Green consumerism

According to a 2005 Harris poll, 74% of US adults agree that "protecting the environment is so important that requirements and standards cannot be too high, and continuing environmental improvements must be made regardless of cost." Many of them feel, rightly, that they can’t wait for the superheroes of environmental capitalism to get it right. And a lot of them act on their convictions every day.

They volunteer, like my friend who spends her weekends at beach clean-ups. That’s okay, but remember that Ronald Reagan launched the Adopt-a-Highway program so he could lay off unionized maintenance workers.

They also get religious about litter and recycling. For three years in a row, students at my university have won first place for the best campus recycling program in the country. That’s a good thing, but it also means they’re doing a hell of a lot of free work for Waste Management Incorporated, the "Walmart of Waste."

The truth is that watching where we put our trash may help us feel better about ourselves, but it really doesn’t do a damned thing about the environmental crisis.

They also watch what they buy, doing their best to use organic local produce, for example. I do that when I can too. It tastes better and its easier on my liver. But I don’t kid myself that it’s going to save the environment.

The problem with green consumerism is that it attacks the problem with our weakest weapon, our power as individuals in a global system. Meanwhile, agribusiness companies are taking over organic food production, ratcheting down standards, and plowing local farmers under. In the end, we use up our energy policing ourselves instead of putting any kind of effective pressure on the companies that that are the real source of the problem.

The truth is that choices about fuel efficiency, fuel sources, emissions, and so on, are not made at the individual level. They’re made at the level of whole societies, and in this capitalist society, huge corporations use their power to maintain our dependence on the chemicals, and nuclear power, and fossil fuels they sell.