OP-ED Appearances aren't enough

Author: Kevin Redmon

The mailman delivering to my Washington apartment is not known for his attention to detail. I end up with a lot of other people's magazines this way. Normally I crumple up the pages to stuff into the crumbling masonry of my poorly constructed and very drafty basement room. Yesterday's wayward arrival gave me pause, though.

Plenty magazine is a self-consciously stylish harbinger of the eco-revolution to come. Replete with features like Miss Eco Etiquette, Green Gear, Eco-Eats and The Dirt - "celebrity gossip from an eco perspective" - the publication feels like a middle school girl who wants very badly to fit in. With features on the movement's darling children Gore and DiCaprio, reviews of recycled Patagonia jackets, recipes for "green cocktails," and discussions of whether wrapping Christmas presents is morally (that is, environmentally) reprehensible, it is a magazine that misses the disease while diagnosing the symptoms.

The editors revel in the providential good fortune that refurbishing one's countertops with certified bamboo or shopping for responsibly-panned Sierra Leonean diamonds are now selfless acts demonstrating environmental concern. What luck, that we can save the planet by ensuring that our next pair of Ferragamos is sewn of sustainably culled, free-range leather. Fact: the "green-collar" jobs that environmentalists love to promote won't be filled by workers who spend a lot of time choosing between organic vodkas.

Plenty is a small part of a larger, problematic trend: the eco-movement is preoccupied with appearances rather than dialogue. Underlying this, there is a tremendous amount of energy being devoted to creating a "green identity." Environmentalism and all its discontents - climate change, deforestation, ad nauseum - are at peril of being reduced to a slogan and a brand image. It's simplistic and it's dangerous. Why? Because it replaces nuance with ideology, complexity with dichotomy - us vs. them, greens vs. everyone else. With regard to affecting real change, though: you can't get there from here.

It's time to abandon our misguided faith in continued consumption, as if consuming differently can preclude consuming less. The indomitable Ed Abbey cautioned against precisely what Plenty champions: "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." It is a Faustian bargain that consumer culture is striking with eco-entrepreneurs. Caveat emptor.