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December 2007

ECOCENTRICITY
SUV’s In Whole Foods Parking Lots
By Shashoua

So here we are in the USA and you can’t open a magazine without finding a topic on environmentalism and saving the planet.   New products arise that are organically harvested.  More and more chickens and farm animals are ‘free range’ or ‘cage free’ and yet, by the very structure of American society, we are the most environmentally damaging country in the world to date.  

We worry about China and its youthful flirtatious relationship with private enterprise, and know that right now, all China wants is to get rich.   This, of course involves lots of unethical behavior toward the planet.  How do we know this?  Because we have been there and done that.   And despite what we know we still support unethical practices.  To concern ourselves over another country’s environmentally questionable activities when our own habits take a lot to be desired is a little ecotistical don’t you think?  I mean, here we are, the big brother of the world and we can’t even get to work without adding more carbon to the collective carbon footprint.  So while the media, both mainstream and otherwise, bombard the consumer with greener living ideas, there is a huge contradiction at play, which can be witnessed in the Whole Foods parking lot.   You will be hard pressed to find a hybrid vehicle, although I did spot two on the same Sunday morning in which I counted forty SUV’s driving in and out.

Eco-friendly options are created most often without government support and therefore have to be priced accordingly.  This means really that only 5% of the population can have a truly organic and eco-friendly lifestyle because it is only they that can really afford it.   If this does not trickle down, being eco-friendly is just a symbol of stature that won’t make a dent on the environmental issues at hand. Yes, it’s a start, but until laws are put in place that demand, not simply promote green practices, we won’t get anywhere.   Or at least not until the world is a significantly smaller place (if Al Gore’s projections are correct in as little as 10 years the oceans will rise and inner cities will be our new beach front properties, so maybe that time isn’t so far off).

As consumers go, people who go out of their way to support green practices, even if only partially deserve admiration.  However, in our corporation nation, this gesture will remain as such and not really be able to make a huge difference.  Until the laws require green practices in all manufacturing, being eco-friendly is just a marketing mavericks wet dream.

But I am not here to point my green finger at anyone, because I am that Whole Foods shopper described above.  No, I don’t drive an SUV, but my mini cooper is a far cry from perfect when it comes to reducing carbon emissions. I do, however, constantly ask myself the question: can my organic shopping make a difference to global warming?

Er. No.

Not that the power of the people can’t move mountains or make a difference mind you.  It’s just that it is not enough.  To make greening voluntary is a great business ploy, but that is about it.  Corporations need to be required to be eco-friendly.  There need to be tax cuts for being eco-friendly.  There needs to be a greener government.  There needs to be penalties and loss of business licenses for those that do not comply.

There are of course some people that do question whether or not global warming is a result of human activity.  MIT climatologist Richard Lindzen claims that mankind is not to blame for global warming and that Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth is more like a very convenient lie or at the very least a misreading of the global warming facts.   According to an interview in Outside Magazine (October 2007 “Inconvenient Expert”) Lindzen does not dispute that the planet has warmed up in the past three decades, but he argues that human-generated CO2 accounts for approximately 30% only.  The rest is due to the earth’s own natural fluctuations that have happened since time immemorial.   

Lindzen is probably right.  Intuitively it makes perfect sense that it is just our ego’s that think we, the children of the earth, can actually damage it.   You see the planet will exist even if life upon it becomes impossible.  If Lindzen is right, the 30% human contribution to global warming is still a huge amount, and what is more troubling than the squabble as to whether human activity is damaging to life as we know it is the fact that we have the technology and knowledge to reduce our contribution to nearly 0%.   

When we look to history it is easy to laugh at human activity as being naïve.  The world was flat; the sun revolved around the earth; people went to a Dante-esque hell for being bad.  All these old beliefs dictated the way society was structured.  When new discoveries were found, a new worldview was created and hence today we have a completely different social system from our predecessors.  This is evolution.   So, wake up people.   We have the power.  We have the technology.  We can be a huge eco-centric country.

So back to China.  Let them do what the Wild West did in its naivety.  This is where they are in their own evolution.  But we are now beyond the need for fossil fuels.  We could have enough alternative power to light up the country.   We could all drive electric cars (see Who Killed the Electric Car if you haven’t already).  We could all work remotely and not drive to work.   We could turn our attention from listening to the dictates of profits and instead listen to the prophets of today that are silenced on the periphery of the social circle.  We could turn our focus from making green to living green.  We could be the pioneers of a new way of life where being eco-friendly is just the way it is.