When I think of “green,” I think of environment. Don’t you? Maybe I connect the two because one research project I led for the Commonwealth I entitled Green Technologies in Pennsylvania. But “living green,” as so many advocate we do, isn’t one of my fortes (if I can be said to have any strengths). I use plastic for groceries and garbage, for example. And paint. My town is not required to recycle, so, sorry for this, I don’t. And other stuff I acquire becomes more stuff to throw into landfills when I’m done using it. So, yes, although I researched “green” for the state, I probably haven’t really lived “green.” In that, I’m like every other environmental hypocrite. What I profess is buried in a mess.
Maybe for most of us, “living green” is, in fact, hard or almost impossible. But we keep bringing up the topic, typically in a fashion that casts guilt freely about. It’s as though we accuse one another: “Well, don’t you care about the environment?” I’ll ask you, “Well, don’t YOU care about the environment?”
“Green Buying: The Influence of Environmental Concern on Consumer Behavior,” a research paper by Tina Mainieri and others, focuses on predictor variables that influence people to “buy green.”* Here we go with yet another study that killed another tree. This was Maionieri et al.’s methodology: “A written questionnaire, mailed to randomly selected residents of 8 middle-class communities in the Los Angeles area, was answered by 201 respondents.” Okay, let’s consider. Middle-class communities. Los Angeles area. California has both given lip service to and made laws for environmental stewardship. Californians teach environmental stewardship in their schools. Middle-class communities probably recycle, and their kids complete lessons on “living green.”
Certainly, the intentions appear to be noble. The problem, of course, lies in the action, reticent action, or inaction of the state’s citizens. Californians will not easily relinquish their affluent lifestyle even when they pay lip service to environmental stewardship. Think California will have empty ten-lane highways because Californians take mass transit, walk, bicycle, or work from home? Truly living green is not going to happen for a very long time—maybe never. But we keep getting the same message from those who control cultural messaging. “If you ain’t livin’ green, you don’t care about the environment.”
Every effort to corral the non-green lifestyles and consumerism of an affluent culture is probably destined for some failure. Even with repeated shaming, people of means will continue to live non-green lives. And there’s been no better example of living non-green while paying lip service to living green than the $20 million Google Camp in Sicily where “celebrities” flew in on more than 100 private jets, sailed in on yachts collectively worth more than a half billion dollars, and arrived in luxury cars with 500 HP engines to stay in five-star hotels.**
But let’s consider the study done by Mainieri and gang. What are the predictor variables that influence us to buy green? Wait! This study was a survey. And that means self-reporting. No one went to the homes of the 201 respondents (regardless of the supposed randomness of the sample, it was a small sample in a state with more than 30 million people). Here’s what I would suggest to Mainieri. Watch what they watch on TV; read what they read. Go through 201 garbage cans. Look in 201 medicine cabinets and garages. Peek into the closets and under beds. Check the subscriptions to magazines and newspapers that will fill landfills. Weigh the catalogs they receive. Examine the electric bills and the electronic equipment of any kind. Don’t forget those light bulbs, dehumidifiers, and humidifiers. Check the duration that any electrical device remains on or on “standby.” Look at the price lists for “green” foodstuffs in local grocery stores as predictable variables, and see how many of the 201 eat organic arugula.
We’re in a real bind with respect to green living. We know we’re not going back to cave dwelling, not going to stop eating fish, and not going to stop going to beauty salons and spas. We’re going to stay warm in winter and cool in summer, so conditioning our indoor air will be with us for as long as we can afford it.
Have you calculated your carbon footprint?*** If you have and if you found yours to be above average, have you altered your lifestyle? What of your landfill footprint? Would you measure such a footprint by weight, volume, or resistance to decay? And how can you calculate your pollutant footprint? Have you ever used fertilizers or insecticides? This kind of footprint is a puzzler because of its complexity. Should you consider that the vitamins you take enter the environment through your sewage or septic system? Ever throw away a used AA battery? Ever choose not to car pool? Hey, and what about those old lawnmowers, car tires, and toys? Consider yourself frugal and practical? Have any rooms you use just for storage? Got stuff stuffed under the bed, in the cellar, or in the attic? One more: Do you wrap birthday, anniversary, Christmas, and wedding presents in colorful paper?
We might be past the point of no return. Even if Californians learn to buy green and live green, they are only one tenth the American population, and the American population is just a small fraction of the world population. Consider that all those other countries’ populations are striving to live non-green lives of affluence like Americans. Do you think China and India will actually stop using coal?
And then there’s NBC’s “Climate Confessions.” The network asks, “Tell us: Where do you fall short in preventing climate change?”**** Even where there’s no religion, there’s always religion of sorts. But don’t feel guilty or worried. NBC can’t impose penance for your environmental sins.
Humans have always lived with excess when they had an opportunity to do so. What is the chief variable that makes people “live green”? Probably poverty. That’s a relative term, of course. So-called green products that you’ve been told to consume are often too pricey for the lower middle class and the poor. Absence of wealth is definitely a predictable variable.
We are a strange species, but in some ways we’re not too different from squirrels. “Squirrels?” you ask with indignation, “Squirrels?” At the end of every summer I can observe a couple of squirrels collect and bury walnuts from a hundred-foot high black walnut tree in my yard. They accumulate as many as they can, and scamper to bury them almost everywhere. One might think they are just prudent, storing for the harsh winter, but, no, squirrels don’t remember where they buried every walnut as a study involving grey squirrels and hazelnuts by Princeton University researchers suggests. They sometimes dig up the nuts, sample them, and rebury them. Those they forget about become trees. What’s that growing in your extra refrigerator? What’s that stuff in the back of your garage? And do you really need all that stuff under your kitchen sink? “I dig it up occasionally,” you say.
We have members of our species with inordinate wealth living non-green lives or pseudo-green lives in mansions, driving electric cars that have batteries that will probably end up in landfills and that are mostly recharged by fossil fuel electric power plants, and going to conferences in distant lands with five-star hotels, where they proclaim their passion for Mother Earth from the decks of yachts and brightly lighted stages, after which they feast on caviar, fish, and organic arugula.
When I think of my own level of hypocrisy, I look in the mirror and say, “You’re not so bad. You’re kind of average bad. You just had to exploit Mother Earth a little, much less than the one-percenters did for a single conference they could have held over SKYPE or some other online meeting venue. You really do care about the environment, don’t you, Donald? After all, you did write reports on environmental matters for the state and federal governments. That has to count for something.”
And so, I’ll assuage myself, as, I’m sure, those wealthy celebrities assuaged themselves at a conference estimated to have spewed a minimum of 800 long tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Variable influences that make me want to buy green and live green? We could get a cheerleading squad to keep shouting, “Go Green; Go Green.” If I hear it enough, I’ll be influenced to radically change my ways from marginally green to largely green. But then, if I win the lottery, I might be influenced by that variable to acquire something I don’t actually need, to travel in a style I could not previously afford, and to attend a conference of “concerned” greenies to present my previous research on green technologies.*****
* Tina Mainieri, Elaine G. Barnett, Trisha R. Valdero, John B. Unipan & Stuart Oskamp (1997) Green Buying: The Influence of Environmental Concern on Consumer Behavior, The Journal of Social Psychology, 137:2, 189-204, DOI: 10.1080/00224549709595430 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224549709595430 Accessed September 18, 2019.
**Stickings, Tim and Dianne Apen-Sadler. The $20 million climate change party: How Camp Google wracked up an 800-tonne carbon footprint flying ‘hypocritical’ celebrities to environmental talking shop on 114 private jets to watch Coldplay and hang out on mega-yachts. DailyMail.com, 1 August 2019 updated 5 August 2019. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7311015/Google-splashes-20million-Italian-climate-change-party.html Accessed September 18, 2019
***Carbon footprint calculator. The Nature Conservancy, online at https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/consider-your-impact/carbon-calculator/ Accessed September 18, 2019.
****Hasson,k Peter. NBC News Asks Americans To Confess Their Climate Change Sins.” Daily Caller. 18 September 2019. Online at https://dailycaller.com/2019/09/18/nbc-news-climate-confessions/ Accessed September 18, 2019.
*****According to one report, Naomi Campbell gave a “heartfelt speech” about Nelson Mandela. Say what? I wish I could have heard that speech. I didn’t know anything about Mandela’s “greenness.” https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/festival-of-wealth-inside-googles-mysterious-camp-for-the-elite/news-story/e1762dfc4a6a11009c09a21a9fa81a0a Accessed September 19, 2019. “Local media reported the A-listers “invaded” the island, clogging local roads with Maseratis, Ferraris and Porches, with celebrities photographed tooling around the island in gas-guzzling, high-end SUVs.”—with The Sun, New York Post.
Maybe for most of us, “living green” is, in fact, hard or almost impossible. But we keep bringing up the topic, typically in a fashion that casts guilt freely about. It’s as though we accuse one another: “Well, don’t you care about the environment?” I’ll ask you, “Well, don’t YOU care about the environment?”
“Green Buying: The Influence of Environmental Concern on Consumer Behavior,” a research paper by Tina Mainieri and others, focuses on predictor variables that influence people to “buy green.”* Here we go with yet another study that killed another tree. This was Maionieri et al.’s methodology: “A written questionnaire, mailed to randomly selected residents of 8 middle-class communities in the Los Angeles area, was answered by 201 respondents.” Okay, let’s consider. Middle-class communities. Los Angeles area. California has both given lip service to and made laws for environmental stewardship. Californians teach environmental stewardship in their schools. Middle-class communities probably recycle, and their kids complete lessons on “living green.”
Certainly, the intentions appear to be noble. The problem, of course, lies in the action, reticent action, or inaction of the state’s citizens. Californians will not easily relinquish their affluent lifestyle even when they pay lip service to environmental stewardship. Think California will have empty ten-lane highways because Californians take mass transit, walk, bicycle, or work from home? Truly living green is not going to happen for a very long time—maybe never. But we keep getting the same message from those who control cultural messaging. “If you ain’t livin’ green, you don’t care about the environment.”
Every effort to corral the non-green lifestyles and consumerism of an affluent culture is probably destined for some failure. Even with repeated shaming, people of means will continue to live non-green lives. And there’s been no better example of living non-green while paying lip service to living green than the $20 million Google Camp in Sicily where “celebrities” flew in on more than 100 private jets, sailed in on yachts collectively worth more than a half billion dollars, and arrived in luxury cars with 500 HP engines to stay in five-star hotels.**
But let’s consider the study done by Mainieri and gang. What are the predictor variables that influence us to buy green? Wait! This study was a survey. And that means self-reporting. No one went to the homes of the 201 respondents (regardless of the supposed randomness of the sample, it was a small sample in a state with more than 30 million people). Here’s what I would suggest to Mainieri. Watch what they watch on TV; read what they read. Go through 201 garbage cans. Look in 201 medicine cabinets and garages. Peek into the closets and under beds. Check the subscriptions to magazines and newspapers that will fill landfills. Weigh the catalogs they receive. Examine the electric bills and the electronic equipment of any kind. Don’t forget those light bulbs, dehumidifiers, and humidifiers. Check the duration that any electrical device remains on or on “standby.” Look at the price lists for “green” foodstuffs in local grocery stores as predictable variables, and see how many of the 201 eat organic arugula.
We’re in a real bind with respect to green living. We know we’re not going back to cave dwelling, not going to stop eating fish, and not going to stop going to beauty salons and spas. We’re going to stay warm in winter and cool in summer, so conditioning our indoor air will be with us for as long as we can afford it.
Have you calculated your carbon footprint?*** If you have and if you found yours to be above average, have you altered your lifestyle? What of your landfill footprint? Would you measure such a footprint by weight, volume, or resistance to decay? And how can you calculate your pollutant footprint? Have you ever used fertilizers or insecticides? This kind of footprint is a puzzler because of its complexity. Should you consider that the vitamins you take enter the environment through your sewage or septic system? Ever throw away a used AA battery? Ever choose not to car pool? Hey, and what about those old lawnmowers, car tires, and toys? Consider yourself frugal and practical? Have any rooms you use just for storage? Got stuff stuffed under the bed, in the cellar, or in the attic? One more: Do you wrap birthday, anniversary, Christmas, and wedding presents in colorful paper?
We might be past the point of no return. Even if Californians learn to buy green and live green, they are only one tenth the American population, and the American population is just a small fraction of the world population. Consider that all those other countries’ populations are striving to live non-green lives of affluence like Americans. Do you think China and India will actually stop using coal?
And then there’s NBC’s “Climate Confessions.” The network asks, “Tell us: Where do you fall short in preventing climate change?”**** Even where there’s no religion, there’s always religion of sorts. But don’t feel guilty or worried. NBC can’t impose penance for your environmental sins.
Humans have always lived with excess when they had an opportunity to do so. What is the chief variable that makes people “live green”? Probably poverty. That’s a relative term, of course. So-called green products that you’ve been told to consume are often too pricey for the lower middle class and the poor. Absence of wealth is definitely a predictable variable.
We are a strange species, but in some ways we’re not too different from squirrels. “Squirrels?” you ask with indignation, “Squirrels?” At the end of every summer I can observe a couple of squirrels collect and bury walnuts from a hundred-foot high black walnut tree in my yard. They accumulate as many as they can, and scamper to bury them almost everywhere. One might think they are just prudent, storing for the harsh winter, but, no, squirrels don’t remember where they buried every walnut as a study involving grey squirrels and hazelnuts by Princeton University researchers suggests. They sometimes dig up the nuts, sample them, and rebury them. Those they forget about become trees. What’s that growing in your extra refrigerator? What’s that stuff in the back of your garage? And do you really need all that stuff under your kitchen sink? “I dig it up occasionally,” you say.
We have members of our species with inordinate wealth living non-green lives or pseudo-green lives in mansions, driving electric cars that have batteries that will probably end up in landfills and that are mostly recharged by fossil fuel electric power plants, and going to conferences in distant lands with five-star hotels, where they proclaim their passion for Mother Earth from the decks of yachts and brightly lighted stages, after which they feast on caviar, fish, and organic arugula.
When I think of my own level of hypocrisy, I look in the mirror and say, “You’re not so bad. You’re kind of average bad. You just had to exploit Mother Earth a little, much less than the one-percenters did for a single conference they could have held over SKYPE or some other online meeting venue. You really do care about the environment, don’t you, Donald? After all, you did write reports on environmental matters for the state and federal governments. That has to count for something.”
And so, I’ll assuage myself, as, I’m sure, those wealthy celebrities assuaged themselves at a conference estimated to have spewed a minimum of 800 long tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Variable influences that make me want to buy green and live green? We could get a cheerleading squad to keep shouting, “Go Green; Go Green.” If I hear it enough, I’ll be influenced to radically change my ways from marginally green to largely green. But then, if I win the lottery, I might be influenced by that variable to acquire something I don’t actually need, to travel in a style I could not previously afford, and to attend a conference of “concerned” greenies to present my previous research on green technologies.*****
* Tina Mainieri, Elaine G. Barnett, Trisha R. Valdero, John B. Unipan & Stuart Oskamp (1997) Green Buying: The Influence of Environmental Concern on Consumer Behavior, The Journal of Social Psychology, 137:2, 189-204, DOI: 10.1080/00224549709595430 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224549709595430 Accessed September 18, 2019.
**Stickings, Tim and Dianne Apen-Sadler. The $20 million climate change party: How Camp Google wracked up an 800-tonne carbon footprint flying ‘hypocritical’ celebrities to environmental talking shop on 114 private jets to watch Coldplay and hang out on mega-yachts. DailyMail.com, 1 August 2019 updated 5 August 2019. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7311015/Google-splashes-20million-Italian-climate-change-party.html Accessed September 18, 2019
***Carbon footprint calculator. The Nature Conservancy, online at https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/consider-your-impact/carbon-calculator/ Accessed September 18, 2019.
****Hasson,k Peter. NBC News Asks Americans To Confess Their Climate Change Sins.” Daily Caller. 18 September 2019. Online at https://dailycaller.com/2019/09/18/nbc-news-climate-confessions/ Accessed September 18, 2019.
*****According to one report, Naomi Campbell gave a “heartfelt speech” about Nelson Mandela. Say what? I wish I could have heard that speech. I didn’t know anything about Mandela’s “greenness.” https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/festival-of-wealth-inside-googles-mysterious-camp-for-the-elite/news-story/e1762dfc4a6a11009c09a21a9fa81a0a Accessed September 19, 2019. “Local media reported the A-listers “invaded” the island, clogging local roads with Maseratis, Ferraris and Porches, with celebrities photographed tooling around the island in gas-guzzling, high-end SUVs.”—with The Sun, New York Post.
RSS Feed