In an encounter with someone he identified only as a “California Green,” the writer Murray Bookchin asked the blunt question: “What do you think is the cause of the present ecological crisis?” The Green’s answer was emphatic: “Human beings. People are responsible for the ecological crisis. They overpopulate the earth, they pollute the planet, they devour its resources, they are greedy. That’s why corporations exist — to give people the things they want.”
This emotional statement encapsulates one of the most common beliefs about the environmental crisis: that we are all, generally and equally, responsible for the deterioration of the earth. As a promotional brochure for Earth Day put it, “Our species got itself into this mess, and we must get ourselves out of it.”
Environmental consciousness has increased in recent years, and many of us understand our responsibility as consumers to choose environmentally benign products and to think about packaging, disposable products, and recycling. As Time magazine told us in its “Planet of the Year” issue, “No attempt to protect the environment will be successful in the long run unless ordinary people — the California housewife, the Mexican peasant, the Soviet factory worker, the Chinese farmer — are willing to adjust their lifestyles.”
For Americans, the idea that we are all responsible for the environmental crisis has a certain common-sense ring to it. It appeals to our sense of individual responsibility. Our acceptance of this notion has led to the rash of environmental self-help books that promise to guide solitary consumers toward ecologically responsible lifestyles. Earthworks has published a Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth “tip-a-day” calendar that offers valuable lessons in green living, and adds only a single, small square of paper to the recycling bin each day.
From another corner of magazine journalism, New Age Journal has joined Time in focusing on the responsibility of ordinary citizens. Its “Definitive Guide to New Age Living” declared that “this revolution must take place within each of us, and through the small actions we take in our everyday lives . . . global change can be a matter of individuals simply changing their minds.” This new-age belief in the power of the individual was exemplified in the 1980s by the popularity of The Hundredth Monkey, by Ken Keyes, Jr. According to the story:
There were these Japanese scientists in the fifties who left potatoes out every day for these wild monkeys on Koshima Island and then watched what they did. One of these monkeys learned to wash the potatoes and began teaching this to the others. Then, when a certain number had learned, maybe a hundred — scientists call this a “critical mass” — an amazing thing happened. Suddenly, all the monkeys knew how to wash potatoes, even monkeys on other islands hundreds of miles away! Scientists consider this to be conclusive proof of a telepathic “group mind.”
The implied message of this story is that each of us may be the “hundredth monkey” — that person whose adoption of an environmentally correct lifestyle sets humanity on a new course.
In fact, the hundredth-monkey phenomenon has been debunked by a number of researchers. The increase in the number of potato-washing monkeys on Koshima was exactly equal to the increase in population, and is thus readily attributable to normal learning behavior without the involvement of any mysterious or miraculous forces. Moreover, potatoes, which are not native to the Japanese islands, were introduced on a number of islands simultaneously. Potato washing on the other islands can be attributed merely to the cleverness of the monkeys, not to paranormal communication. If anything, then, the popularity of the hundredth-monkey story proves not the power of group mind but the power of wishful thinking. It’s also an indication of the extreme passivity and disempowerment of people in contemporary society who, unaccustomed to effective, organized action, instead turn hopefully to the putative power of good thoughts.
The Hundredth Monkey sold more than a million copies to people wanting to stop the nuclear-arms race. Of course, nuclear weapons continue to roll off the production lines. With arms as with the environment, it is not enough for a million people to have the right idea; they must also know how to express the idea through action.
The principle of individual responsibility for environmental problems has even been asserted by the environmental organization Greenpeace. After the Exxon Valdez accident, Greenpeace ran ads with a large picture of Joseph Hazelwood, captain of the Valdez, and the following statement: “It wasn’t his driving that caused the Alaskan oil spill. It was yours. . . . Because the truth is, the spill was caused by a nation drunk on oil.” And yet it was Exxon that chose to use single-hulled ships, that failed to manage the drinking habits of its captain, that has worked and lobbied persistently to maintain America’s desire for a large supply of petroleum, and that pressed for the opening of the Alaskan oil fields against the protests of environmentalists.
This ad, remember, came from Greenpeace, renowned for disrupting French nuclear tests and Japanese whaling fleets. Greenpeace’s record of radical action, personal risk taking, international success, and inspirational leadership is outstanding over the last quarter century. The ad’s focus on generalized blame is so foreign to this group’s usual approach that one can only conclude that Greenpeace, too, was momentarily caught up in the popularity of consumer-oriented environmentalism.
Citizens engaged in grassroots environmental battles must also fight the onus of consumer choice. For example, members of a Green organization in Charlotte, North Carolina, responded to a proposed nearby landfill for low-level radioactive waste by discussing to what extent their use of electricity made them responsible for the waste. They failed to consider the fact that none of them had chosen nuclear power as their preferred power source. They also apparently forgot that environmentalists had actively and consistently opposed nuclear power, citing precisely the problem of radioactive-waste disposal as one reason for their opposition.
The problem with the idea that we all share the blame is that consumers do not make choices about production. This was brought home to me on a trip to the supermarket in search of peanut butter. I discovered that the favorite brand of my childhood, Peter Pan, was now available only in plastic containers. As a responsible “green consumer,” I am aware that the production of plastic creates extremely hazardous chemical wastes, and so prefer reusable, recyclable glass jars.
Bookchin’s California Green told him that corporations exist “to give people the things they want.” But is this really the case? Have people indicated that they prefer plastic to glass for storing peanut butter? I can’t remember a time when the Peter Pan product stood side by side in glass and plastic containers, identically sized, priced, and labeled, allowing consumers to indicate their preference on the basis of container alone. Such decisions are made not by consumers, but by manufacturers seeking to cut production costs. In many cases, manufacturers use new packaging as the basis for a marketing campaign, perhaps touting the advantage of unbreakable jars. Certainly, there has never been an ad from any industry explaining that although new packaging may be less expensive and more convenient, it is more damaging to the environment and thus more costly to society. Only such complete disclosure would offer consumers a fully informed choice.
The inadequacy of the theory about the power of consumer choice in these matters is obvious to anyone visiting a conventional supermarket. Is milk available there in glass as well as plastic containers? Are natural, fully biodegradable cleaning products available? Is meat from free-ranging, hormone- and antibiotic-free animals available? How about organically grown produce?
In effect, our sense of individual responsibility is enlisted by those making production decisions to craft a myth of universal responsibility. For if everyone contributes equally to the problem, then we can’t hold any specific institutions or people accountable for decisions that hurt the earth. But in reality, when it comes to pollution or the production of toxic chemicals, the problems stem from production decisions that take into account only cost, not environmental impact. The major global environmental problems have their origin in choices made by specific managers in positions of corporate power, whose guiding principles are cost reduction and profit maximization.
This failure to distinguish between individuals and institutions also leads concerned citizens to ignore government involvement in environmental destruction. A recent Earth Day prospectus read as if the government had done no more damage to the environment than the typical consumer. But the government is responsible for numerous critical environmental problems. The extent of the federal government’s pollution record was confirmed in a study by Newsday that found “a huge catalog of leaching landfills, leaking underground tanks, radioactive waste piles, and lab disposal pits at U.S. facilities. It is a record of widespread environmental neglect . . . revealing a government that has broken the same pollution laws it enforces on others.”
There’s a dangerous flip side to the consumer-choice/we’re-all-responsible fallacy. It’s the notion that no one is responsible — that anonymous, perhaps inevitable, forces lead to environmental ills. Time, again in its “Planet of the Year” issue, tells us that “starting at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, smokestacks have disgorged noxious gases into the atmosphere, factories have dumped toxic wastes into rivers and streams, automobiles have guzzled irreplaceable fossil fuels and fouled the air . . . forests have been denuded, lakes poisoned with pesticides, underground aquifers pumped dry.” Note that there are no actors or decision makers in this description: there are not even any people.
Yet each of these destructive situations was caused by industries whose managers made decisions about what to produce and how to produce it.
If the environmental crisis has more to do with decisions made in the corporate boardroom, the manufacturing plant, and Congress than it does with those made in the supermarket, then how can people’s choices make a difference? What can we do as active citizens — organizing and working together — rather than as passive consumers?
In the late 1980s, a tuna boycott brought to public awareness the fact that dolphins were being ensnared and killed in the nets of tuna fishers. In 1990, the major tuna packers announced that they would use only tuna caught with methods that do not endanger dolphins — a great victory for environmentally conscious consumers.
A short time later, the publishers of Shopping for a Better World ran an ad that proclaimed, “You changed the fate of the wild dolphin population. You made visionary product choices. You made a difference.” It then solicited the reader to “make a difference in so many other ways” by using Shopping for a Better World, “a quick and easy guide to socially responsible supermarket shopping.”
But despite appealing claims to the contrary, changing the way modern consumer goods are produced and distributed is neither quick nor easy. Although Shopping for a Better World is a valuable reference tool for individual purchasing decisions, the tuna policy was changed only because of a widespread, well-organized, clearly targeted boycott. Too often, manufacturers confronted with changing shopping habits respond with new marketing campaigns, improved packaging, or, in the case of environmental concerns, a green façade.
It usually takes a well-targeted campaign like a boycott, aimed at corporate decision makers or government regulators, to achieve substantial change. One advantage of a boycott over a passive shopping program is that it provides a clear rationale and motivation for participation. Moreover, boycott organizers know how to determine when and if they have achieved a victory, and can develop ways to inform the target company of their success. For example, the Citizens’ Clearinghouse on Hazardous Waste (CCHW) asked those participating in its boycott against McDonald’s to mail the infamous styrofoam “clamshell” burger containers to the company’s headquarters. Soon afterward, McDonald’s announced the elimination of its styrofoam packaging, and CCHW had won an important battle in the war against hazardous waste.
Unfortunately, boycotts and similar efforts are difficult to organize and sustain, particularly on a national level. Dozens of boycotts remain unknown to most Americans. People have trouble keeping up with whether long-term boycotts like those against California grapes and wines, Nestle, or Coors are on or off at any given time. Another problem with boycotts is that they come into play only after the damage has been done.
Ultimately, smart shopping and even widespread boycotts will not be enough to achieve environmentally responsible corporate behavior. Citizens must seek greater power to directly influence corporate and governmental decision making. Only an expansion of democratic participation will give us the ability to achieve social and environmental well-being. Participation in local and regional politics is particularly effective, because people can best understand and respond to ecological conditions at the grassroots level.
Since we must shop, it is undeniably an improvement to be “shopping for a better world.” It will make a difference, as will participating in organized consumer activities like the tuna boycott. However, the environmental crisis will only be resolved by action that directly addresses production, as well as consumption, in a context that acknowledges and confronts questions of power.
This is an excerpt from Dan Coleman’s Ecopolitics, a new book that challenges prevailing wisdom about the environmental crisis. We’re grateful to Rutgers University Press for permission to reprint. The book can be ordered by calling (800) 446-9323.
— Ed.
