Is there a danger in equating environmentalism with the consumption of “green products”?
Yes, it gives people the impression that they’re being good environmentalists if they simply buy the right products, if they just make sure they buy the non-toxic stuff or the biodegradable stuff. Not only does it blind them to much bigger and more fundamental issues such as population, but it also promotes continued consumption at rates (population size x average per capita consumption) the earth can’t sustain. We’re seeing some corn based plastics, for instance, which are supposed to be biodegradable. There’s value in that. But as we’re seeing with ethanol, as we shift agriculture toward producing other products, be they fuel or plastics, we ultimately take away from food production. One way or the other, there are trade-offs and costs, and as long as we remain at numbers so vastly in excess of what the earth can support sustainably we’ll run into them. We can and should switch to hybrid and then electric cars but they still involve a physical throughput of material “stuff” (such as
