Forget shorter showers
[Originally published at the now defunct group blog explananda.com]
Oh thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou so much to the internets for this article on a variety of environmentalism that drives me absolutely bonkers.
Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption—changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much—and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. Scientific consensus is that emissions must be reduced by at least 75 percent worldwide.
Or let’s talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans. Collectively, municipal golf courses use as much water as municipal human beings. People (both human people and fish people) aren’t dying because the world is running out of water. They’re dying because the water is being stolen.
And so on with lots of illustrative examples. The author concludes with a reasonable meditation on the sorts of political changes we need to bring about.
I think this is exactly right. We’re facing enormous political problems with the environment now that require broad political solutions. Everyone in my neighbourhood can recycle and bike to work for the next ten years and all the good we’ve done can be undone in an instant by a single line in a farm bill. Environmental activism that focuses energy and effort away from that level may be well-meaning, but it can also be positively harmful. At this point we really need to think globally and act nationally.
Comments
Author: A White Bear
Date: 2009-08-01
I’ve been wanting to write something about this for a while, ever since Slate started that absurd column about making “green” choices. Is it better for the environment to make Chinese food at home or to order it at a restaurant? Pick up or delivery? Plastic or paper takeout containers? Someone actually sits around calculating the carbon footprint of all these choices. Should I buy beans dried or in cans? Is it greener to cut my own hair?
Seriously, if this is the dilemma keeping you up at night, you don’t have enough problems, and are also a moron.
Author: Chris
Date: 2009-08-02
I can see the dilemma keeping you up at night if you think the fate of the planet depends on it. What’s irritating is thinking that the fate of the planet depends on it, and not on large scale political changes—especially since large scale political changes come about mainly through lobbying and campaigning and donating (lots of) money to groups who lobby effectively at the national level. If it makes people happy, fine. I’m made happy by much stupider stuff. But it’s frustrating when it becomes a substitute for or a distraction from effective political action. Anyway.
Author: OneFatEnglishman
Date: 2009-08-02
In my more charitable moments, I convince myself that thinking about these marginal gestures is a way of generally reminding oneself that environmental issues are bloody important when push comes to shove. But in my less charitable moments I agree that they generally have the effect of trivialising the really important questions. So I dunno. On balance, I suppose I agree with you, but…
And yet, there are personal choices that I think it’s worth making. If you live in a city, not running a car. If you live in a suburb, running an efficient compact rather than a Hummer. That sort of thing. So, how far down the scale of triviality do you go before it shades into futile, time consuming gesture? Or should I buy a gas guzzler anyway?
Author: A White Bear
Date: 2009-08-02
I am sort of obsessed with this video right now, in which Zizek talks at length about revolutionary political action and its relationship to issues like ecology. There’s a part that seems relevant here, which is his tasteless joke at 21:00. The problem is not that small efforts can’t be helpful; the problem is confusing small victories for revolutionary action. What bothers me about the Slate column and discussions like it is that so much energy and effort goes into thinking about the minutest imaginable environmentalist gestures, as if purposefully to ignore the larger structures of corporate destruction of the environment through the medium of the illusion of consumer “choice.”
I do not get the sense that these discussions (is it more important to buy recycled toilet paper or unbleached toilet paper?) are held in the spirit of “This do in remembrance of me,” as a way of living fully within environmental awareness even in our smallest choices. It’s cheap, symbolic absolution for the politically sedentary bourgeoisie.
Yes, take your bike to work and buy recycled toilet paper, but don’t imagine you’re some kind of environmentalist martyr.
Author: A White Bear
Date: 2009-08-02
Sorry, the “joke” is at 21:55.
Author: Chris
Date: 2009-08-02
Saying “forget shorter showers” might be a bit dramatic for the point I want to make. Habitually taking long showers is sort of selfish, all things considered. It’s just that, as I’ve complained, taking shorter showers isn’t likely to do all that much good.
I buy organic food partly because I want to support in a very modest way a slightly more sustainable model of farming. I buy fair trade coffee because I don’t want to participate in an unfair and exploitive coffee trade. I try to stick to fair trade chocolate because kids are used (and abused) in the cultivation of chocolate all around the world. And so on (but not on and on—I don’t mean to suggest that I go all that far on these sorts of issues). But I think these choices are more about trying to avoid the icky feeling that you get from participating in bad things than it is about actually doing much to make the world a better place.
But yeah, there is something obscene in buying a gas-guzzler. I admit it.
AWB, yeah, preach it, sister.
Author: OneFatEnglishman
Date: 2009-08-03
It’s cheap, symbolic absolution for the politically sedentary bourgeoisie.
Please can I recycle this phrase, possibly forever?
What worries me is that too much emphasis on the insignificance of these little gestures can lead to a sort of nihilistic despair in which we all go, “We’re DOOOOMED!” and give up. Not that I’m doing anything useful much anyway, but at least I feel I should be.
Author: Chris
Date: 2009-08-03
Yeah, I hope that this point doesn’t lead to despair. I think it just needs to be made along with concrete suggestions about what we can do. Right now, I think, writing a lot of firm letters to politicians and giving judicious donations to effective organizations are concrete things that we can do. Mobilizing others to do the same is excellent. Volunteering with the same organizations is also useful. The point is to really focus the bulk of our energy on the political level (though, again, you suck if you drive a Hummer).
Part of my concern is that (most) people only go in for so much effort and expense in the service of any cause, however worthwhile. If they feel that they’ve made that effort in dragging themselves from a relaxing shower, perhaps they’ll be less likely to volunteer money or time where it’ll be effective. To a certain extent the concrete suggestions I’ve made are in competition with the concrete suggestions I’m less keen on, which is why I’m being sort of hard on well-meaning people.
I’m looking forward to taking my own advice on all this soon.
Author: A White Bear
Date: 2009-08-03
Reuse, recycle, OFE! The environment demands it!
Yeah, Chris, the “I dragged myself out of a lovely shower” environmentalist is, I think, less likely to care about environmental revolution, in part out of the sense of resentment and entitlement.
The despair that I often feel is that even if individual citizens are “doing their part” to turn off the A/C, drive less, shower shorter, and buy environmentally friendlier consumer goods, whatever benefit that adds up to will be eaten up by unregulated corporations.
I have strong feelings about the “problem” of true-believerism, in that the political effectiveness of impassioned, ethical struggle is always overmatched by the social pressure of public opinion. So unless it’s cool for the bourgeoisie to pay attention to the environment, they will never care about it for its own sake at all. Unless there’s something they can buy to salve the guilt of participating in a corrupt economy, they’re not interested. But consumerism can’t save us from consumerism.
In my more radical moments, this is basically what I resent about Obama. He talks up populism and true-believerish stuff in a way that makes “change” seem cool, but in making “change” cool, it ensures that no change can ever really happen. Cool is a consumerist drive. Cool is the satisfaction of property. Cool means not getting angry or making demands, but instead trying to market a new product, and no product can ever truly constitute change at a level that will make a difference.
My, what a pessimist I have become!
Author: DC
Date: 2009-08-03
Hmmm. I think there’s some confusion going on here between two distinct concepts:
that corporations/the “growth economy”, rather than feckless individual consumers are chiefly responsable for environmental degradation.
that political action rather than changes in individual consumers’ behaviour is necessary to protect the environment.
The nub of the argument (OK I haven’t read the article) seems to be here:
“Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry.”
But of course agriculture and industry use water in order to sell stuff to… individual consumers. Therefore 1) is a bit of a false dichotomy, and if we amend the naive environmentalist slogan from “take shorter showers” to “consume less water-intesive products (including showers)” then the environment would in fact be saved if everyone took this advice to a sufficent degree.
Obviously, this brings us to 2) - everyone is not going to take this kind of advice, either because they don’t have the required information (eg about the water-intensity of different products), or because they don’t care or because they think individual action is futile. In other words we have a collective action problem, which can only be solved through political action.
So I don’t think it’s wrong to think about the environment in terms of individual consumption choices. But the question shouldn’t be “what can I do in my consumption patterns to save the environment” but rather “what can we do so that individual behaviour changes enough to save the environment”? For the reasons mentioned above, the answer to that involves things like carbon taxes and cap and trade (which affect corporations and individuals alike) rather than mere exhortation.
Author: Chris
Date: 2009-08-03
AWB, you are pretty harsh! So sad that you’re right, especially the point that the gains from personal sacrifices are likely to be eaten up by free riders in the absence of deeper political changes.
That’s an interesting point you’re making about the false dichotomy, DC, but I’m not sure how far you can press it. If a corporation, e.g., succeeds in securing (through political donations and lobbying) the passage of legislation that allows it to dump harmful waste as part of its widget-making process, then I would say that it, “rather than feckless individual consumers [is] chiefly [my emphasis] responsible for environmental degradation.” And that’s so even if the public buys the widgets.
Author: OneFatEnglishman
Date: 2009-08-04
Just as a futile exercise, how could you create a fashion for living less extravagantly, which is the problem that underlies AWB’s pessimism? Not to say that any such effort would be a substitute for political action, but would it actually be possible?
Could we persuade people to eat less? God knows the cool kids spend enough time sweating in gyms, and there’s all this research coming through which suggests that animals which don’t eat much live far longer. I know most diets involve eating horrible food, but I swear they don’t have to. Could we sell the hipsters on body image and immortality?
Could we persuade people to live outside more, so they don’t heat their homes so much? In warmer climes they do of course, but the worst offenders in energy consumption are in the north, obviously. Would it be possible to encourage a new school of radical architects, who would re-imagine indoor public spaces so that we could agorazein fashionably while there’s snow on the ground?
Could we actually make it trendy to wash less? I doubt it, although I remember old people, pretty well off, who used to bathe once a week because that was what you did. No. You couldn’t even sell me that. But you could try making the use of electric dryers, as opposed to hanging stuff up to dry, something that isn’t done, like driving Hummers.
Vacation locally? Not sure how you’d work this through, but I feel there’s the germ of an idea…
Less is more! Strip it all to the bone! Stuff is too plebian!
It’s all bollocks, of course. Crippling corporate penalties for manufacturers who refuse to meet emission targets would be much more useful.
Author: Chris
Date: 2009-08-04
You can get people to do a whole lot of pretty crazy things in pursuit of fashion. But they’re just that—fashions. And the problem is that fashions come and go, only hit certain segments of the population, and so on.
Author: OneFatEnglishman
Date: 2009-08-05
Oh, I quite agree. I was just playing with AWB’s “He talks up populism and true-believerish stuff in a way that makes “change†seem cool, but in making “change†cool, it ensures that no change can ever really happen.” to see if there was any way of subverting it. I wouldn’t suggest investing any effort in such fantasies unless someone can show me that politicians/business types are significantly influenced by current fashion in how they act rather than what they talk about.
