Comments lucas has made

On eco-friendly product pricing and consumerism

Perhaps part of the problem, at least with the younger mostly white activist crowd, is that their politics are often tinged with a rather strident anti-statist rejection of the formal decision-making arena (government).  And thus, they don't invest enough energy in fighting FOR rational, sustainable urban planning (or other public policies) that must clearly articulate an anti-racist, pro-community, pro-regulation approach to environmentalism.

The only quibble I might have with Adrienne's piece is when it comes to the pricing of supposedly environmentally (and worker) friendly products.  Telling folks to bring down prices is obviously easier said that done.  The fact that crappy, harmful food is often cheaper and more readily assessable, or that buying recycled toilette paper (again, for example) costs more than double the tree-destroying kind is a central dilemma of capitalism itself.  For one, the capitalist producer is always looking for ways to privatize the profits (earnings for the company) and socialize the environmental and social costs (considerations often left out of the pricing of goods... and left for the public to redress in terms of pollution clean-up or providing health care for uninsured employees, etc.).  Lowering the retail costs of goods, even for eco-friendly products, either means cutting the profit margin, reducing wages or material costs, or producing a more inferior product.  

And secondly, the individual consumer will almost invariably (and understandably) tend to buy the cheaper of the goods out of self-interest over long-term ecological concerns.  There is a case to be made to convince people that it is an ethical responsibility to only buy goods that aren't exploiting workers or destroying the planet.  But focusing on the consumer end is mostly a mistake, I think.  The more money you have, the more you can "afford" to purchase do-gooder items.  This is a patronizing, and often a paralyzingly moralistic form of social change.  It also tends to relegate one's environmentalism to a private expression, rather than as a political public domain where it belongs.  The emphasis should be more on empowering workers to change the power relations in the productive process, to organize communities to mobilize to improve various facets of community health, and to demand government enforced policies that require firms to adhere to strict social and environmental regulations (essentially forcing "externalities" back into the pricing mix).  In the long-term, as wild-eyed as it always sounds, I'm obviously for replacing capitalism with a system (democratic socialism) that doesn't subordinate human rights and the environment to the enrichment of the few or short-term "gain" trumping long-term ecological sanity.

Adrienne's central point in "Be Easy and Appealing" is correct, however.  The niche marketing of most environmentally sustainable (or less harmful) goods is often targeted to a highly educated, white, upper middle class audience.  And yes, there's nothing that requires our responsible products to look drab (in Ithaca where I come from, a lot of the people who buy this stuff wear these awful burlap sack-looking "natural fiber" clothes).  No need to trade in style for functionality.

I very much enjoy the way Adrienne writes (people should check out her other writing).  We need a style of advocacy story telling that isn't the tired old leftist academic approach that I find myself replicating.

On a side note... I would point to the Apollo Project as a initiative that can unite environmentalists with the trade union movement... and groups like the L.A. based Bus Riders Union/Sindicato de Pasajeros that mobilizes for environmental justice and better transit policies by combining race, gender, class, and immigration status concerns in a way that naturally reflects the communities they work with and are comprised of.  It's only out of ignorance, discomfort, anti-urbanism, and a lack of imagination that prevents the mostly white environmentalist movement from taking up these and other critical struggles.

peace
Lucas
www.ydsusa.orgOn Dramatizing the "death" of environmentalism doesn't help urban people of color, or anyone else posted 4 years, 8 months ago 21 Responses