With any number of “green” lifestyle books hitting the shelves including my own The Virtuous Consumer: Your Essential Shopping Guide For a Better, Kinder, Healthier World (New World Library – pick it up at your favourite independent, online or big-box bookseller), old-time environmentalists have their backs up, accusing us of bastardizing the movement they’ve worked so hard to have ignored for so many years. (For more, visit http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/fashion/01green.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin). Perhaps they’re unaccustomed to the attention their movement is finally getting. Perhaps, after toiling away in obscurity for so many years, they suffer not a fear of failure, but a fear of success. Perhaps, after perfecting self-righteous indignation, they’re loathe to give it up.
In any case, I object to their contention that “green” consumerism is distracting people from more serious issues. Indeed, I think it’s leading people, albeit through the mall, exactly toward those more serious issues.
So why do I write a book that offers up info on sourcing a sustainably harvested spanking paddle? Bamboo socks? Lipstick in packaging that can be planted to sprout? Surely there are larger issues at stake?
Of course there are. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my volunteer work in oft-ignored areas, not to mention as mother of three high-energy, know-it-all children, no one listens if you behave like Chicken Little. Sure the sky is falling, but until a piece lands on your head, you’re likely to tune me out in favour of catching up on the latest jailhouse gossip about Paris Hilton. Not you, of course. You’re enlightened. But those other folk.
So, I agree with the environmentalists that Houston, we do indeed have a problem. However, I remain convinced that if I can start people off on the path by suggesting they start buying local produce instead of something flown from 3,000 miles away, they might start to really think about their purchases. And once you start to think about how you’re spending your money, you just might start to ask some harder questions. Such as where is my money going? Who’s making what I’m purchasing? What is it made of? How was it made? Where will it go when I’m done with it? And…do I need it?
And that, I propose, is how a environmentalist might be born in the shopping aisles of North America.