Time to stop the Greenwashing

[losthills]

This essay is from the personal blog of Dr Glen Barry, of Rainforest Portal, one of the most committed environmental activists on the planet...

EARTH MEANDERS
Time to Stop the Greenwashing

Global ecological sustainability depends upon identifying and
acting upon ambitious, sufficient eco-policies now; and
rejecting misleading, exploitative and inadequate reformist
pandering

Earth Meanders by Dr. Glen Barry
http://earthmeanders.blogspot.com/

January 4, 2008

The Earth and all species including humans are threatened with
imminent ecological ruin. You should be afraid, very afraid.
Yet real hope remains that fundamental social change can avert
looming failure of global ecosystems. The biggest current
obstacle to such change is that now that everyone, every
product and every business claims to be "green"; we have been
diverted from urgent, adequate ecological change required to
secure being.

Many mainstream (and some "radical") environmentalists, most
businesses and essentially all governments are greenwashing --
misleading the public regarding the environmental benefits of
their practices, policies and products. Certified FSC logging
destroys ancient forests, climate and water. Coal is unlikely
to ever be clean as existing plants emit into the atmosphere,
and sequestration is unproven. Biofuels hurt the environment,
geo-engineering will destroy remaining natural processes, and
buying more stuff is rarely good for the environment.

It is time to stop the greenwashing. After two decades of
successfully raising awareness regarding climate change,
forest protection and other challenges to global ecological
sustainability; increasingly my time is spent reacting to
dangerous, insufficient responses that fail to address root
causes of ecological decline, provide a false sense of action,
and frequently consolidate and do more environmental harm.

Many "greenwash" to make money, some to be perceived as
effective advocates, while others believe incremental progress
without changing the system is the best that can be done. Yet
all are delaying policies necessary simply to survive. The
greatest obstacle to identifying, refining, espousing and
implementing policies required to maintain a habitable Earth
may come from "environmentalists" proposing inadequate half-
measures that delay and undermine the rigorous work that must
be done to bring humanity back into nature's fold.

Sufficient policies required to save the Earth are massive in
scope and ambition. Deep-seated change is required in how we
house, feed and clothe ourselves; in our understanding of
acceptable livelihoods and happy lives; and in our
relationship with the biosphere and each other. To maintain a
livable Earth there is no alternative to less people and
consumption, a smaller and restorative economy, and an end to
cutting natural vegetation and burning fossil fuels.

....

You can read the rest of this essay, and check out some of Dr. Barry's other writings at the link above.
peace

[NNadir]

1. Don't mess with Amory Lovin's paycheck.

The world's most fundementalist anti-nuke couldn't afford to pay his lift ticket fees on Aspen Mountain if cruel people took away his checks from Rio Tinto.

[GliderGuider]

2. Like Lester Brown, he's halfway there

I agree with Barry that the light green proposals of the MSE (Main Stream Environmentalists) are ostrichism at its most egregious. He definitely gets the fact that we are standing in shit up to our nostrils and it's still rising. Then he says things like this:

Yet real hope remains that fundamental social change can avert looming failure of global ecosystems.

What is one to say to such apparently willful blindness from such an otherwise informed and concerned commentator? Like Brown, his position founders on his lack of knowledge of evolutionary psychology and group dynamics, as well as his complete failure to appreciate the amplifying effects of convergence on the global crisis.

Even those who understand that the crisis they recognize has civilization-extinguishing power still fail to comprehend the other two-thirds of the problem or the nature of the human response. His psychology is no different from those in the Peak Oil camp who insist that if we just put on an Apollo-Project-style push to build more nuclear reactors we could fix everything. Or those economists who think that liquidity injections and better rules on mortgage lending will stabilize everything after a bit of a shakeout.

Far from giving me hope, reading things like this convinces me more than ever that "estamos tan jodidos!"

[losthills]

3. But you do think that we should go down fighting...

Don't you?

[GliderGuider]

4. Of course I do.

But if you're going to "win" the fight you need to understand your enemy. Otherwise you risk bringing a knife to a gunfight.

[losthills]

5. Well said...

[Delphinus]

6. Alright,

guess I can't figure out how to use babblefish - what does this mean: "estamos tan jodidos"?

[GliderGuider]

8. It means

"We are so fucked!"

[Delphinus]

7. His writing reminds me of what I'm reading now:

Endgame by Derrick Jensen.

I wish more in power understood that economic growth is not the way. Even some environmentalists that I know on the local level don't grasp this.

[The2ndWheel]

9. Those in power want to remain in power

They're not going to say stop what put them in power. Economic growth has been the engine of acquiring power for the last few thousand years. America, or any other modern country, wouldn't exist without economic growth. Not only is economic growth a way, it's the only way.

[losthills]

10. Another problem

is that to get our civilization on a sustainable footing we need to rein in human population growth. I don't see that happening, because those in power see lower population levels as a threat to continued economic expansion. And all world leaders feel weaker militarily if their population declines and all religious leaders seem to favor population growth. Nothing that you gain in terms of energy conservation or resource management means anything as long as world population keeps expanding year after year.

[The2ndWheel]

11. Yeah, without population growth, everything stops

The state, the corporation, the church(or whatever place of worship you want to choose), all need more people all the time. Any form or organization requires more people. That's why getting our civilization on a sustainable footing will be difficult. Civilization is the form of organization of all forms of organization.

When I think of population growth, I don't see it so much about adding actual people to our total these days. I mean, we will, because we'll keep going up before we go down, but I think it's more about integrating the few billion people who aren't a part of the global socio-economic system. If we stopped today at 6.5 billion people, but did all we could so that each one of us would have everything we needed, wanted, and desired(and who has the right to say someone doesn't have that right?), we'd make the whole situation worse. I know that I can't really stand myself saying that since who am I to be saying someone who needs X will make things worse if they get it when I might use X on a daily basis, but that's why it's such a difficult situation. I do what I can, but I'm only an imperfect human.

Even if we are able to get off of oil, and a complex system of renewables is able to satisfy our current, and future, energy demands, what then? Just because an energy source is renewable doesn't mean we won't have an impact on the environment. We, unfortunately, live in physical reality. Every action has that equal and opposite reaction. If we use more energy, we have to increase our impact. I don't see any way out of that. I'm no expert, and I could be as wrong as anyone, but the more we've used more energy over the last few thousand years, the more we alter everything around us. Every species does that, existence requires it. However, when we do it, we don't like dealing with the consequences, so we take more energy for ourselves(we're like corporations, where we privatize the benefits, and externalize the costs onto the rest of the planet), increasing the scale of the cycle. So here we are today, in a position where we're able to fuck things up on a global scale.

It's a hell of a situation we've put ourselves in. We can't stop what we're doing, but we can't continue what we're doing. To stop would mean dealing with the consequences of our collective actions over thousands of years. To continue would mean at some point dealing with the consequences of our collective actions over thousand of years, with the possibility that we might not be able to deal with the consequences of our collective actions over thousands of years. Obviously we've been able to deal with the consequencess of our collective actions over thousand of years, or we wouldn't be where we are today. However, to deal with our collective actions over thousands of years, we've had to increase the impact of our collective actions over thousands of years. That's why, as a civilization, we won't stop what we're doing, because we've been able to push every consequence off into the future. Every civilization that couldn't push the problems off into the future died out. Today we have a global civilization(not completely, but close enough for now). The only place left to go if we can't deal with the consequences of our actions is to another planet. If we can't do that, this civilization will die out. If we can get to another planet, we'll just continue the cycle there.