NY Times - The global economic collapse pushed the rise of green capitalism off business magazine covers, but it will surely resurface. After all, Wal-Mart and G.E. are still pushing it. In a recession, they need all the good publicity they can get.
Now, along comes Heather Rogers, who warns about the dangers of buying into this mind-set w
ith "Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution" (Scribner, 272 pages, $26). She says green capitalism is actually undermining ecological progress.Ms. Rogers is a muckraking investigative reporter who is also the author of "Gone Tomorrow: the Hidden Life of Garbage." She says corporate America has led us into thinking that we can save the earth mainly by buying things like compact fluorescent light bulbs, hybrid gas-electric cars and carbon offsets.
"The new green wave, typified by the phrase 'lazy environmentalism,' is geared toward the masses that aren't willing to sacrifice," Ms. Rogers complains. "This brand of armchair activism actualizes itself most fully in the realm of consumer goods; through buying the right products we can usher our economic system into the environmental age."
Ms. Rogers offers plenty of evidence that consumers who load up their shopping carts with organic food, for instance, may be unwittingly subsidizing big farm companies that are eradicating forests and defiling the soil in some developing countries. She says their governments aren't as concerned about the environment, and well-intentioned nongovernmental organizations don't have much clout.
"Green Gone Wrong,"...doesn't just go after easy targets like big corporations that she says are clearly more interested in making money than saving the earth.
She is also critical of fashionably green rock bands like Coldplay, whose members fly around the world and think they can erase their sizable carbon footprints by planting trees in developing countries. In Coldplay's case, many of the trees died.
Indeed, Ms. Rogers is so scornful of the mainstream environmental movement that a lot of her points could be used by its enemies, like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, who are always looking for ammunition.
... "Green Gone Wrong" is well-written and exhaustively reported. The author went to places like Uruguay, Borneo and India to show problems she says the green movement has inadvertently created.
But some of the most poignant moments come when Ms. Rogers visits organic farmers in upstate New York. She laments that they can't make a living because it is so expensive for them to comply with the federal certification requirements for organic foods. "What isn't being talked about is that many of the small organic producers who are expected to lead the reinvention of the food system can barely make ends meet," she says.
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