Yesterday I went to the bookstore in town. You’ll probably not be surprised that I spent my time there browsing the section labeled “Environment”. Of course, we all know that “green is the new black”. Green is more than trendy. Everyone is on board with green these days…as long as it doesn’t cost too much or require too much sacrifice…and ESPECIALLY if appearing “green” increases profits. Well, given that I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised at the books on the shelves. Yes, there were a lot of the sorts of books I would have expected, books talking about the serious water crises around the world and books talking about loss of biodiversity due to cattle. However, it seems to me that nearly half the books in the section had something to do with what they called the “new green economy”. Granted, I didn’t read or even flip through them all. I’m sure that more than one of these books advocates for a radical rethinking of what we even mean when we talk about economics in the modern world. But all of the “new green economy” books I picked up and flipped through had similar messages. And the messages were thoroughly non-radical. They were very status quo. And I felt sad about this.
My frustration with the thinking advanced in most of these books is similar to the frustration I have with something like An Inconvenient Truth. If you saw An Inconvenient Truth then you know that the message is that we are facing serious problems. We’ve got too many people on this planet, and we’re destroying it rapidly. When faced with problems as serious as what An Inconvenient Truth points out I find it very, very sad that the message is followed by a truly pathetic list of things that you can/should do to “save the environment”. If you visit the official An Inconvenient Truth site at www.climatecrisis.net you can see the list for yourself. But here’s a quick selection of some of the recommendations.
* fly less
* telecommute from home
* keep your car tuned up
* only run your dishwasher when there’s a full load and use the energy-saving setting
* buy recycled paper products
* turn off electric devices you’re not using
I’m not saying these might not be good steps to take. Flying less is not only good for the environment, but it’s good for your own sanity, for example. But here’s why I take issue with this list of things you can do to save the planet. These things won’t save the planet. That’s what I find frustrating. The initial message is good. The initial message is that there’s a really major problem facing us. You get people’s attention. Then, instead of telling people the truth, you essentially say, “Don’t worry, though, you won’t have to really change your lifestyle. Just recycle more and we’ll be okay.” That’s a disservice in my way of thinking. If the climatecrisis.net site was seriously interested in saving the planet then it would say something more like the following.
“Dear reader, you’ve probably just seen An Inconvenient Truth. You just learned about the major problems facing humanity and all of life on this planet. You may now be wondering what you can do to avert the consequences. The truth is that it’s probably far too late to avert the consequences. Our way of life has already set into motion causes and effects that are beyond our ability to control. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s not important for you to make changes. In fact, it’s more important now than ever. You see, if we don’t act now then humanity may not see the 22nd Century, and we may bring millions of other species to extinction with us. Your help and participation is critical. We wish we could tell you that it’s going to be easy, that you won’t have to make real changes. We wish we could tell you that all you have to do is recycle and that would be enough. That’s what we wish because it would be a whole lot less scary and a whole lot more realistic that we’ll actually make the changes we need to make. But the truth is that what’s required are radical changes.”
That would then be followed with a list of the sorts of changes people need to make. And those changes might include things such as the following.
* Stop buying things unless they are artisan goods made locally and sustainably, and even then only buy them if you really need them. Consider bartering instead of buying with currency. Bartering eliminates the need for centralized financial authorities, and limits the ability of such organizations to coerce populations and damage ecosystems.
* Grow your own food using organic practices. Save seeds from your garden to reduce dependency on seed companies and transportation. What food you cannot grow, obtain from your community. Refuse to buy anything that required large scale energy use to produce.
* Reduce your use of electricity to an absolute minimum. If possible stop using electricity entirely.
* Work with your community to build strong community support systems. Ideas may include gardening groups and natural building education groups. The stronger your local community is, the more self-sustaining your community can be, reducing or eliminating the requirement for import.
* Plan families carefully. Consider the negative impact that population growth has on the planet. Discover if it is possible to live a fulfilled life without having children of your own.
Hell, even this list is probably a compromise of what is really necessary. But at least it’s more honest in a lot of ways.
My point is that half-assed “solutions” that require little to no real change just allow everyone to remain complacent. They allow those systems and organizations that are actively destroying the planet to continue as they have been. Worse yet, many of these half-assed solutions actually exacerbate the situation because they provide great PR opportunities for some organizations that are actively destroying the earth. For example, only in an Orwellian environment such as we have today could petroleum companies such as BP or ExxonMobil claim to be “green” in order to boost their profile. And sadly we, the public, fall for these PR insanities.
You might be wondering at this point what any of this has to do with the books I saw on the shelves. A “new green economy” sounds pretty good, right? We might envision a future in which carbon trading has been so effective that every industry on the planet has reduced its greenhouse gases to zero because it was profitable, millions upon millions of people have “green collar” jobs building new, “sustainable” and “environmentally-friendly” houses and offices, etc. But I feel like this whole fantasy is just that, a fantasy. I’m actually cynical enough at this point to believe that the entire fantasy of a future “green economy” is shaped by the dollars and PR work on the behalf of the corporations that already run the system. It’s just another distraction. Meanwhile, the machine keeps on going, destroying thousands more acres of habitats for endangered species every day.
There’s a word used to describe a lot of the PR these companies use. That word is “greenwashing”. Well, I think that it’s not just these companies that have been greenwashed. Our minds have been greenwashed too. We’re so thoroughly greenwashed that we’ve apparently lost all ability to think critically. No. It’s more than that. We can’t even see what’s right in front of our face, plain for all to see should they just open their eyes. It’s like we are characters in 1984 all believing that 2 + 2 = 5. But all the belief in the world won’t make 2 + 2 = 5. It’s still 4 regardless of belief. And that’s true of greenwashing too.
Take the notion of “green collar” jobs. This is a notion that most recently has been popularized by Van Jones. For those who don’t know about Van Jones, he’s an Oakland-based “environmental advocate, civil rights activist, and attorney” (according to Wikipedia) who wrote a book a few years ago called The Green Collar Economy. (Side note, I recently saw that Van Jones was the recipient of the Reebok International Human Rights Award in 1988. Excuse me? Again, just another conformation of the Orwellian nature of our times. The Reebok in Reebok International Human Rights Award is the same Reebok that manufactures “athletic footware”. Isn’t a Reebok International Human Rights Award a bit like a Nazi International Human Rights Award? You may think I’m being dramatic and that the comparison isn’t warranted. But I’m not in a happy mood today, and I’m just going to call it like I see it.) The Green Collar Economy puts forward a plan for how to apparently “solve” the “economic problems” and the environmental problems at the same time by way of a new New Deal approach that creates lots and lots of new “green collar” jobs. What’s my problem with this? Well, for someone who refuses to think outside the box it might look very progressive. Hell, it might seem radical. But radical it is not. It is thoroughly within the box. Whether your thinking is to the left of the box or to the right of the box it’s still in the box either way, and boxed-in thinking ain’t going to solve nothing because the box is designed to always generate destructive thinking. It’s just that some of the thinking is more destructive than other thinking. But less destructive is still destructive. The idea of a “green collar economy” is built fundamentally on all of the same flawed ideas as our current economy.
The thing is, I wouldn’t be satisfied with any idea that greens the economy, no matter how green. Why? Because I believe that the very notion of “an economy” is itself flawed and inherently destructive. The idea that there is such a thing as an economy instantaneously objectifies everything and turns it all into commodities. Don’t believe me? Think about it for a minute. What isn’t a commodity in our current mainstream thinking? Everything and everyone is considered a commodity. Traders will place bets on anything. And this is all in the name of “an economy”. But what is an economy? Does such a thing exist in reality? Or is it just an idea, an idea that is merely a collection of other ideas called commodities? Without commodities there is no economy. There is just life. And I’m advocating for life, not economy.
We’ve seen plenty of evidence that our economic thinking leads to anti-life behavior. Our notion of economics is fundamentally in opposition to life. Look and see for yourself. When environmental issues are mentioned in political debates the counter is always that taking any sort of meaningful steps to stop the environmental damage we are doing would harm the economy. Well, shouldn’t that be a clue? If doing what is necessary to live in harmony with our environment would damage the economy then doesn’t that make the economy anti-life by definition? The environment is life. We like to pretend that we can live without it. We like to pretend that there’s some techno-solution in the future that will clean our air and water and land and restore all the millions of extinct species of plants and animals. But when will we wake up from this greenwashed nightmare? There is no such techno-solution, and even if there was, it would be with its own set of anti-life problems. We can’t get out ahead of the wave of destruction that is the economy. We can only stop. And stop is what we should do.
Do you love your job? If you do, you are in the very small minority. Surely you know this. The majority of people would feel no remorse if they no longer had to live in wage slavery. But we’ve been brainwashed well enough that most of us never even clue in to the fact that there is life outside the box. We’re scared by the horror stories about poverty and homelessness and violence that await us should we decide not to work in the system any more. And that fear has blinded us to the fact that for hundreds of thousands of years humans have lived without this system, and they did well enough to usher in the next generations of humans and to deliver them to a healthy planet. We can’t say the same today. We’re not doing well. We’re far worse off than our ancestors. They may have lived in caves or tipis or other dwellings seemingly less impressive than modern skyscrapers. But they had clean water, and in my way of thinking that’s a hell of a lot more important. We’re mucking things up really badly, and the notion of a “new green economy” is just more fuel to the fire to muck things up more, but this time in the name of environmental progress. It’s insane, though, and we ought to see that immediately. It’s not environmental progress…unless we mean progress in destroying the environment.
What is the alternative to a “green economy”? I’m not advocating for a “non-green economy” either. I’m just saying that perhaps it’s time we consider dropping the economy entirely. Then it’s not a “green economy”. Then it’s just “green”. And to me that is vastly different. Tacking “green” on to “economy” is just a way of dressing up “economy” so it’s not a bad word. But the emphasis is still on economy, not the green part. Hell, the green part is largely not in the equation. But if you take away “economy” then we have to focus on the “green” part. And suddenly there is life again. Suddenly we are thinking in the right direction, which means restoring forests and grasslands and undamming rivers and building communities.