The following is from an email exchange with a colleague that was spawned when discussing the merits of writing a column for publication on tips on how to “go green.”
KMac:
Being a realist of the highest order, I am not so sure all this going
green stuff is anything but a marketing scheme that is rooted in philosophy rather than reality and once it becomes clear that it really does not make any actual difference on the macro scale people may begin to see that the retailers were just using it to sell more stuff which is really not very environmentally sound. In other words, it would depend upon how you are thinking of addressing it whether it would be a good long term marketing tool. I noticed today that Jupiter is acquiring big
red spots that they are attributing to global warming. What do you suppose the Jupitereans are doing to cut down on their contribution?
I heard a report on NPR yesterday about the legal roadblocks to harnessing one of the most prolific energy sources currently available: reusing the waste energy at industrial operations and nuclear plants. Harnessing all the “waste energy” that is a byproduct of these operations could generate 200,000 megawatts of electricity per year (think capturing all the steam coming off the cooling towers at Palo Verde to power turbines). There are all sorts of legal roadblocks including the Clean Air Act. This would be considered a modification and would trigger highly expensive pollution controls be added as well so people can’t afford to do it. If we could find things like that to write about every month it would make a lot of sense coming from a law firm.
NL’S DELICIOUS REPLY:Haha, you're right that I don't agree. Caution: speech ahead, proceed with plenty of time
;o)
I don't think there is anyone (including those selling the
greenwashed products) that thinks the rampant
greenwashing of every product is a impactful or meaningful...except me...
I see it very much the same way as the health revolution of sorts that happened a few decades ago. One minute it was good enough to eat Mom's down home cooking as long as you ate the Lima beans too, then everything on the shelf said it was light or was in some way healthier for you. It wasn't of course, and eventually (after people went from skeptically discounting the claims and warnings of death by any one of thousands of potential ailments to frantically gobbling down everything that said heart healthy and light) got regulated so that unless it was actually "Light" you had to call it "Lite" so the consumer could retreat comfortably back into a foggy cushion of belief that "they" were again safely in the hands of governmental controls on what was put in front of them.
In fact, I think the mass marketing overload is a key component in slipping the importance of environmental responsibility into the recesses of the American psyche. Right now, everything and it's emission is getting a green lens on it, and everyone with half a brain can see right through most of it chortling at the ridiculousness of a hybrid SUV that still only gets 20 miles to the gallon. We call it stupid and scoff at the lack of impact something like that will have on how soon we create a dearth on earth of people. This is the equivalent of those who, rightly, laughed at the first "health" foods that were hardly so. Slowly, people went from not thinking they even needed to change their diet to demanding that the "healthy" food actually be that and the FDA stepped in. Next thing you know, healthy living/diet is one of the most lucrative industries. I think the whole "
green" thing will eventually work itself out the same way...
Oh yea, I would also just add that the other school of thought on Industrial waste energy is to come up with ways to not waste the energy in the first place...but I am deeply in the school of thought that things like that should be voluntary not mandatory and make your existing system more efficient and cost effective; people choosing to do things on their own, whether it be to triple profits or save endangered anemic orphaned baby skittering plankton found only in the crevices of sub oceanic pre-historic craters, makes it far more inclusive, less adversarial, and just happier. I don't see why you can't have this cake and eat it too...
KMac BITES BACK:
Ok, sorry, but you kind of stepped in it when you decided to use food as analogy. Your argument using food as an example of how marketing can change lives (with a little help from the government) for the better by convincing people to change their behaviors would be pertinent to the green thing if derived from a sound premise.
I completely disagree that by naming products lite the marketers got people to change their health habits for the better and that in their zeal to sell things were adequately "checked" by the FDA. Just putting the issue into play did not make any long term difference to Joe Blow. He doesn't really think about this stuff.
In actuality, the people who are eating right and exercising would have done so on their own. This country has the worst record for obesity. This is a human nature life style choice that is abetted by the way food is produced and distributed. Those who watch their diet and work out also read labels and were savvy enough to have interpreted the farce of lite without the government's help and did so. Sure, lots of people started thinking about their unhealthy lifestyles but were soon distracted with thoughts of their inadequate erections and forgot to get on the tread mill.
I have been working out three times a week at the same facility for over 15 years. The population of my classes rarely varies. The same people who were there before the marketing are still there. Everybody else comes once or twice and never returns.
The FDA did nothing to improve matters. In fact they have made them infinitely worse. They insist on inspections but do not have the staff to adequately do so, thus putting us all at risk of E coli and meat recalls. Meanwhile, the pure meat farmer is unable to sell his wares to the public as it would be illegal without inspections. This forces mass production with its inherent risks. The small operations, however, are unable to get the attention of the inspectors because they are overwhelmed by the big guys. So we have few alternatives. Not that most people care.
Most people buy food at the grocery without giving any thought to what it is made of. If it says light they buy it under the false pretenses that they are somehow being healthy. Most processed foods (and these are the most consumed items in the average American diet) are made up of corn which has been broken down into its components and rearranged into all manner of chemically designed foodstuffs. It is easy to determine where this crap is in the food chain: read the label. Most people only glance at the large type on the package front.
As for the FDA making verbage more accessible, what a nightmare. Light no longer means light and organic has no meaning whatsoever. Unless you are a huge enough operation to be able to afford to jump through the hoops required to be able to use the word on your products, even if you are in reality the most organic farmer in the world, you are forbidden from saying that. The government now OWNS that word which renders it just an arrangement of seven letters. Small local farmers cannot sell their harvest for what it is without breaking the law.
And this is supposed to help the consumer?
For more reading on this and many other food issues I recommend
Michael Pollen, "The Omnivores Dilemma."
I submit to you that most people are too busy to spend time thinking about this. They want taste and convenience so they can get back to their video games and DVDs. The people who changed their lives after the "healthy" marketing schemes are thinking people who would have done so just because they didn't feel good.
The upshot is that after the marketing we are now left with total confusion. Organic may or may not be organic.
Green may or may not be
green. What does it all mean?
One of the greatest writers of our time,
David Foster Wallace, refers to all this miasma of information as Total Noise. It now takes professional sorters to comb through this noise and shake it down into little segments that are digestible by the common person. There is just too much information out there to process for decision making purposes. But having other people do it for you risks distortion and bias. (See David Foster Wallace, introduction to
Best American Essays 2007).
This column idea is our attempt to provide that service to the public and in the process get some name recognition and hopefully more business for ourselves. I applaud that concept of course (after all I think I do a pretty good job of seeing reality as evidenced above) so why not do it? All I am saying is that we should do it with integrity and about things we know to be real and meaningful to avoid the risk of being exposed in the end as greedy hypocrites who ignored the truth.
That is all I am saying.
Oh, and eat local and seasonal. Come to the Downtown Public Market.
NL CHEWS ON IT SOME MORE:
Well said Kim. You're right, I did step into it when I used food, clearly an area you are familiar with, as an analogy and then didn't qualify with anything.
I apologize in advance for my wordiness.
I agree with you, unfortunately, that the food/diet/agriculture situation in our country is in an abysmal state and that to argue that we are better off now than we were a few decades ago b/c of a crescendo of a health food revolution is not an easy pitch. I have alos heard some very accurate and hilarious alternative definitions of the acronym FDA that I would share with you another time that I think you would appreciate. However, I do think that it is possible that mass marketing and the rise of the media colossus has had a very significant influence on the direction society has taken with respect to eating and diet, not just in a bad way.
Raised as a kid to admire foods like fluffy flakes of questionable derivation that could miraculously become mashed potatoes, to appreciate the time saving of McDonald's "happy" meals (though I had no where to be), to see the good in the coffee and dining room tables being one and the same, and to savor the potato flavoring unwittingly consumed on the king of burgers' french fried potatoes, I left the nest to became a one time vegetarian (short stint that will not be revisited), long time member of many CSAs in most places I've lived, eschewer of soft drinks, caffeine, fast food, and many other low hanging fruits for health, and someone who currently thinks when he shops, reads labels, tries to keep up as best he can on the status of many of the good fights being fought.
With several close friends farming organically in various parts of the country whether they can advertise it or not, several other friends who will make a run to the border for a double dipped thrice fried mexi-melt chalupa with an extra helping of guacamolito sauce from that infamous eatery who thankfully got rid of the Chihuahua, and most somewhere in between, I feel like I have seen at least a bit of more than one side and have come to the same conclusion as you, that there is a significant group out there who live as consciously as they can and would inform themselves as best they can for their purchases and lifestyle choices independent of the marketing that they are exposed to (at different levels depending on if they have a tv or listen to the radio or otherwise engage mainstream society).
However, I also think there is a much larger portion of the population that is so exquisitely and precisely depicted by the cunning wits who write for the
Simpsons (America's longest running prime time television show animated or not). That depiction is of a group who can only think as one mob and whose opinion can be swayed readily by a person with charisma or just a threat to be feared. It is this group who, as you seem to agree, still buys anything that has a label on it saying that someone else is making sure it is good for them without wondering what standards are used or what the enforcement is. This is the group who today's advertising works best on and who it is primarily directed at, in my opinion. This is the group that I think would not have even looked for the label saying healthy years ago. This is the group that I think hasn't really even started looking for the green label yet. Has the food/diet/agriculture situation reached an idyllic point of perfect balance? Ha! I think we all know that isn't the case. Has it come a little further along from where we were when people thought it was good to cook with lard, good to eat a large helping of meat with every meal, safe to chase the DDT truck, and set up lawn chairs to watch the nuclear tests? I think we have, though I understand that you may not. Obviously it is not just b/c of marketing. There have been countless good people trying to do right and educate others; without them, we wouldn't have even taken these few steps.
I did not mean to imply that the FDA or the government regulation on food has saved the national health and waistline. I did mean to imply that the beginning of the movement as a whole, along with the health-washing equivalent of today's green-washing, played a part in raising awareness (I guess this is where we disagree). I think there are some big lessons to be learned from what has happened with our food industry (that it is currently primarily one is part of it) but that we should indeed learn something from that and apply it now to what I, in one humble opinion, think is another case of history repeating itself with global instead of individual health. If nothing is done differently, we will be planting corn on farms tens of thousands of acres large run by machines and filling our buildings with thousands of CFLs instead of using day-lighting all the while wondering why the planet is still going into the crapper, much like so many order a salad from McDonald's with extra dressing, then get in the car to drive across the parking lot to the Jamba Juice wondering how they and their kids are still getting so fat and having so many health problems. There may also be some things we should do the same so as to not "throw the baby out with the bath water" as they say.
As
Michael Pollan's books
Omnivore's Dilemma and
In Defense of Food sit yet unread (though this may be the impetus needed) on my shelf next to several other lately popular ones by his colleagues that I have read about the state of our food industry and national habits, I am glad that we are having this conversation and believe you are right that the upshot is total confusion where once there was total ignorance and denial. Sounds like a step forward to me.
As a perpetual devil's advocate even with myself the thought also occurs to me that perhaps we are trying to solve the current problem with an old solution. Maybe, as hard as it is for me to believe, the solution is something more radical that we can't even entertain yet b/c it seems impossible or at first contradictory to the goal. Many things throughout history must have seemed like that without the hindsight we now have through history's lens, as inescapably skewed as it is.
I agree that we should pursue a column that provides the service you mention with integrity and about things we know to be real and meaningful. Extremely long story short, I would like to clarify that I think the greenwashing is "impactful and meaningful" only in so far as it is a necessary part of the process of getting to a point of raising awareness in a way that I don't think most people think of, but integral nonetheless.
KMac SWALLOWS:My final thought. All this
green stuff is great, if it works because it is nice and good for us and makes us happier people. That is why I am into it; I am greedy, I want to live in a nice world. The planet will cope.
Having studied this subject and taught enviro science I am convinced that our arrogance will always be held in check by mother nature, who is a cruel taskmaster in her own right. I think we both reached the same conclusions; just by different routes. You are a very wise man!
This was so much fun I just thought it would make a good post for others to read. Crazy way to spend a virtual weekend. You are a thoughtful guy and a worthy sparring partner.
Somewhere in all of this I never read the column. Can you send it to me again?
