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In Houston, Earth Day is always sponsored by oil companies like Shell or Exxon. For years John and I called it [destroy the] Earth Day. The festivities trash the parks with litter and the concerts stomp out all the grass along the bayou for months afterward. But that wasn't bad enough. Now that the movement hit its tipping point, the day has become a festival of consumerism. Next, watch for Global Warming the ride at your nearest theme park because that's what we do with trite cultural themes. Green is the new brand of desire. Buy everything you want and call it carbon neutral! People, rebel. Buy nothing, celebrate nothing. Breathe the air and try to exist on this planet for just one moment with that exchange alone. Like the good folks at World Changing pointed out, you can't shop your way to sustainability.
WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future: Make This Earth Day Your Last!: "...Earth Day, which every year has become less and less the revolutionary event it once was, seems this year to have entered a new phase of meaninglessness. Indeed, this year it appears to have gone into a form of retrograde motion and begun to move actively away from the concept of comprehensive sustainability that drives all rational environmentalism. In short, Earth Day has served its time, and it must go [...]"
Saturday, April 21, 2007
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2 comments:
But at the same time, something needs to be done. Awareness does turn most movements into a traveling carnival (the trash left on the abandoned field after the show leaves town) which is horrifying, but we can't rebel by being complacent.
What can we do to save our home from oil companies and consumerism?
It has to be more than breathing, right?
breathing is just the lowest common denominator for benign behavior in our country. It's the only way I could imagine people spending the day without consuming. If Earth Day were about living without plastics, gasoline, and other petroleum products maybe I'd feel differently. But watching the new green brand paraded in new products on Oprah and the View or attending concerts and fairs just doesn't pass the legitimacy test. There was a time when I thought reducing our footprints to sustainable levels would solve the problem. But the Holland paradox defies measurements for wealthy countries and their inhabitants. Progress and the light at the end of the tunnel, if it's there to be found, may exist instead in life cycle analysis for everything. Can you imagine reading the label on the side of a product to determine its LCA?
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