Money talks

Buy green, forget Congress—or not 11

Wendys signNeed or want?Courtesy soundfromwayout via flickrAmericans concerned about climate change are far more likely to shop green than to call or write a lawmaker, according to a new poll from Yale and George Mason University. Of those who say they are “alarmed” by global warming, 75 percent say they have rewarded and punished companies based on their environmental performance, but most had not called or written their Congresspersons, according to survey director Ed Maibach.

Maibach leads the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason, which conducted the poll with Yale’s Project on Climate Change. He gives the following interpretation in an interview with Marc Gunther in GreenBiz.com:

“They are more comfortable expressing their wishes through their shopping patterns than they are by acting as citizens in a democracy.”

… Americans tend to see themselves as consumers, not citizens, Ed explained. “Therefore it’s not surprising that this is how many of us choose to express our wishes for a better world,” he said.

That’s a big claim, one that seems a little off to me. Couldn’t the poll suggest that smart respondents understand that money talks? To use the academic word, they know they have agency, however small, through their dollars. It’s less clear to them that calling or writing members of Congress does any good. That doesn’t mean Americans don’t see themselves as citizens. It means they see their elected leaders as unresponsive.

The poll, “Global Warming’s Six Americas 2009: An Audience Segmentation Analysis,” grouped respondents in six categories—Alarmed, Concerned, Cautious, Disengaged, Doubtful and Dismissive. Maibach’s conclusions are about the “alarmed” group. The “dismissive” group consisted mostly of members of Congress, who didn’t see any need to call themselves and demand less action on climate.

Jonathan Hiskes is a Grist staff writer. He reports, tweets, eats, asks questions, self-promotes, looks out windows, and wonders if it could be like this.

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  1. Dave from Canada Posted 12:58 pm
    28 Aug 2009

    Uh, I wouldn't take solace from either interpretation. Whether citizens are only acting like consumers, or elected representatives are unresponsive, the democratic process is broken.And either one will lead to the other.

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    1. Tyler Durden Posted 9:34 am
      29 Aug 2009

      You hit the nail on the head.  Americans are consumers above all else, and the vast majority do not consider themselves citizens unless they want something from the government.  But it's also true that the government is largely unresponsive to the will of the people due to the fact that we have a system of one-dollar-one-vote instead of one-person-one-vote and due to lack of proportional representation.  The failure of the U.S. government to respond to the will of the people is of course caused by most Americans' lack of engagement in the political process and their unwillingness to even study issues enough to know what's really going on.  (The vast majority of people in the U.S. only know is what's fed to them by the very sophisticated corporate propaganda machine, both through so-called "news" and by the "entertainment" industry.)This comes down to an old conundrum:  In order for a democracy or republic to function properly, its citizens must be well informed and engaged in the political process.  But the average person has neither the will nor the ability to spend the time and effort it takes to study issues and make informed decisions.  An ideal solution would be for Buddhist monk types to rule the planet, i.e., people who have small egos and are not materialistic, self-centered, or greedy.  But by their nature, these types of people have no desire to rule anyone.  And if you don't give average people the right to vote, the rulers will end up being those who are the most aggressive and self-centered, which are those who have the most money and power (this is pretty much the way it is now anyway, but it would be even worse if ordinary people couldn't vote).  As much as I can't stand him Winston Churchill was right about one thing: democracy is a horrible form of government, but it's the best one we have for now.And remember, a major root cause of this problem is our extreme overpopulation.  It is impossible to have a government that's truly representative of millions, or even tens of thousands, of people.  The most democratic societies are those with small numbers, starting with hunter-gatherer societies.  The larger the population, the less democratic it will be.  This is a generalization and I know there are a few exceptions, mainly in Scandinavia, but the exceptions are rare.

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  2. Chris McMasters's avatar

    Chris McMasters Posted 3:30 pm
    28 Aug 2009

    I once heard a speaker declare herself - not as a consumer - but as a steward:"One who administers anything as the agent of another or others."This would get my vote before 'consumer.'

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  3. Delay And Deny's avatar

    Delay And Deny Posted 7:48 pm
    29 Aug 2009

    The problem with Global Warming Relief is you can't sell it in little packets that individuals can buy.
    Ideally, you'd have something you can set up in your backyard that provides a Cone of Coolness as your neighbor fries to a crisp.As you watch his family swealtering, while you saunter to your climate controlled vehicle, you say "Oh, that...I bought it at Wal*Mart.  $1400.  Works wonders..."
    Everyone will want one...some in designer colors.  

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  4. Chris Pratt Posted 10:39 am
    30 Aug 2009

    The new democracy is consumerism and it takes just as much education to be a good consumer as it does to be a good citizen.  The only difference is that companies track what we spend money on a lot more than politicians track what we are telling them.  Maybe in the future we can do away with government all together, since they are becoming just another arm of the corporations.

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  5. Dave from Canada Posted 11:43 am
    30 Aug 2009

    Consumerism is not democratic.  And it's not effective at producing the kind of solutions needed to fix collective action problems - e.g. environmental problems.Corporations (and the human elite that they serve) won't allow government to be done away with, as they rely on it as a cheap and effective way of keeping the masses away from their wealth.

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  6. Tyler Durden Posted 10:01 pm
    30 Aug 2009

    Consumerism is a problem, not a solution.  The more you consume, the more you destroy.That said, how you vote with your pocketbook is far more important than how you vote at the polls.  Companies can be made to do or refrain from doing certain things by a threat of a boycott or an actual boycott.  In the U.S. there is no real choice in an election, only a false choice between members of one of the gangs of corporate lackeys.

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  7. Chris Pratt Posted 1:23 pm
    31 Aug 2009

    Tyler- As animals we are consumers, the only primary producers are plants.  We can be responsible consumers when our consumption feeds back into the production cycle.  Maybe the word consumerism has a more negative conotation of wasteful consumption and depletion of resources.  Maybe Dave can suggest something that is more effective at changing the existing system?

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    1. Dave from Canada Posted 2:19 pm
      31 Aug 2009

      That would be a long list.  Sigh...It would include political reform (capping campaign contributions, lobbying, etc), improving the educational system to wise up the general public (instead of dumbing itdown), reducing corporate concentration in media ownership (and providing public support for non-profit media), vastly curtailing military spending, and breaking up excessively powerful corporations, among other things.  Then we'd be in a position to maybe start doing what is really needed - re-building confidence in government as a means of serving the public interest and resolving collective action problems, so that it can institute effective carbon pricing, Tobin taxes and a host of other policies needed.Long list, yes.But considering the scale of problems like global warming and fossil fuel depletion, and the forces standing in the way of fixing those problems, I don't see an end run around the heavy lifting that is needed. Certainly greener shopping doesn't seem up to the task.  We've had over 40 years of it, and it hasn't moved us closer to solving the big issues.

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    2. Tyler Durden Posted 9:54 pm
      31 Aug 2009

      Chris,By "consume" I do not mean eating, drinking, or gathering materials for shelter or cooking.  I'm talking about needless consumption of stuff, which almost all modern humans do and which, along with overpopulation, is a root cause of all environmental harm.  Lumping acquisition of necessities together with needless consumerism serves no purpose except to obfuscate the issue.  I'm not saying you did this on purpose, maybe it was my fault for not being more articulate.  Google my moniker for more explanation about consumption.

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  8. mwildfire Posted 6:48 am
    01 Sep 2009

    I have done both (call Congresspeople and change buying patterns) but I recognize that neither is effective. I'm not sure it's fair to say that Congress is unresponsive because the public is apathetic and uninformed--more like the other way around, or realistically both spring from the same cause, the taking over of our society by corporations. A key element of this control is the use of mass madia to keep the public distracted, misinformed and confused. I believe the cure is simpler than what Dave suggests. What we need to do is ban corporations, making economic aggregations larger than a certain siz illegal. This may seem drastic, but if you read the history of corporate control put out by POCLAD, you discover that sensible rules to keep corporations in check were in force in the this country from its founding to about the time of the Civil War, when corporations were able to use their increasing size and power to remove controls one by one--the biggie was the 1886 Supreme Court ruling that give personhood status and human rights to corporations. What this proves is that reasonable rules constricting corporate power only last so long--abolishing them is the only way humans can retake control of this world and have any hope of preserving it. And the organs of public conversation, the mass media, cannot be privately owned--nor too closely controlled by governments.

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