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Right now, my e-mail inbox is bursting with Earth Day PR pitches. "Please tell your readers to buy a T-shirt made from recycled plastic bottles, a recycled toothbrush, compostable cups and biodegradable plates, organic "me-shirts," bioplastic iPhone case and baby wipes, reusable containers and utensils, green tips from L'Oréal, organic cotton sheets, Sunchips in biodegradable bags, green cleaning products, eco-friendly jewelry, organic underwear, organic salad greens, or an American flag made from recycled plastic..."
Let's buy, buy, buy our way to a clean and green tomorrow.
Please forgive the sarcastic tone. Because I must admit that several of the PR pitches in my inbox are from companies I believe in and have promoted on my blog Fake Plastic Fish. I certainly support plastic-free products when I feel they are healthier than the alternative and can help us reduce our plastic consumption. And I want to support small companies whose offerings can help us reduce waste, avoid toxic chemicals, and lower our ecological footprint. In fact, just last week, I sponsored a couple of giveaways of products I felt were worthwhile.
But do I think that merely switching from plastic to a different material without lowering our overall consumption is going to protect the planet for future generations? I do not.
Having spent years traveling the world to examine the green initiatives and products touted as organic, eco-friendly, Fair Trade, low carbon, etc., Rogers reveals that many of the green alternatives we choose are anything but. And the reason has to do with a capitalist system that values monetary profits over true planetary and social justice.
In studying our food systems, Rogers' investigations into organic local farming in New York state reveal that many of the small farmers who show up at the farmers market each week with food priced well above conventionally farmed products are barely making a living, and many face foreclosure due to an infrastructure and government policy that supports big industrial agriculture over small farms. Traveling to Paraguay, she discovers that big organic companies like Wholesome Sweeteners, suppliers of organic and Fair Trade sugar products, is clear-cutting the native forests and degrading the land for sugar plantations. How organic is that?
In Indonesian Borneo, Rogers witnesses rainforests cleared and burned to make way for palm oil, the crop increasingly used to produce biofuels, the "green" alternative to fossil fuels. In fact, she learns that when we factor in the loss of carbon-sequestering trees and the burning process itself, palm oil biofuel actually generates 10 times more CO2 emissions than petroleum.
Looking to fuel efficiency as a step in the right direction, Rogers visits the three major auto companies in Detroit and discovers that while these companies have already developed the technology for incredibly fuel-efficient cars, they have stalled on manufacturing them for sale in the U.S., where the profit margins are much lower than are those of big gas guzzlers.
Investigating the truth about carbon credits, particularly the voluntary credits we as consumers can purchase to offset our emissions from flying, driving, or basic living, Rogers comes to see that rather than actually offsetting the emissions we are generating now, credits used for tree-planting programs actually only neutralize greenhouse gas emissions over the lifetime of the trees. Those kinds of programs do not help with CO2 emissions now, when we need them most.
What's more, some carbon credit programs, contrary to their mission, actually incentivize the use of fossil fuels in developing nations since the money from carbon credits is not provided to countries that already have clean energy. And because there is no official registry or auditing of these programs, consumers have no way to find out what's really being done with the money they spend to assuage their guilt.
Natural Capitalism?
Natural capitalism, as promoted by thinkers like Paul Hawken and William McDonough, asserts that "we can use the levers of the market to fix ecological breakdown." Advocates cite companies like Xerox that have saved
