A Sustainable Train of Thought

I was reading Salon.com this evening, and I ran across two articles which revealed a strange juxtaposition of values. In the article about Wal-Mart entitled Who is guilty of killing downtown?, money seems to be the underlying motivation:

The obvious question is, do the costs outweigh the benefits? And there are plenty of good reasons to argue that they do; that the total cumulative impact of Wal-Mart on the fabric of society is negative. But the unfortunate reality is that few minds are going to be changed by one-sided reports that do not even begin to acknowledge the very real reasons that people have for shopping at Wal-Mart—or the responsibility that those shoppers bear for what kind of changes are wrought in their local communities.

In the Salon.com article Why do people buy Priuses?, the argument is that people want to communicate an image of green citizenship to others.

Catching up on old news from GreenBiz, I found the following quote in one of the GreenerBuildings articles which brought to mind again the idea of pressure points for change:

Whatever the motivation, the lesson learned is simple but elegant: get to the right person inside the retailer’s world and the right things begin to happen. The big question of course is how you find this virtuous insider? Sometimes it’s sheer luck. Sometimes, in the course of doing research on a potential tenant, you discover that they’ve done projects elsewhere that don’t fit the retailer’s typical prototype – and you look for the particular team members responsible for these atypical projects. And in a few cases, the retailer is actually on record as promoting eco-friendly practices. Whatever the case, once you find alignment between your team and that of the tenant’s, instead of a vicious cycle of ongoing resistance to green, you find a virtuous cycle of collaboration.

And since I’ve been looking at supermarkets, I was also interested to see the following:

As a result of the September report by Ceres entitled Availability and Affordability of Insurance Under Climate Change: A Growing Challenge for the U.S., ClimateBiz reported in early December that “20 leading U.S. investors urged 30 of the largest publicly-held insurance companies in North America to disclose their financial exposure from climate change and steps they are taking to reduce those financial impacts.”

It’s interesting to see how everything is working out, because a lot of the pressure points within corporations and industry could be stimulated by the insurance industry. Top-down change in other words.

In addition to the risk of direct losses due to physical weather-related events, the letter asks insurers to look strategically at climate change and how it could affect the long-term value of the investments that enable them to pay claims and remain profitable.

Chevron’s public relations campaign Will You Join Us is an attempt similar to BP’s public relations campaign to engage the public on issues of oil consumption and climate change.

As I’ve mentioned before, public perception plays a critical part in the march towards more sustainable practices. However, companies like Chevron need to remember that talk only gets you so far: at some point they need to act, and in their actions we will be able to determine whether or not they truly mean what they say. As ClimateBiz points out:

But others say the friendly “letters from Dave” approach is a classic case of corporate greenwashing as Chevron attempts to shore up Big Oil’s threatened power base with calculated public relations language. Some environmentalists argue the effort and investment would have been better spent cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

My girlfriend uses ecover detergents because they’re ecologically friendly. Yet the basis for their claims of ecological friendliness lies in their ingredients, which, if I say so myself, is a little hard to understand:

plant based soap, plant based non-ionic tensio-active surfactants.

The other issue concerns greenwashing. If people don’t understand the language and what it means, how can they discern legitimate claims from illegitimate ones?

The solution would seem to consist of two parts. One is overall education of people, so that they are savvy enough to understand or comprehend the complex systems we interact with on a constant basis. The other part is making this information understandable. I’m not talking about dumbing-down the information, but perhaps contextualizing it so that people can understand its impact and importance.

For example, energy efficiency is something people can relate to because it ultimately connects to money. What does “plant based anionic tensio-active surfactants” mean to you? How can you relate something in your life to this information?

Language comes into play because it’s the language of science. And I can’t help but see a connection between understanding the meaning and importance of these ingredients and the science and math education statistics for the US, which usually places rather low in world education rankings. This is potentially a rather large problem: if people can’t understand the language used to describe the situation, then their ability to act effectively might be compromised. True, they can be told what to do, but I believe it’s better for people to understand why they’re doing something.

Looks like Tide laundry detergent is marketing a new product called Tide Coldwater which promotes saving money and energy by enabling you to wash clothes in cold water. (Yeah, a quick look in treehugger shows this product’s been around for at least a couple of months, but this is the first time I’ve seen the commercial on TV seeing as I’ve been in Europe the last several months.)

As the FAQ asks:

What spurred P&G to launch this product now?

Ran across the following quote in Gas Guzzlers Go Green on ForbesAutos.com:

Tax deductions notwithstanding, at current gas prices it could take a decade or more to recoup the premium you’ll pay for a hybrid SUV, depending on how much you drive. What helps to justify the cost is the notion that in owning a hybrid vehicle, you are reducing humanity’s dependence on a non-renewable resource, the mass consumption of which is damaging the environment and lowering our standard of living (through toxic pollution and global warming). my emphasis

While I appreciate the acknowledgment by Forbes of the need to reduce our dependance on non-renewable resources, I find somewhat ironic this notion of saving through, essentially, spending. It’s not unsurprising considering this quote comes from a car magazine (they can’t after all suggest that people NOT drive), but I’ve always been confounded by the logic that justifies a purchase because you’ve just “saved” 50%. In reality, of course, you’ve just spent 50%.