Action: February 2009 Archives
This continues a discussion about my adventures in Eco-Flackdom.The green/ethical consumer movement is very promising. It shows just how many people want to make a difference with their purchasing power. However, as long as making a difference stays in the domains of consumer trends and personal ambition, well-meaning impulses can easily be co-opted by polluting industries or those with an anti-science agenda.
It's not that the green businesses or consumers shouldn't be doing their thing, it's that they need to constantly think critically about the information they get, and make sure that they remain citizens first and consumers second. The last 30+ years of environmental history have shown us that it's easy for those who make a career or hobby out of environmental advocacy to lose site of people with less access to educational opportunity or resources to make their communities clean and safe.
For me, the shift from Environmental Consumer to Citizen resulted from a combination of the TreeHugger breaching, crazy domestic spying/terrorism, and watching a Movie called Cache. I saw that if we failed to take care of each other by protecting one another's rights, our environmental concerns might prove meaningless.
Continue reading Confessions of a Former Eco-Flack: Part 2.
