justdust

Just saw Daniel Goldman on Bill Moyers talking about his new book, Ecological Intelligence. Made some reallying interesting comments, including the use of the "swarm" mentality via twitter, facebook, etc to inform your friends and the markets that you are taking into account the ecological impact of the entire life cycle of the products you buy when making purchasing decisions. He recommended GoodGuide | Ratings of Natural, Green and Healthy Products as a resource for researching products. Haven't read the book yet, but intend to. Sounds like a really promising opportunity to convince Corporate America that there is an economic incentive to go green!

Willy36

Is it just me, or does anyone else realize that by convincing "corporate America" to go green, all you're doing is fueling green corporations, thus simply continuing the exact corporate system that everyone seems to think is the devil?

Being environmentally-friendly is important, but every way that the (corporate-owned) media and (corporate-sponsored) authors tell you to do so is bullshit.

justdust

People are going to buy stuff. Period. Elevating your consciousness about the impacts of your purchase decisions doesn't strike me as bullshit.

Willy36

Totally missed my point.

justdust

I took your point to be that Daniel Goldman's advice is bullshit. If that is not what you intended, maybe you could clarify your post.

PaoloSmythe

presumably such literature is published in a pleasing font, condusive to reading on VDUs....?

as opposed to it being distributed on yet more fallen trees, be they recycled or otherwise sourced?

afterall any step towards the utilisation of non-conventional media will help nurture a change in human behaviour, which of course remains central to the ills which currently blight us

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PaoloSmythe

but of course this author might be just the latest to hop onto the hippie band wagon, claiming to be a pioneer for a worthy cause which is little more than the current cause celebre and thus is simply contributing to the latest emergent industry in its own right?

praise be to the planetary saviour that is, the forever rich Al Gore!!!! :cheeky:

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Willy36

I find the current green movement to be bullshit. There are many reasons I think this, but the one I was focused on originally is this: Many people who want us to "go green" think the corporations are the problem in environmental issues today. There's a fair bit of truth in this, but then the most popular solution seems to be buy green. All this does is cause new industries and corporations that specialize in "green" products to rise up. Thus creating more corporations and industries which, long story short, causes more environmental issues. Not to mention in reality, these "green" products cause just as many REAL environmental issues as the supposedly non-green products do, because the public is not educated on what are actual problems with our environment today and what is simply the latest trend in feel-good causes.

justdust

The pros and cons of corporations are complex and I don't think I know enough to suggest a solution on that issue yet. But as for the current green movement you refer to, it sounds like you would throw the baby out with the bathwater. Consumerism isn't about to disappear in the foreseeable future, so doesn't it make sense for consumers to direct the markets toward environmentally friendly efforts, even if our knowledge of what is or is not good for the planet is not perfect (and never will be since the concept of "good" involves to many value judgments on which individuals with unique perspectives will never agree)?

Flick Montana

Sounds to me like you guys are both right. It's sort of the good and evil of what our country is.

It is true that most "Green" products companies are putting out just trade in one environmental hazard for another. They use "Green" as a money-making tactic. They blatantly avoid working on the real problem, such as factory pollution or the use of non-degradable plastics and instead use an all-natural chemical in place of a more dangerous one, then market their product as environmentally friendly. I find it insulting, personally.

But the fact is that anything is better than nothing so long as we realize that the problem is not going to go away based solely upon corporate decisions. As individuals, we have to take conscious steps to reduce our impact, not rely on corporations to put products out that reduce the problem for us. People need to seriously educate themselves about the environment. With as big a problem as it is, I'm surprised there isn't an environmental class in our school system. We take economy and geography and history, maybe environmental education is next.

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