Green washing – Raising Awareness or Breeding Complacency?

ARCHIVED ARTICLE FROM MY “ANTI-CONSUMERIST”, ANARCHIST DAYS.
My politics have since changed, so I really do apologise if bits of this end up sounding obnoxiously elitist, even right-wing at some points. For instance, I no longer hold the view that encouraging workers to spy on their neighbours in the name of residential water saving  is acceptable at all, when the largest water waster is industry.Uranium mines should be forced to clean up their act, instead of being given government subsidies for wasting hundreds of thousands of litres of water a day.
The basic point of this article remains, however – Ordinary working people should not have to pay for basic human necessities, or climate change itself, when those at the top continue to reap their insane profits at the expense of the future of the planet.

Green washing – Raising Awareness or Breeding Complacency?
Jimmy Yan

A polemic against Earth Hour written for the Glen Waverley Secondary Eco-Committee Blog

As the ominous March 28 approaches, teachers, students and (vice) principals could be seen walking around the campus wearing black t-shirts displaying an image of the planet earth cut out into the number “60”. Yes, the much-anticipated Earth Hour Day has come and passed and the actual Earth Hour is approaching but unfortunately for the few supporters, the sense of euphoria within the school wasn’t as high as expected, with many students who otherwise would have become active in environmental issues left feeling even more powerless as spectators of another clichéd PR stunt. Instead of being overly hostile to Earth Hour, this critique of the event will be from an environmentalist perspective. Instead of outright lambasting Earth Hour or attacking those who support it, I hope to provide some constructive feedback for both the Earth Hour supporters and the eco-committee. Furthermore, the views expressed below are mine only, and not necessarily of the Eco-Committee.

Earth hour began as an event organized by the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) in Sydney in 2007. This year it is “going to be a world-wide event with 24 countries participating”. The main logic behind Earth Hour is that if everyone could put in a little effort and participated by turning off their lights for one hour, they could help “raise awareness” of global warming or show world leaders (ironically, some of whom are also participating in this) that “people care”.

The problem with this mentality is that most people already are aware of global warming, it’s just that most feel disempowered because of a lack of awareness of what to do about global warming. In today’s consumer culture, we are conditioned with the idea that instead of being citizens, we are primarily consumers. Earth Hour just seems like a logical extension of this branded culture of consumption that fuels people’s sense of powerlessness.

It is our over-consumption that caused these problems in the first place. It is the merest truism that the problem of global warming, rainforest destruction and drought cannot be solved through more consumption. Earth Hour is commendable in that the event itself directly sends a message that it is our consumption that is the problem. However, upon further investigation of the Earth Hour website, we are told that in order to save the planet we must buy greener, more Eco-Friendly energy saving light bulbs and “carbon credits” in order to “offset” your holiday to London with massive monoculture eucalyptus plantations in the Majority World, expelling traditional communities from their villages.

At Mount Elgon National Park in Uganda for example, the Dutch FACE Foundation has been planting carbon “offset” trees since 1994. Villagers living near the park have been beaten and shot at and barred from their land by armed park rangers.

However only promoting less consumption as an individualized act misses the point. Earth Hour although promoting less energy consumption, still indirectly promotes the idea that we can bring about change through our individual consumption. Instead of looking at the point of production, Earth Hour looks solely at the point of consumption. A central component of the mentality of ‘ethical’ consumerism is the idea that people can influence the production processes of corporations by simply buying supposedly “greener” products. If anything, corporations have a lot more control over people’s consumption habits than the other way around. Production processes of companies are initiated by the company and are always governed by their economic interests.

Corporations – bodies that have a legal obligation to deliver profits to shareholders – never do things in the name of altruism unless it will increase their profit margins. Instead of looking at the deeper political and economic reasons for our environmental problems, Earth Hour reduces real social and political activism to merely shopping. This is not “empowering”, quite the contrary, it is completely disempowering and patronizing to tell students that the best they can do to save the planet is to turn off their lights for one hour. This elitist mentality only perpetuates the disease known as the consumer culture and the stereotypes of teenagers as apathetic and stupid.

Furthermore, Earth Hour is packaged as a “win-win” situation for both the environment and the corporate world. Multinational companies have joined in, and even McDonald’s are turning off their Golden Arches for one hour! Do we really want to be working with a company that is linked with rainforest destruction for cattle grazing? Do we really want to be working with companies such as the Commonwealth Bank, companies that have shares in – or are themselves – some of the worst polluters on the planet? The reality is that companies like McDonald’s have adopted a model where they primarily sell their brand, while their actual products are secondary. Today, companies are spending a larger and larger percentage of their revenue on advertising and market research. Why would a company which has had such a bad record of environmental destruction resist an opportunity to “green” up their image? Even oil companies like BP are doing it! At the end of the day, it means more sales for them, and more soothed (numbed) consciences to exploit.

Not only is Earth Hour helping companies to sell their brand, Earth Hour has become a brand in itself. At a recent inter-school student “summit” held at Glen Waverley Secondary College run by the WWF and Fairfax, students were asked to provide ideas to promote the Earth Hour brand – not environmental awareness or the issues but Earth Hour as an end to itself- through ‘youth’ mediums such as social networking sites, as well as posting flyers and posters.

Earth Hour rests on the assumption that the environmental movement can make any real progress without looking at the deeper social and political institutions and systems within our society that cause our environmental problems, one of them being a system that seeks to accumulate as much profit as possible for the sake of more accumulation and more competition irrespective of the human, environmental and social cost. Our environmental problems become another commodity that is bought and sold on the market. Case in point: “carbon credits”, where people are told that pollution is OK, as long as they pay an “indulgence” to the “pope”.* There is no such thing as a “win-win” solution when the long-term interests of the environment and short-term interests of corporate polluters are inherently opposed and contradictory to each other.

Carbon trading and Earth Hour represent the blurring between the terms “ecologically sustainable” and the almost oxymoronic “economically ’sustainable’”, putting our environmental problems in the hands of the competition and profit-driven logic of the cost-obsessed market. Schemes such as “carbon offsetting” only allow companies to avoid taking any responsibility for their pollution while giving them underserved environmental legitimacy. Airlines, cars, weddings and even oil companies can now be carbon “neutral”. While walking to my platform at Flinders Street Station last week, I stumbled across a beer advertisement. Not any old beer ad, it was for a “100% Carbon Offset” beer. Apparently there is now an “Official Beer of Earth Hour”!

It is impossible to equate permanent fossil fuel pollution with the absorption of carbon dioxide by trees. Once trees die, rot, burn, become diseased, or are chopped down, the carbon “stored” is released back into the atmosphere. In contrast, carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels are permanent.

Aside from the fact that planting trees to stop global warming is akin to drinking water to empty the world’s oceans, does carbon trading actually reduce emissions? The first few years of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme actually witnessed an increase in pollution. Because carbon permits are commodities that can be sold on the market, in order to protect the profitability of their competing economies governments massively over-allocated emissions permits to the heaviest polluting industries.

In order to understand why the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) – the organization behind Earth Hour – would use advocate such reactionary and counter-productive tactics, we would need to briefly look at its history of pandering to corporate interests since its inception. The WWF began as a group backed by a Public Policy think tank in Switzerland. However in its 47-year existence it has promoted a model of environmentalism through working with big business, accepting funding from oil companies such as Chevron and ExxonMobil, as well as the logging industry. Today it is the world’s largest environmental lobby group, operating in 46 countries. The WWF have been found to organize hunting trips for their members and recently, they’ve even come out in support of Uranium mining in Australia!

Now, you would probably be asking “What’s the point of singling out the WWF for criticism when just about any NGO accepts money from corporate donors?” The answer is that the WWF take a principled stand of working with big business instead of merely saying it’s a “necessary evil”. Green capitalism is a founding principle of the WWF.

The WWF’s advocacy of “green” capitalism is blatantly expressed on its website, with an animated banner flashing the words “Drought…Global Warming … Invasive Weeds… shopping?” which leads to a page selling “carbon offsets” and organic skin care products. According to the WWF:

“conservation is good business, and we are gratified by the growing number of successful companies that agree. We are partnering with leading companies across all industry sectors.”

These companies include Wal-Mart, Nokia, Nike and even Coca-Cola. The WWF has also teamed up with car company Nissan to form a “partnership” in order to promote a branded environmental program in university campuses.

Coca-Cola in particular have been the target of environmental and social justice activists around the world for their pollution of soil around bottling facilities in India, and also for causing water shortages in local communities. In August 2007, while sipping a can of Diet Coke in front of the WWF logo, Coca-Cola CEO Neville Isdell announced a US$20 million dollar “partnership” with WWF that would aim to “replace every drop of water we use in our beverages and their production”. Part of the plan was to replenish the water. However, this replenishment wouldn’t be taking place at the sites of the water depletion, but through a series of projects taking place in other parts of the world — in other words, water offsets. This is exactly the mad logic of “green” capitalism that also applies to schemes like “carbon offsetting”.

At times like these it can be easy to simply dismiss the WWF as another big-business front group but credit must be given to the progressive things that the WWF have done for conservation. This does not at all however excuse their constant pandering to corporate interests.

Ultimately, events like Earth Hour and “Live Earth” rest on the idea that we can trust and work with those responsible for environmental destruction without holding them accountable for their crimes and the assumption that ordinary people are too stupid and naïve to go beyond just turning off their lights for one hour.

As outlined above, there are many flaws with Earth Hour and its strategy of promoting green consumerism or “selling-out” – something not applicable to the WWF because it was never “unsold”- in order to popularize an issue or in Earth Hour’s case, a brand disguised as a movement or even other brands. However, Earth Hour still has its few positives. For instance, Earth Hour’s movement-like approach – however artificial – is commendable. It’s undeniable that most supporters of Earth Hour have the sincerest of intentions, but this is just another reflection of the co-optation of the environmental movement by corporate giants. We can now see clothing chains selling anti-whaling t-shirts, in an attempt to appeal to people’s desire to “make a difference”. Instead of blindly accepting the fact that capitalism has successfully co-opted environmentalism, we need to use this opportunity to expose not only those specifically responsible for pollution and deforestation, but also the underlying system.

A starting point to building an effective movement would be to hold those in charge that are responsible for environmental exploitation accountable for their crimes rather than employing a “If we can’t beat them, join them” approach. Sometimes changes to one’s life are absolutely necessary, such as saving water. However, there is a difference between changes in one’s lifestyle and promoting the idea that those lifestyle changes can change the world. There is a difference between pressuring those in charge to clean up their act and equating social activism with consumption alone. Consumerism is defined as a culture that is centered around consumption for consumption’s sake but the real problem here is a system that produces purely for accumulation’s sake. There is a difference between conserving energy and buying the latest eco-friendly air conditioner. The WWF is interesting in that it advocates the former through more consumption such as buying energy-saving light bulbs.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t participate in Earth Hour but I hope that everyone who turns off their lights tomorrow will think about the issues beyond just “this will raise awareness”. Because it is only when we get past the idea that those directly responsible for most of the world’s pollution and the environmental movement can coexist that we can make real progress to genuinely build a movement to not only conserve but to prevent environmental degradation from happening and to hold those at the top accountable. This change certainly cannot come from the top; it cannot come from those responsible for the world’s problems. Social justice and environmentalism are inseparable. Instead of accommodating polluters, we need to confront them and the system underlying it. Instead of promoting “carbon-trading”, we need to promote “leaving-the-coal-in-the-ground”, we need to fight for free public transport, an end to uranium mining and logging, we need to firmly say no to desalination and we need to campaign for massive research into renewable energies.

So when you switch off your lights tomorrow, think beyond just individualist lifestylism, think about the mad system that we live in. We need to get rid of it at its roots and not just create a greener version of it.

*I wrote this not because I think the environmental movement is a religion, as right-wing idiots like Andrew Bolt argue but because the “Carbon Credits” system is a corporate farce.

Also read:

“Offsetting Democracy” by Kevin Smith – Green Left Weekly

http://www.carbontradewatch.org/

“The Great Carbon Trading Scam” by Liz Walsh – Socialist Alternative Magazine.