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The image of the ideal green city is almost always one with peoplegrowing crops in their high rise apartments, riding publictransportation and/or walking and biking every where, having one orzero children, living in ugly and unfamiliar glass and metalstructures, eating completely vegan diets and generally not havingcars, big houses, nuclear families, elbow room and the lifestyle that amajority of Americans want. Although my uncle is a self describedprogressive, he says that he realizes that most people want atraditional middle class or upper middle class life and they feel thatpursuing radical solutions for clean energy and a sustainable globaleconomy involves a guarantees that they will never have a decent middleclass lifestyle and that they will be unfree and poor.
I and myuncle, whose job is to promote sustainability, alternative energy andsustainable living said that the goal of green technology should not beto force radical lifestyle changes but to reduce and eventuallyeliminate pollution as well to lower the cost of living. A successfulgreen revolution should be marketed as something that will make theposition of the middle class and upper middle class more secure andwill bring hundreds of millions of people into a middle class or betterstandard of living. The goal should be a world where improvingtechnology in solar power makes it so that people can have cheap,efficient and discrete solar collection devices that power their home,power their 300 hp electric car and puts so much power make into thegrid that fossil fuels caps and taxes will be redundant and that energywill be cheaper then it has ever been.
The image of world wheregreen technology triumphs must be one that shows that rather thanstifling economic growth, it advances it and it makes everything thatwe consume cheaper in terms of money (energy and durable would becheaper and there would be more money to pay for things whose prices donot fall) and in non pecuniary terms, that are also tangible such asmore stable weather, clear ocean water at urban beaches, an abundanceof species on public lands and a lack of guilt from eating animalproducts when meat, eggs and diary products can be grown without theneed to harvest them from sentient beings).
As anenvironmentalist, I have been thinking this for a while now and I feellike some are using the very real concerns over unsustainability andenvironmental degradation to attack the average person's tastes andpreferences (the notion among some that driving cars is anti social,that people who live in the suburbs are selfish (and usually racist),that eating meat is primitive and that having more then one child issimply wrong) for reasons beyond their environmental costs.
Thisdevelopment is troubling because it obscures the promise of cheap andlow and no carbon energy sources and instead of using this current waveof widespread environmental awareness to excoriate the evil of thequarter acre lot and the white picket fence, we should promote greentechnologies as the thing that will turn your white picket fence intothe thing that pays you electric bills and powers your car and createsa world where everyone can now have a white picket fence if they sochoose and whose who choose to have children will not be scorned asbeing people who recklessly overpopulate the Earth but rather childrenshould be seen as people whose futures will not just full of blue skiesand a clean blue earth but will live in a world where the future issomething that is viewed with giddy anticipation instead of apocalypticdread.
Cliff notes: Today's environmental movement is beingabused by those who dislike American style prosperity and as a resultthey make environmentalism look a like a force that is hostile toMiddle Class Westerners and hostile to the billions of people who wantto rise economically and live as well as middle class Americans. Thereality is that the refinement of, the creation of and the widespreaduse of new and better green technology will make existing affluencemore secure and will greatly expand the ranks of the affluent andif green technology being the way to greater and more widespreadprosperity became the dominant theme of environmentalism, there wouldbe be much more public support, more wide spread public engagement inthe process and green policies would be shaped by forces who are morerepresentative of ordinary citizens and the world would become a muchbetter place.
Before I start, I always appreciate your posts Rexanglorum, and while I rarely go into detail about econ/business on the board, it's typically because I don't want to get into juvenile arguments on here or because I don't have detailed knowledge on the topic at hand (most times, finance or quantitative econ). Also, don't take what I write personally, I'm just picking out some things I can hear my professors asking in class.
I did my Masters dissertation on consumer demand in the greening automobile industry, and if anyone would like me to email them a copy I'd be more than happy to, just PM me.
1. Going "green" is at the intersection of traditional capitalism, technology & manufacturing. A common misconception is that these cannot co-exist, and if this can be achieved (as is being seen in many products today), who's to say that people can't have a "traditional" middle class life that is more "green?"
2. It's already marketed as a tool to save $$$ and improve your lifestyle. I'm not sure where you're located, but London (where I did my Masters the past year) has made a huge push to be greener and much of it is towards individuals (ex. riding a bike to work instead of the Underground or the bus...or driving). Some automobiles have marketed towards improving peoples' lifestyles, in that they are saving $$$ on gas and helping the environment. As for solar energy, I'm not so sure you can blame proponents of green products: there still needs to be investment from publicly or privately help entities to truly work, and natural gas seems like a more likely alternative.
3. Some products do, such as the Toyota Prius. As for clearer ocean water and a lack of guilt from eating animal products, I think you're reaching. Going "green" does NOT necessarily mean being an environmentalist/vegan. People can become more environmentally-friendly in hundreds of ways and eat all the meat they wish.
4. Prejudices & stereotypes exist in every aspect of life, unfortunately. If you go "green" you're a hippie and if not, you're a redneck that drives a truck and wants to blowup the Middle East...NOW.
5. Some is being marketed correctly (Exxon Mobil, Toyota, Apple, BP, T. Boone Pickens) and some is not (Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth").
6. Some of your opening sentence is true: there are those that are making outrageous claims about the apocalypse, and many are ironically doing so with the hope you'll buy their book or read their journal pieces consistently. Some of the same people complaining about corporations making money off the environment are only bastardizing the system by doing it themselves. After your first sentence, I completely agree.
I look forward to hearing from some of you. Again, PM me if you'd like a copy of my dissertation everybody.
