The genius Lily Tomlin once noted how hard it is to be funny these days, when satire can't keep up with the number of people who miss it entirely and use it as a script rather than a warning.
A few days back, Grey posted this great short video:
Just one day later, a group that has done tremendous work in the past -- a group I give to monthly and normally love, Redefining Progress -- sent me the letter below (after the jump).
It's grim. Despite the throwaway "we don't mean to encourage more shopping," the site sure looks like it does.
Dear JMG,
Earlier this year, I wrote to let you know that I was spearheading a new venture for Redefining Progress that is aimed at mobilizing hundreds of millions of dollars a year in consumer spending to stop climate change. I'm pleased to announce that the new venture is named Cooler and we've launched a Web site (http://www.ClimateCooler.com) that enables consumers to eliminate the global warming impact of the goods and services they purchase online.
Here's how it works. Cooler has partnered with hundreds of the Internet's most popular stores to provide a shopping portal that offers millions of products and services. We've calculated the global warming impact of these products and services, and when someone starts their online shopping through Cooler, the store returns a percentage of your purchase price which we invest in renewable energy or pollution prevention projects that eliminate the global warming impact of the purchase. The calculations as well as the projects we invest in follow strict guidelines set by a group we formed of the world's best known environmental groups (Environmental Defense, the National Wildlife Federation, the National Resources Defense Council, and others).
When you shop at Cooler, we track the impact that you and your friends are having in the fight against global warming. Best of all, it's free to join, the prices are the same low prices offered by the stores themselves, and it makes a big difference.
Our goal is not to encourage more shopping; it's to help consumers make smarter choices when they shop for products and services every day. And in the spirit of finding solutions that ensure a sustainable and equitable world, I want to personally invite you to become a Cooler member, shop through the site, and invite your friends and family to do so as well.
Join Cooler, start shopping, and invite your friends at http://www.ClimateCooler.com.Together, we all can make a big difference!
Thanks,
President, Redefining Progress
CEO, Cooler
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Comments View as Flat
David Roberts Posted 8:41 am
24 Aug 2007
People suck.
Here's how this could be a good thing: people buy stuff they would have bought anyway, except some small portion of the purchase price goes to a good cause.
Here's how it could be a bad thing: people use this as an excuse to buy more things, or use it as an excuse not to do some other good thing they were going to do.
You assume the latter. As far as I can tell, that assumption is based entirely on your dyspeptic view of human nature in general and your fellow Americans in particular. Am I wrong? Is there something else, some evidence or something?
grist.org
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sunflower Posted 9:18 am
24 Aug 2007
Green Internet bubbles, froth
But an idea that may become faux green goodwill marketing. Buy a Hummer and GM will make a token contribution to a windmill. Buy Exxon gas and get thin green windmill stamps. God help us.
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David Roberts Posted 9:36 am
24 Aug 2007
Yes,
but who's going to buy a Hummer because of this? Honestly. How's it supposed to work? The people buying Hummers don't care about this stuff, so why would they use the site? The people who use the site care about this stuff, so why would they buy a Hummer?
I get that this isn't going to be a grand solution to our problems, but what I want -- for once! -- is a plausible story about how it's going to make anything worse -- increase consumerism, reduce activism, something. And if it's not going to make anything worse, I would like to know what justifies the self-righteous contempt poured on every such effort by enviros -- who, one might think, would be interested in pulling people in rather than crapping on people who aren't already on board.
grist.org
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sunflower Posted 10:34 am
24 Aug 2007
Random questions
I've taken to asking questions from total random strangers. Yesterday an old guy was picking up liquor bottles at the Island boat launch. He was angry at the unseen litterers. So we talked and he did not care about future sea rise flooding the waterfront because he was too old to see the worst from global warming. Another lady responded to global warming by talking about the slaughter of Silverback gorillas and how nobody cares. Global warming was just one of many green issues and more distant. We definitely need to stimulate a public dialog and focus the mind on the big problem, on the urgency.
Working for personal consumption of crap is two-thirds of the economy and of the carbon. All things 'green' are a distraction from the carbon crisis, or at best, just irrelevant. Marketing green is an oxymoron.
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John Fish Kurmann Posted 12:47 pm
24 Aug 2007
Human nature
Hear, hear, David. I'd say, based on my years of activism, that deeply pessimistic views of human nature are the biggest obstacle to saving the world we face. As long as the great majority of people assume that people are selfish and greedy and shortsighted and destructive by nature, how will we ever change things for the better? After all, everybody knows you can't change human nature.
Fortunately, it's not human nature that prevents us from saving the world but our destructive culture, and cultures can change--as ours is in the process of doing. Maybe not quickly enough, of course. Who knows if we have time--we might've been in overshoot for decades already, for all I know--but there could never be enough time as long as most people think human nature is the problem.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
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Jones Posted 1:27 pm
24 Aug 2007
I'm with David on this one
There was nothing in that letter would constitute inducement to shop more. The assumption that it does seems a little suspect. The desire to consume more was instilled in people a long time before this letter ever got to them.
I also love how enviros throw around the 'need for people to consume less' as if it's as easily done as said: "Excuse me, Sir? Could you adopt a new paradigm? And get it done tonight? Thanks."
We've got to get on top of this paradigm thing, and we need to think much harder about what consumption means to people... and we'll never understand it if we're looking down our noses at people whose choices have been different than ours. People have reasons for what they do. You or I might be right, but that doesn't make us better. Fretting about the great unwashed becoming complacent is just as indulgent as buying a designer shopping bag.
Actually, when I first read that letter, I somehow came away with the impression that they had indicated the carbon footprint of every product listed. Now that would be paradigm-shifting.
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JMG Posted 4:16 pm
24 Aug 2007
Yeah, you're right
I overlooked the careful attention to detail in limiting the program to merchants who display the highest environmental sensitivity in their good. This explains why there are so few of them -- few companies can pass the careful, thoughtful consideration necessary to tell people that "The smarter you shop, the cooler it gets." And that explains why there is such a strong emphasis on reducing, reusing, and recycling, and locally sourced materials among those few progressive companies who are participating:
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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justlou Posted 10:47 pm
24 Aug 2007
JMG
Sometimes you need to ask questions even if some judge that to be preaching. So, I appreciate the post.
" eliminate the global warming impact of the purchase" ???? Seriously questionable.
There are more dimensions to consuming than global warming. I'd like to see these internet sales companies collecting state sales taxes on all those purchases that would support our rapidly declining public school systems. A bunch of non critical consumers ain't going to help the cause.
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Emily Gertz Posted 12:44 am
25 Aug 2007
Hear, hear, Dave
The overwhelming, experience-based evidence of over a century's American environmental thought and advocacy, from Thoreau's time to today, is that we are simply not going to embrace "voluntary simplicity" in numbers even remotely significant enough to have an impact on any ecological crisis we now face.
Continuing to consider it as central to environmental advocacy, therefore, seems like a lot of wasted energy, especially now that sciences like green chemistry and engineering will soon lead to true cradle-to-cradle design: goods that easily break apart to recombine into other goods, or organic and easy to handle waste.
That will take care of the "too much stuff" side of the "voluntary simplicity" argument. What's left once that's gone? Moral opinion. I guess everyone's entitled to at least one.
Journalist and Editor egertz AT oneatlantic DOT net emily AT worldchanging DOT com
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sunflower Posted 1:21 am
25 Aug 2007
Are placebos bad?
Anything that makes people feel better is fine with me.
A cultural revolution on consumption is not likely. Consumers are more likely to be encumbered by credit from China, Murdoch's war with Iran, the Bush Nero syndrome, or some other random change.
Offsets, efficiencies, renewables are great rhetorical topics but will not reduce carbon emissions anytime soon enough.
My reactive response is to shut down coal and let the chips fall where they may.
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John Fish Kurmann Posted 7:03 am
25 Aug 2007
So, JMG...
...benefit do you get from this self-righteous attitude (asked by someone who's been accused of self-righteousness more than once in the past, but who thinks he's doing much better now)?
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
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JMG Posted 12:30 pm
25 Aug 2007
Funny
JFK,
A lot of people who heard Al Gore say that the climate crisis is really a moral crisis don't seem to understand the implications of that statement.
If you think that the alternate paths before us, in broad strokes, ultimately boil down to more business as usual (consumption-driven, economic "growth" [planetary liquidation actually, but recorded as growth by our autistic economists], extirpation of species, etc.) vs. a radical reordering of priorities (starting with recognition of the exceedingly stressed nature of the all-too finite biosphere and willing to see ourselves and not just others as contributors to that stress), and if you think that one path is ethically bankrupt and that the other is not, then you are likely to become most sensitive to precisely those things that act like the latter but are actually the former.
Look through that list of companies a few times. Which of those are in a sustainable future? Anyone giving resources to those companies is voting for those companies to prosper and continue shoveling coal into the runaway train of consumer culture.
You label this "attitude" self-righteous, and that's fine. I see calling out greenwashing and those who sell the seduction of "saving the planet through shopping" as an ethical duty; like most such duties, it's not about being popular. The people who report pedophiliac priests were/are not popular, but they are acting ethically. Maybe even self-righteously.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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Pathos Posted 7:06 pm
25 Aug 2007
Actually, JMG...
I did look at that list, when you posted it, and wasn't at all appalled by what I saw. I'll admit I know basically jack about most of those businesses, but the ones I know about aren't typical malignant corporations. At least three are businesses I originally found through charitable click-to-donate sites: Businesses that were using their advertizing money to save rainforest, one ad banner's worth at at time. You can challenge the actual impact of those sites if you get the urge, but given that I also found Grist through one of them ( www.EcologyFund.com , for anyone who cares), I'm not going to knock them. They do good, and spending advertizing dollars on them that could be more lucratively spent elsewhere shows some interest in helping the world. Seeing the names of those businesses on that list actually gives me more confidence in the program's good intentions.
Now, should we reward these people for a couple of green marketing attempts by buying a bunch of %#$!! we don't need? Absolutely not. But if we support them when we buy things we do need--and make a point to access them through their green marketing programs so they see the connection--we send a message that there is profit in caring about the world. And I think we all agree that that's a good message to send.
(The three businesses are 1-800-PetMeds, 123InkJet, and Half.com if anyone was wondering. Those last two kept FreeDonation.com running pretty much by themselves for six or seven years before it finally collapsed.)
And yeah, there are some big businesses up there, like Starbucks. But as trendy and commercial as it is, Starbucks is a pretty nonmalevolent corporation, as corporations go. They go to a great deal of effort to make sure the farmers who grow their coffee reap some of the benefits of their success--and as I understand it, the life of most coffee farmers frankly sucks something unmentionable in polite company. But Starbucks pays far more for their coffee than the market average to help reduce these people's poverty, and even does things like build schools in regions where their coffee is grown. If they seem to be interested in working to minimize their environmental impact, I'm willing to accept that they're sincere about that, at least until I see compelling evidence to the contrary.
And even some of the businesses that we usually think of as inherently evil--e.g., NASCAR and Wal-Mart--have been going to efforts to clean up their act at least somewhat. Does that undo the environmental harm they do? Of course not. But it means they're moving, however slowly, in the right direction. It means that someone at those companies either cares about the earth, or thinks there's a profit in appearing to care about the earth (which can amount to nearly the same thing). We need to encourage this. Extending a little good will, giving them a little validation, and at the very least, not attacking them for it... We can take these tiny seeds of benevolence, and help them grow into something that will actually make a difference. They might decide the steps they've taken are worth following up, and other corporations may be encouraged to follow their lead. And then, when we point out that what they're doing still isn't enough, it will come across as a challenge rather than an attack.
We can, as consumers, move our consumer culture toward something that at least vaguely resembles sustainability; it's going to take time, and it's going to move in baby steps. But there's something you have to realize about baby steps: When a baby starts taking them, the thing to do is applaud him, and tell him what a big strong boy he is, and generally be the loving, patronizing parent. If all you do is deride him for not being able to make a 100-yard-dash yet, he'll be back to crawling tomorrow.
Green marketing programs like this are baby steps for some of these businesses. But encouraging them can help them learn to walk--and we desperately need them to learn that, if we're going to survive the next century or so.
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caniscandida Posted 7:29 pm
25 Aug 2007
Hear hear, JMG ...
... I'm with you on this one. It might indeed help us a bit, to be asked to examine just why we are shopping, much more than it is for us to be invited to carry on as before, shopping shopping shopping, only beneath certain signs of certain brands.
And very exclusive ones too, as you note, in that record-breaking quote. : ) Too bad the irony was so little appreciated.
As for your being a "dyspeptic pessimist," never mind, that charge cannot stand. It is at once refuted by all the energy and love that you clearly put into writing.
On another matter, it saddens me that that great prophet Sunflower should have been put off by the generosity of an old man collecting discarded bottles, and by the good-heartedness of the woman disturbed by the killing of gorillas. Just because those two fine persons are not prepared yet to preach the gospel of the supremely looming danger of global warming, does not mean they should not be warmly welcomed to sing in our (hopefully) polyphonic choir.
Oh well, that happens often enough with even the greatest prophets. They are out in the desert more than a normal person can stand, the Sun does something bad to their eyes, and their head turns a bit funny.
But just for a while. They tend to come back to their senses, by and by.
Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!
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justlou Posted 8:32 pm
25 Aug 2007
Localization?
I commented earlier about taxation. Many of the internet companies do not collect state sales taxes. This is primarily a problem of governing. While many states are suffering with budget woes, they somehow do not have the will to implement a tax on all internet sales originating within their borders. Very unfair to local merchants who are forced to collect sales taxes.
So, the topic of this post is very relevant from the standpoint of furthering the globalization of commerce. Your purchases from these companies may be helping a wee bit on a global level, but what does it do toward weaning us off the globalization stampede and helping your local communities?
The moral and ethical issues involved in trade extend much deeper than computing our CO2 footprint. If localization is a real goal in building sustainability then we really need to think about internet commerce. What kind of jobs and job skills is this system generating and where? Does it select for the kind of skills, crafts, etc. that will be needed in a sustainable world, in the development of local economies?
Does being able to sit at your computer and command the movement of goods from around the globe to your doorstep reinforce a cornucopian world view?
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blastodave Posted 11:34 pm
25 Aug 2007
Global Warming
The debate always comes down to education or a cultural change. Check out this project that goes into schools to educate kids creativity and sustainability.
http://the-seed-project.org
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mihan Posted 12:28 am
26 Aug 2007
shopping and the "stuff" diet
I disagree that people won't be encouraged to consume more if presented with "green" options. I know many people who have bought things that they wouldn't have otherwise because they were "green." I've done it myself... who hasn't? If I'm on the fence about buying something, its being organic sometimes puts me over the edge. It's marketing. More stuff is more energy and more space to store it and more energy.
I just moved to a new apartment, and though I have very little stuff (according to my delighted friends), I still feel like I have too much. So I'm going on a "stuff" diet.
For a couple of years, a friend got rid of one item every day. It couldn't be something that was new and he'd get rid of anyway (like a magazine from last month), it had to be something that he'd had for a while (like a three-year-old magazine). I think I'm going to do that every week, and see where that gets me. Anyone care to join me?
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gmunger Posted 4:30 am
26 Aug 2007
astride the fence
I see value in both DR's and JMG's viewpoints.
On the one hand, I'm often dismayed at how every proposed solution to our problems has its imperfections exposed and is subsequently dismissed as having no value. In fact, although imperfect, many of these ideas often have substantial merit in moving us toward our goals.
On the other hand, Americans are gluttonous consumers without peer. Glorifying, encouraging, justifying....however you care to characterize it, this project strikes me as greenwashing to the -nth degree. And our "consumer culture", beyond being inarguably one of the most important contributors to the global environmental crisis in so many ways, is also the envy of much of the world in so many other ways. And its export threatens to become the ruin of the world (Darth Cheney's non-negtotiation stance notwithstanding).
DR is on a serious anti-coal jag these days. Justifiably so, without question. But the export of our "way of life" to places like China and India will mean that they will almost certainly engage in a dramatic ramping up of their coal consumption, not to mention other problematic aspects of becoming us.
So while I agree that many of us are often too hard on reasonable proposals for change, and I believe I have taken issue with the one JMG in some like instances, I think DR could have chosen a more defensible prospect to defend.
By the way JMG, could you have borrowed the "shoveling coal" metaphor from the author Brian Czech? If so, have you read his similarly titled book, and can you recommend it? I have had my eye on it for some time, and it strikes me from your postings that you are of a like mind on such things.
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David Roberts Posted 4:39 am
26 Aug 2007
Is and isn't
Yes, this small project to divert some consumer dollars to a good cause does not encourage people to live slower, less materialistic lives. It does not encourage them to localize their purchases. It does not encourage them to drive less or use more efficient appliances. It does not encourage them to be kinder to their spouses, or to plant a small garden in their yard, or to brush and floss twice a day. It will not solve global warming or peak oil. It does not do anything to cure cancer or produce world peace.
Indeed, all it does is divert some consumer dollars to a good cause.
grist.org
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WWAGD?! Posted 5:19 am
26 Aug 2007
Financial Obesity
One of the smartest computer guys I know is a fellow named Jeff Relf (you can look him up in Google as he's a regular on Comp.os.linux.advocacy as well as alt.sci.physics).
He coined the term "Financial Obesity" to describe the situation of people being so money-bound -- way beyond what they could actually use (digest) that they become sort of immobile...unable to really participate at a human level in society and so just go around the world flinging things this way and that either trying to get sympathy or just making a nuisance of themselves (almost all celebrity has-beens featured in the html of Grist fit that category).
My rejoinder to him was that perhaps we need a new twist on an old saw:
"You can't be too poor, or too thin."
John Bailo
Sutext:
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JMG Posted 6:18 am
26 Aug 2007
Shoveling Coal
Yes, I read Czech's book a while back (while on a long-distance train trip, in fact, albeit not a coal-fired one) and I think I even plugged it in a post here, or maybe it was a comment.
I do highly recommend it ("Shoveling Coal on a Runaway Train" by Brian Czech), although I have some reservations about some of his prescriptions. Still, a worthwhile antidote to so much of the sludge sold under the label of "economics" today.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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gelobter Posted 6:34 am
26 Aug 2007
I signed that letter...
Thanks to JMG and others for a discussion that cuts to the car crash (a.k.a. the point) on so many of the issues we tried to address in launching Cooler. Our vision is to connect every purchase to a solution for global warming, and the debate in this stream has been mostly about whether or not we aim to encourage more shopping. At the risk of being controversial, the answer is yes - more shopping through our site and less through other channels - because when you start your shopping at Cooler you eliminate the global warming impact of the goods and services you buy.
Jones above said that if we calculated "the carbon footprint of every product listed. Now that would be paradigm-shifting." Well, we do calculate it for every purchase and then we offset that footprint with a basket of renewable energy and pollution prevention investments. Both the calculation and the offsets are vetted by a coalition of the world's best-known environmental groups.
Enuf with the mechanics - here's the strategy: To make sure that, somewhere in consumer-land, there is a brand that signals real action on climate, and:
In the coming years, we are all going to be inundated with global-warming marketing. Without Cooler, those claims could eventually become as meaningless as those made about the healthiness of various snacks. With Cooler, and ongoing collaboration with the environmental community, there's a beacon in the marketplace for quality and a platform for powerful consumer action.
PS: there's a stealth strategy too...the guidelines for every offset dollar we collect are set by our environmental partners. If, with your help, we get to scale, that means tens of millions of intentional dollars into a carbon offset market desperately in need of a conscience.
Michel Gelobter, President, Redefining Progress & CEO, Cooler
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John Fish Kurmann Posted 8:12 am
26 Aug 2007
Are you...
...more interested in feeling "right," JMG, or in actually being effective? It's one thing to attack people who we have have solid evidence are only pretending to be green. It's quite another to attack the well-meaning efforts of those who are sincere, and I see no reason to think the folks at Redefining Progress are insincere.
If you attack people, almost all of them will go into defensive mode, and, once they're on the defensive, they're unlikely to listen to anything you say. If you approach them with some humility, on the other hand, acknowledging the simple fact that none of us created the system that's eating the world alive and all of us participate in it to one degree or another, you can find common ground and begin to work together to improve things.
I disagree with you and Al Gore about the value of treating the climate crisis--or any other aspect of our ecological crisis--as a moral or ethical issue. That sort of rhetoric only works with those who are already inclined to agree with you; those who aren't already inclined to agree will simply engage you in an argument about it which cannot be won by you or by them.
We were all born into a cultural system that by its very nature is destructive to the world, a locomotive that has 10,000 years of momentum built up--and there's simply no way to stop it quickly. If we're to stop the train at all, we have to stop treating the other passengers who don't yet realize we're heading off a cliff as enemies and recognize that they're victims here, too.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
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Biodiversivist Posted 9:08 am
26 Aug 2007
Someone explain to me
How India, the USSR, China, North Korea, all managed to rape their environments without evil corporations or rampant consumerism? A good answer, not just any answer.
Then, I want someone to tell me why spending disposable income (the definition of consumerism) on envied, high status, but really small, super efficient homes with technology, like PV and passive solar integrated with their pricey plug-in hybrid car and bikes, which they don't use much because they telecommute with high speed Internet, all run entirely off zero carbon sustainable energy also purchased by said consumers would be a bad thing?
It is what you choose to buy, not so much that you choose to buy.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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sunflower Posted 11:02 am
26 Aug 2007
Michel --
This is a new concept for me. What is the typical cost percentage of a product used for energy? Typical total carbon emissions of manufacture? And how much do you pay for carbon offsets? Does all this pencil out?
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ids Posted 1:32 pm
26 Aug 2007
Y not green
Daniel Gilbert (Harvard psycho Stumbling on Happiness) describes super-replicating false beliefs. More wealth and consumption creates happiness is a false belief because wealth/consumption has diminishing marginal utility -a given amount of additional wealth/consumption is valued more by a poor person than a rich one, wealthy people are not more happy, etc. Believing more wealth/consumption makes one happy is a super-replicating false belief because our economic system and society is operating to propagate the delusional belief that more wealth and consumerism makes one happy. More wealth/consumption helps grow the economy, which serves to stabilize society (something DG says is a foundation for personal happiness and something to strive for), so that makes US happy if nothing else. Climatecooler replicates the false belief that consumerism makes US happy beside the growing footprint, and not to think twice about it, and be happy you can buy your way out of it and eliminate it's global warming impact.
Raising money to decarbonize the grid is inarguably a good thing. However, climatecooler doesn't help make the smartest choice that the purchase might not be necessary, that it might be purchasing wage slavery to boot, that beside the ghg, it might harm air and water supplies and other natural resources, keeps hidden how (given a good ghg footprint estimate) the ghg fee charged the seller is calculated. Climatecooler looks green to me in the sense that in every good greenwash there is a grain of green.
Beside the footprint $#, explain how the new footprint can harm the economy and destabilize society, despite the seller's fee, and charge twice the calculation because the one purchase might lead someone else to make an additional purchase of the same thing. Take the buyer through a few questions about whether the purchase is necessary to begin with, or whether purchasing a recycled item would suffice and where to do that, and how much better it would be to put all the money into decarbonizing the grid. That might green it up, ask the participating merchants if they have a problem with that. Coolerclimate now seems more like a tool for marketers to mine information than an environmentally green thing to join.
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justlou Posted 10:06 pm
26 Aug 2007
How Do You
How do you calculate the carbon footprint of the destruction of an ecosystem that is lost forever? For example, can you show that some of these purchases of goods from China are not somehow tied to China's destruction of rain forests in Indonesia or their mining in Brazil or their involvement in the mining oil from the tar sands of Canada?
Mitigation will never replace the biodiversity lost from the destruction of natural ecosystems.
And the appeal to peoples' senses of morals and ethics should offend only those who are closed to such appeals. There can be no denying that there is a strong moral and ethical component of our environmental crisis. Changed people change culture. There should be moral and ethical involvement in our consumption decisions. I don't need an intermediary footprint bookkeeper to help me buy my way to a better earth, zero my account, and place me with a happy church of saved consumers. Sorry, JMG's satire did not go far enough.
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mihan Posted 12:33 am
27 Aug 2007
BioD and DR,
BioD:
Many countries rape their environments because of our rampant consumerism, not theirs. Trade deficit, anyone?
DR:
"all it does is divert some consumer dollars to a good cause."
That's not "all" it does. The point is that it probably encourages more consumption than would otherwise occur, having a zero-sum effect. For example, for most people, when they get a raise at work, they start spending more money. If you have a hybrid car, you might feel justified in driving more, so that your net fuel use remains about the same. Etc.
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gmunger Posted 2:17 am
27 Aug 2007
That's not "all" it does.
Even if it does not encourage more consumption, it at least enables justification of current levels of consumption. And can't we all agree that our (in the US) current levels of consumption are not sustainable?
I see this as only a short stretch from Bush's call for Americans to fight "terrorism" by going to the mall. It's time to start speaking the truth to everyone about the pickle we're in. And speaking it loudly. Sorry to offend the American Dreamers, but it's time they woke up to the nightmare reality that they've been missing while mired in their mindless slumber.
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Green Princess Posted 6:20 pm
27 Aug 2007
Another one
Climatecooler isn't the first site in the area. Mother Earth News started a price comparison "carbon offset shopping site" called Earthmoment.com, which I've been using since the beginnig of the summer. Earthmoment gives 50% of it's revenues to carbonfund.org, and the user can choose which projects to give too. I think it's a far better shopping site than climatecooler + you see directly how much money is being donated on each purchase. There is also a eco rating possibility on each store (not much rated so far) so you can choose the better alternative.
Another point I have, is that global warming will not be solved through us - a few thousand enthusiasts, but only when mainstream goes green. They are not likely to shop less or recycle just because we think they should, therefore I do like initiatives that makes it easy for people to help.
Both Climatecooler and Earthmoment is a step towards that direction.
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JGL Posted 9:29 am
30 Aug 2007
I work with the guy who wrote the letter...
...and I think JMG raised a good question: why would a trusted environmental organization promote consumerism? What happens when heroes turn out to be chumps?
I can't answer the second question, but to understand the first you'd have to understand Redefining Progress itself, how we work, how we think, and what we value.
I'll take the last one first: Redefining Progress values social, economic, and environmental justice. We value healthy neighborhoods, sustainable planning, reducing the Ecological Footprint, and ensuring that the people most affected by climate change have a place at the table when policymakers are discussing solutions. We believe that climate change can only be solved with economic and social well-being in mind.
How we think is easy: We think. A lot. We analyze data, we review policies, we look over planning documents and we wonder, "How could this be better? How could this policy or plan be made more just, more sustainable, better for the planet?" Then, we write about, or teach people about it, or tell people about it. That's our job.
Which leads us to how we work. The truth is, though our goals are the same, our methods can be different and sometimes contradictory. Our Environmental Justice group mobilizes people of color and disenfranchised people who are the first and the hardest hit by climate change. As a rule, Environmental Justice communities are not served by cap-and-trade policies. Our Sustainable Economics program, meanwhile, posits that though there are real reasons to oppose cap-and-trade, if the permits are purchased by polluters rather than given away, justice can be brought into the system.
The good part is we discuss everything, all the time. Some of our staff meetings can be quite long, but we debate (and debate and debate) internally and make sure that the actions and ideals we choose as an organization achieve the same ends.
Cooler is one of those actions. Like all shopping sites, it does enable the purchase of goods that could instead be made, bartered, repaired, or are simply not needed. But because Cooler is the brainchild of Redefining Progress President Michel Gelobter, we at RP know and trust that social, economic, and environmental justice are also the values by which Cooler structures it work.
Please--do not shop at Cooler just because it will raise funds for carbon offsets. Shop at Cooler when you need a specific product offered by one of the stores on the site. In the meantime, we'll keep continuing the good fight...
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PhilGutis Posted 11:50 am
31 Aug 2007
Funny, yes. Smart, no.
Hi all. An NRDC colleague sent me this video, which struck me as very PETA-like in its all-or-nothing approach to the world. I blogged on it at:
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/pgutis/musings_of_a_des ...
And my colleague Jon Coifman didn't think much of PETA's campaign and blogged on it here:
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/jcoifman/go_pluck_yours ...
Come join the conversation on Switchboard. We've got some good discussions going.
Cheers,
Phil
NRDC Phil My blog: http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/pgutis/
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