

We don't need more carpool lanes. We need to eliminate fossil fuels from our economy. We don't need more recycling bins. We need to create a closed-loop, biomimetic and neobiological industrial system. We don't need to attend a tree-planting ceremony. We need to become expert at ecosystem management and gardening the planet. We don't need another unscented laundry detergent. We need to ban the vast majority of the toxic chemicals upon which our lifestyles currently float and invent a completely non-toxic green chemistry. We don't need green fashions; we need a bright green revolution.

To really change the world we need to hand out real tools: rugged, free, collaborative tools for understanding the world and our role in it, for seeing the systems in which we are trapped; tools for learning how to work together to either transform those systems or dismantle them completely and bioremediate the rubble. Tools that help us as people make meaningful changes in both our own lives and the world. We need to make people participants, not consumers. We need answers that address peoples' lives, not their lifestyles.

We need to take back the ballot box. With the exception of a couple small nations like Finland, most governments on earth are now seething messes of corruption, oppression and entrenched privilege. We need transparency, accountability, genuine equity, real democracy and human rights. No environmental or social issue transcends the need for worldwide political reform, and none of our huge planetary problems can be solved without it.

We need to seize the trading floor. Most large corporations, and most of the markets we've established through regulation, incentive and tradition, demand that we participate (as employees, consumers or investors) in ecological destruction, unfair labour practices and an assault on the public realm.
We need to grab hold of these economic systems, strip them down to their component parts and rebuild them anew. That means supporting (or becoming) clean energy entrepreneurs, green builders, sustainable product designers and socially responsible investors. We need a new generation uncompromisingly innovative and determined regulators, planners, bankers, insurers. We need to take back business as a realm of service and do away with the dinosaurs who dominate it today, and we need an army of people ready to put their careers and investments on the line to do it.

We need to share. There is no sustainable future without a vigorous and lively public realm. We need to defend the community, from the air we breathe to the culture we create together. That community is under attack everywhere from those who would privatise it for profit and stifle innovation to protect the status quo.

We need better mousetraps. The stuff that surrounds us is waste: toxic, wasteful, unjust, ugly. We need innovation everywhere, real innovation, stuff that isn't just marginally better or superficially green, but stuff that is actually, right now or as soon as possible, an order of magnitude more efficient, completely non-toxic and closed-loop. We need to support the inventors out there trying to design these things. We need to laud their efforts, invest in their inventions, and generally do everything we can to get better design, technology and thinking applied to every aspect of our lives. Then we need to help regular people separate the bright green from the greenwashed.

We need to grow new systems. The systems that surround us are awful. Some of them we can hack. Some of them simply need to be replaced. Suburban sprawl, for instance, is simply wrong: there's no way to make it sustainable. We should simply bring it to a halt. Farming, on the other hand, needs to be reformed -- and through conscious buying, political activism and ethical leadership, we can help steer agriculture away from petrochemical factory farming and towards innovative local sustainable farms. Some of our choices nurture changed systems -- those are the choices we need to show people how to make.

We need to help each other. Consumer-based approaches and "simple things" lists tend to reinforce our sense that the only sphere in which we can act is our own little private lives, and that isolates us. But the isolation we all sometimes feel in the face of the magnitude of the problems is itself a major part of the problem. None of us can change the world single-handedly: as Wendell Berry says, "to work at this work alone is to fail." We need to organize, mobilize, join together, and act in harmony. We need to seek out our allies and watch their backs when they need us. That happens through applied effort, not impulse buying.

We need to admit that we're at war over the definition of the future. There are a lot of powerful interests spending a lot of money to keep people ignorant, make them uncertain, postpone action, encourage cynicism and apathy, and lock them in the mental prison of thinking that no better future is possible. To the extent they are successful, nothing we advocate can happen. We need to fight back. We need to speak clearly, intelligently, and, if possible, with humour and passion. We need to label our opponents (from climate denialists to apologists for the status quo) what they are -- enemies of the future. We need to make the nature of our times crystal-clear for all to see. We need to yield to the demanding standards our actual real situation imposes on us -- that we achieve measurable sustainability, honest-to-goodness one-planet living, for everyone, within our lifetimes -- and scorn the mental tyranny of small goals. We need to break through the meaningless chatter around environmental and social issues, and point to genuine alternatives, hold real conversations, and create a culture that speaks to the soul of our times.

We need, above all else, to show that another world is possible, indeed, it's here all around us, though we do not see it. We need to inspire not only our fellow citizens but ourselves with visions of what we're beginning to accomplish together, visions of what a planet brought back to sanity will look and feel like, visions of how we will live in a bright green future. That future should be beautiful and stylish, dynamic and creative, but it must before all else be genuinely sustainable, or it's not much of a future at all, is it?

The world is listening. It's our obligation to tell it a better story."

Essay by Alex Steffen

[mikepepler]

We need to make people participants, not consumers.

Definitely. I long for the the day where calling someone a "consumer" is an insult!

A quick look in a Thesaurus for "consumer" simply returns things like customer, shopper, user, etc. However, looking up "consume" gives:

Meanings: eat, use, burn up
Synonyms: devour, munch through, guzzle, etc.

Doesn't sound so nice when put that way...

[clv101]

The thesaurus is so much nicer about "participant" with words like: member, contributor, partaker, accomplice...

[biffvernon]

Nice post, Nellie.

(Isn't Finland the one European country that is building a nuclear power station?)

[isenhand]

We need to take back the ballot box. ? We need to seize the trading floor ?

Even this, to me, is fixing the facade. I would go further and say we need to get rid of the whole system. We need a completely new socio-economic system. After all, there is no one groups that says ?lets mess up this planet? and then sets about to organise the destruction of the odd rain forest or two and pollute the atmosphere. The damage we do is not planed or organised it?s a by product of the system that we are in. If we do not like what we get then we change they way we do things.

Remove money from the equation for a start and balance our production and life stile with the needs of the eco-system.

[MacG]

Remove money from the equation for a start and balance our production and life stile with the needs of the eco-system.

I disagree!

It would take draconic measures to "remove money". You would have to start at the root and prohibit barter, and in order to do that you would have to build a society which make North Korea look like a Disney World in comparison.

The problem is not "money" as such, but a monopolized, false and corrupt monetary system. Honest money please. I think that just removing the government monopolies would do the trick. Government monopolies are phenomenal in their power to maintain skewed and corrupt systems since they rest on the government monopoly on violence.

[isenhand]

And I would disagree with that

That won?t fix it. I don?t think it maters who has control of it, it will still lead to corruption as people can horde money. I don?t think there is any such thing as ?honest money?. I also think you can not have a sustainable society with money (as the money supply has a tendency to grow and you can borrow money etc.).

It?s certainly a major and radical change to remove money but it?s not impossible and doesn?t need to be draconian but it will be a shock to the system and there will be people who will lose out but when the dust settles you would have a fair and more objective means of distribution goods. You would also remove profit and a lot of industrial waste.

It, of course, depends on what system you change over to. I?m thinking energy credits here.

[MacG]

It?s certainly a major and radical change to remove money but it?s not impossible and doesn?t need to be draconian but it will be a shock to the system and there will be people who will lose out but when the dust settles you would have a fair and more objective means of distribution goods. You would also remove profit and a lot of industrial waste.

There is just a tiny little question left then: How to acheive this? How would it be possible to stop people from exchanging goods and services with eachother? How to prevent black markets? How to stop people from giving eachother credit?

[isenhand]

Ah, now that is a tiny little question

The thing with this is is that it is one part of an over plan. The plan being that, to put it simply, the units of production are under the control of people who know what they are doing with those units of production. i.e. technical experts.

In a system where you have no money production is not used for producing goods for profit so the system would be run for a different goal. The one proposed is the highest standard of living for the longest time possible. So good are produced to meet peoples needs. They would also need to be produce to minimise waste and energy in production. You should be able to run such a system so there is more than enough good, which effectively makes all the goods valueless and distributed free to all the citizens.

What actually is produced is determined by the citizens. The society has a finite amount of energy available over a fix period, say 2 years. You divide that amount out to the citizens and the citizens allocate it to certain goods to be produced.

That?s ok for massed produced goods but not for rare items like antiques or hand made goods. The original plan for that was to exchange them in a form of barter. I?m not really happy with that but as those sort of items will be the majority perhaps its can be acceptable.

Do you think we need a new thread?

[MacG]

The one proposed is the highest standard of living for the longest time possible. So good are produced to meet peoples needs. They would also need to be produce to minimise waste and energy in production. You should be able to run such a system so there is more than enough good, which effectively makes all the goods valueless and distributed free to all the citizens.

Sounds a little like Kurtzweil's "singularity".

Well, assuming that such a system could be perfected so that no entrepreneurs se opportunities in fulfilling needs the system misses, how to do with everything apart from production? All the services that is. Electricians and plumbers? Who would volunteer to clean jammed waste pipes? Who would run a restaurant? A hotel? Who would take care of the elderly and the infirm?

Questions, questions...

[isenhand]

Sounds a little like Kurtzweil's "singularity".

Hmm ?not sure about that but something to think about. Maybe further down the line.

how to do with everything apart from production? All the services that is. Electricians and plumbers? Who would volunteer to clean jammed waste pipes? Who would run a restaurant? A hotel? Who would take care of the elderly and the infirm?

That is really the same as asking why would people work for free? The basic idea is to minimise work as much as possible. One way of doing that is to minimise production by making it less wasteful and energy efficient. Another is to try and automate as much as possible. Also a lot of jobs would be eliminated by removing money (such as bank manager). The idea in the end is people?s working hours will be reduced, to say 4hrs a day for 4 days a week.

However, there still needs work to be done. It is consider that people will work for what they can get out of it. That is the system produces the goods they want so they work to keep the system going (bit like why people work on Linux or the Powerswitch book). In that sense it?s not much more different than people working for money now as it is not money people want but what they can do with the money. People could also work for status and for interest. Work also defines who we are and gives us opportunities that we would other wise not have. Also, you would need to try and allocate people to jobs they would like to do. That way they would be more willing to do the job.

Even with automation there still could be jobs that need to be done that are dangerous or messy or in other ways undesirable. For such work you might be able to compensate the worker by giving them more time off or something else.

The above is really using the carrot and persuasion to get people to work. The other end would be the stick. One thing with all this is you may have the technical aspects of society run by experts but society is more than just machines. The people aspect is, to me, best run using democracy. If we get a situation where people will just not work and just live of what the state can give them then this is an area for the people part of the state. There could be various measures that could be brought in including denying them citizenship (if they don?t work then they don?t get the rewards).

Personally I would hope that educating people would help prevent such a situation. It is hoped that people would see the benefit of doing some small amount of work and would be willing to do their bit to keep the whole system going and that would be in the best interests of themselves as well as everyone else.

Questions, questions...

and lots of good questions

[Bandidoz]

We need to make people participants, not consumers.

Definitely. I long for the the day where calling someone a "consumer" is an insult!

*cough* Convivial tools, perhaps?

[snow hope]

A very thought provoking essay. Thanks Nellie.

And here I am recycling all my bottles, cans, paper, cardboard, plastic bottles etc. etc. but it is nowhere near enough - hardly worth doing. Makes one think!

But we also have to live life and it is very hard to take your wife and kids down a road that is completely different from everybody else. All I can say is that we have to achieve a realistic path which is likely to be different for everybody. I have certainly stopped consuming some of the rubbish and unnecessary things that many people consume.

We have to have a realistic way of changing our lives. If not, we (as in the general population) won't do it until the point where we have no choice. In reality I think that is the way it is going to be - I think we have to come to terms with that.

[Nellie]

We may have to accept that we're going to become extinct and that's all there is to it.

If you study geological history, then this will come as no surprise. After all, for billions of years there was nothing equating to life on the planet at all. So why wouldn't it go back that way, in it's never ending cycle? (Well, actually, there will be an end, but I think this solar system still has about another 4 billion years to go).

Does anyone here ever talk about the carbon cycle? It's no coincidence that one side of the argument is "oh shit, oil's running out" and the other side of the argumet is "oh shit, climate change is destroying the planet". Basically - having carbon in the earth rather than the atmosphere is what has made the planet habitable. We're still actually in an iceage, and the planet is a lot cooler now than it was previously. Too much carbon in the atomosphere, and we'll be back to deserts and lifeless landscapes.

Its entirely possible that there's nothing we can do. As humans, we refer to ourselves as separate from nature, but in fact, everything we do is in our nature and therefore a part of nature. Because we're actually more controlled by our reptilian brains than our conscious, rational minds, then we will be greedy and consume more than we actually need. Opportunists and entrepreneurs will always exist to build their wealth, whilst the less savvy end up with less than they need.

There's no getting away from any of that, and this marxist-style utopia will never work. The only way to implement behaviour change is through self-interest or regulation. It's that simple.

Anyway, bottom line for me is this:
Enjoy your life while you can. If living in an eco-village sounds like fun and you'd enjoy the simpler life and getting your exercise from digging a vegetable patch and walking to the pub, then do it! If that sounds like hell, then do the best you can within the confines of a plastic and fractured lifestyle. Enjoy the irony of sitting on your arse all day and then PAYING to do exercise by driving to the gym (isn't it just simpler to do something useful that happens to involve exercise - that's what we all did until 50 years ago!).

Have fun. Be responsible. Stop worrying. The sun's gonna burn out in a few billion years anyway, so ulimately the angst is futile.

Nellie

[Potemkin Villager]

Nellie,

Congratulations on this heart felt and excellent "wake up" posting which
very clearly and comprehensively articulates the daunting magnitude of the human situation and the inadequacy of much our responses to what we are facing in to.

It can all seem very overwhelming, and the unwelcome realisation of this
can lead to to its own sort of paralysis in the face of apparently unsurmountable odds and powerful dinasour vested interests.

The exuberant, ecology denying, human project to dominate and subjugate all of nature and most of its own kind has clearly been a massive failure. Many deny this, ego, pride and priveledge are at stake and those that accept it are faced with a monumental challenge of unbelieveable proportions.

Adds a whole new meaning to liking challenges!

I totally agree on your view of the "top down" promotion of "small steps", all
of this is totally cynical. As to the promotion of "pale green comsumer chic" I am
undecided as to how much is purely opportunistic and cynical, based on exploiting

individuals desires to "do somthing" and how much because of superficial understanding.

Having been involved in a number of "energy saving and renewable energy"
projects over the years in the UK and Ireland, I still never cease to be amazed at the highly

unrealistic expectations people have of what "green technology" can deliver in comparison
to what they are accustomed to.

The message that major lifestyle changes are required for such projects to work often goes

unheeded and unheard. Such changes are much easier to talk about than actually do of

course, especially for those with young families struggling to make ends meet. The sheer

magnitude of the reduction in resource consumption and waste production required, and the

resulting loss of physical comfort, thoughtless mobility and wasteful habits many of us are

routinely accustomed to, is just not widely understood.

You speak of clean energy entrepreneurs, green builders, sustainable product designers

and socially responsible investors - well they are coming along and trying to show that

another world is possible in the face of massive nay saying. These are all "bottem up"
small steps, many by idearealistic individuals and small underfinanced groups.

Most are honest, modest and committed, unfortuneately a few are total charlatans, such as

the promoters of some domestic scale wind turbines making outrageous claims for the

performance of their poorly engineered products.

But it is, as they say, the only show in town.