Olly Zanetti: Eco-Thatcherism and the big green sell out
Olly Zanetti knows environmentalism isn’t just a case of ‘shopping green’.
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As usual, my Firefox window is running an almost unmanageable number of tabs. A good few are occupied by research I'm doing on environmental law; another hosts the Climate Camp website that’s helping me plan which days I can attend; and finally there's ebay, where I'm looking for a car.
Given what you might infer about me from the first two selections, you might well question the third. Why would I want a car as, after all, cars produce CO2, CO2 causes climate change, and we all have a personal responsibility to reduce our emissions of climate-changing gasses.
It seems pretty logical, but I'm not sure I agree. The early green movement was all about individuals making choices – switching off lights, recycling bottles, driving less. Sure, it made a point, and there was a time when people were pretty much oblivious to the idea that, say, energy consumption could have an impact on anything beyond their monthly bills. But now awareness has been raised, and calls for individual actions like these serve only as a distraction from the more pressing issues.
This is something that big business has clocked. In a CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) drive, we consumers are being plied with information. The side of a bottle of orange juice from my local supermarket informs me that one serving is responsible for 400g of CO2 reaching the atmosphere. This is the equivalent of driving nearly 3km in my relatively efficient (although still hypothetical) car. A crisp manufacturer has done the same thing, telling us that an average bag of crisps is responsible for CO2 that is double the weight of the crisps themselves.
All this happens under the guise of individual responsibility, tied into consumer choice. “If people really want to be green,” big business would argue, “they would use that information to make greener shopping decisions.” The consumer is, after all, king, in this wonderful free-market economy.
Except it doesn't work like that, and what we see is a kind of Thatcherite environmentalism. It's Thatcherite in two ways. First, the individual responsibility mantra frames being green as something people can do on their own: after all, there's no such thing as society, right? And second, it puts big business at the helm, when really we need leadership from government.
Solo environmentalism is problematic in so many ways. For those who can afford the eco-friendly option every time, it can lead to an intolerable, self-absorbed smugness combined with a disavowal of responsibility to the rest of society – a “We've done our bit, it's not our fault.” Worse, it subscribes to the fallacy that choice – assuming we have a genuine choice, which I tend to doubt – is the answer. Sure, we can choose not to consume certain products, but all this does is transform being green from something positive, beneficial and worth aspiring to, into being yet another pain in the arse to deal with on shopping day.
Further, it provides a handy cover that government and big business can hide behind. For the average person, green or otherwise, under the cold light of supermarket neon lighting, prices not ethics dictate most of our shopping decisions. “So,” they ask, “if individuals aren't changing their habits, why should we change ours?”
But this isn't a manifesto for doing nothing. Quite the reverse. Sure, take all the personal action you can in leading a greener lifestyle, no one will knock you for that. But the environmentalism that matters is in the campaigning. Switching your own electricity supplier will make a negligible difference, but campaigning to outlaw carbon intensive energy production could well change the world. This summer's Climate Camp in the City, from August 27 to September 2 at a location in London, is all about building networks, planning movements, and taking action.
You need to be there.
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Eco-Thatcherism and the big green sell out (text) by Olly Zanetti is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.Comments (1)
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That's the most fucked up thing with laissez faire capitalism. It's claims complete amorality and that freedom of choice will mean the most desirable outcome will always be achieved. Obviously, this is a massive lie. So many factors skew 'the market' that it really is just a system to let complete crooks and bastards do whatever they want, ie. make lots of money at other people's expense.
Companies have a responsibility to reduce the carbon they produce but won't because they may have to cut their profits to do so. And that is a cardinal sin..