A more sustainable world starts with your own choices, right? Roxane van Iperen puts an end to that idea. Consumer activism is a side road that not only contributes little, but actually stands in the way of tackling climate change.
Good news: Roxane's essay has been nominated for the Mercur Report of the Year 2020!
"If we want to save our planet, we will have to eat less meat," argues Jonathan Safran Foer in his latest book The Climate We Are. Saving the world starts with breakfast. The American bestselling author is currently touring Europe with his primary message: If we don't want to be heading for ecological disaster, we all need to drastically cut back on our unsustainable, harmful eating habits.
In view of the share of deforestation and CO2 emissions, he focuses mainly on the consumption of animal products and advocates a vegan diet - at least for two meals a day. 'When you have the menu in front of you, you should have the same feeling as when you look at the burning Amazon,' he says about it in an interview with NRC Handelsblad . That bacon and egg toast suddenly has the aftertaste of scorched rainforest, and that's exactly the point.
What Safran Foer is calling out is not new; he is yet another famous follower of the rapidly growing society of consumer activists, or wallet fighters. The core of their message: the way you spend your money as an individual determines whether you want to harm or improve the health of our ecosystem. Every purchase thus becomes a moral or an immoral choice. A powerful new cult of shame has emerged from this consumer activism, which has all kinds of offshoots.
Flight shame, car shame, meat shame, heating shame or fast fashion shame: you can't come up with it that badly or someone, somewhere, finds with disdain that your buying behavior is destroying the world. The unconscious consumer leaves ecological footprints like an elephant, and it is important to make him or her an illuminated, also feather-light, consumer mouse as soon as possible.
This philosophy has become commonplace in recent years and has many adherents. Politicians, CEOs, young influencers and big celebrities boast of their ethical lifestyle in an increasingly desperate fight against climate change. A struggle, by the way, which I fully endorse. In fact, I join the so-called 'alarmists', as this group of scientists is sometimes scornfully called, as if they don't know how to curb their hysteria. It is the experts who warn that without major economic and political changes we are approaching a crucial tipping point where ecosystems will collapse and become incapable of regeneration.
That is precisely why my patience with types like Jonathan 'sustainability is a choice' Safran Foer op. Consumer activism is a side road that not only contributes (too) little, but even stands in the way of a fast, meaningful approach to climate change.
SIMPLISTIC WAR RHETORIC
The most common response to my position: why should you be an opposition to consumer activism? It does not benefit, it does not harm either. Moreover, it can be both: and propagate that people should adjust their purchasing behavior, and believe that governments and industry should take action? That sounds reasonable indeed. I have no objection to wallet fighters behind the front door - quite the contrary. Anyone who has the time and money to deal with such choices in their daily life should do so. Role models are important and can inspire others to make more sustainable choices.
It becomes different when this individual lifestyle is elevated to an activist public strategy, which is also presented as a serious (partial) solution to the climate issue.
Firstly, that is not the case, about which more later, and secondly, you make every individual who, consciously or unconsciously, makes the 'wrong' choices, the enemy. An immoral being, responsible for the world's ending.
That is exactly what consumer activists do. Like a platoon of green George Bush soldiers, they use simplistic war rhetoric, which automatically puts 'the other' in the wrong camp: You're with us or you're against us . A constant stream of doom talk is heard daily in interviews, articles or on the social media of popular boys and girls who smilingly advertise 'sustainable' products from the most polluting multinationals.
Now I am not fond of the tenderhearted that complains about 'the wrong tone', as activists are often accused. The point is that the war language is directed against the wrong.
Some of the slogans used: "Do you belong to the group that wants to save humanity from destruction, or do you have blood on your hands?" 'Anyone who now eats / flies / buys cheap clothing (fill in as desired, the list is endless) is guilty of the forest fires in Brazil / the emissions of the fossil industry / the water pollution from pesticide use in cotton cultivation.' 'Which army do you want to be in? The army that fights for good or for evil? ' "Are you for or against a livable world for your children?" "People who still shop at Primark now should be ashamed of themselves." "Anyone who stays on the sidelines is just as guilty as the polluters."
UTOPIA
Now I am not fond of the tenderhearted that complains about 'the wrong tone', as activists are often accused. As one ecologist put it: 'You have to stimulate, invite people to do the right thing, otherwise they will get lost in the sand.' That seems nonsense to me. This approach may be useful when you want to lure an adolescent with an imagined Weltschmerz to dinner, but the idea that you have to deal with an adult society in an unprecedented system crisis in this way is ridiculous.
History has shown that you really need ruthless tramps to bring about change. The point is that the war language is directed against the wrong. That is also the difference between consumer activists and the old-fashioned grassroots movements, with which they sometimes like to compare themselves.
Who fought for collective action from citizens for political or economic change. Characteristic of the grassroots movements was that they were inclusive and aimed their arrows at the power blocks above them. Consumer activism, on the other hand, lets those power blocks go free and encourages people to aim their arrows at each other, at the expense of the most vulnerable citizens. And that also on the basis of a flawed starting point.
It is the intention of consumer activists to hit the corporate world - but with a roundabout way. The idea is to convince as many people as possible to spend their money differently, based on the core idea that demand determines supply. "There is no more powerful means than extracting money from these destructive industries," Safran Foer articulates this much-shared view; ' Corporations sell what people buy.'
Precisely in that starting point is a crucial fallacy. In the classroom theory of a competitive market this slogan sounds pretty nice, but in practice it is utopian to think that an individual consumer determines the offer. The entire existing infrastructure of especially Western societies relies on the most polluting industries, which are intertwined with every aspect of our daily existence.
TAKING THE PUBLIC GOOD HOSTAGE
Take the fossil industry. If we do not want to exceed the limit of two degrees of warming, CO2 emissions must be drastically reduced in the short term, including through a strict carbon diet. That means, for example, that oil companies should only be allowed to tap a fraction of their stocks - and thus a fraction of their planned profit. But renouncing our fossil dependence has much broader implications, because of the sector's interdependence with the rest of society.
European financial institutions alone have an amount of one trillion (thousand billion) euros outstanding with the fossil industry; investments that are directly linked to our savings, pension and government budget.
This unbundling is already complex, but is made even more difficult by opposing forces in front of and behind the scenes. The companies concerned are doing everything they can to not limit their profit horizon, with a lobby involving millions. Since the election of US President Donald Trump in 2017, the fossil industry has been giving record amounts to groups that support its deregulation program, and several people from the fossil industry have landed in critical positions of government in the US - with results. As the director of an environmental think tank in Washington put it, "The fossil fuel industry has gotten almost everything on its wish list under Trump's rule."
The mantra 'involve the industry in change' has become so common that few realize that in some situations this approach amounts to holding the public good hostage.
But let's not just point to the US again. Recent data research initiated by The Guardian shows that the fifty largest oil companies want to pump up an extra seven million oil barrels a day over the next ten years, with our national pride Shell being the frontrunner. Shell intends to increase its production by more than 35 percent in order to get the reserves up and running in the interest of profit maximization for shareholders.
Instead of a reasonable run-down, in line with the emergency call from scientists, extra investments are being made that undermine climate goals, such as the construction of new drilling locations. Shell boss Ben van Beurden says: 'Philosophically, I believe […] that it is not up to energy companies to limit energy consumption.' This touches on a crucial law: a company has a fundamentally different goal from the government.
After years of transferring public tasks to the private sector, that premise seems to have been watered down, and consumer activism is a symptom of this. The mantra 'involve industry in change' has become so common that few realize that in some situations this approach amounts to holding the public good hostage.
THE POWER OF MARKETING
There are more reasons why the 'demand-determines-supply' starting point is an illusion. Take the power of marketing and advertising. It is no coincidence that entire population groups walk in Nike shoes, blonde women ride in Mini Coopers and start-up boys race through the city on an urban bike wearing a Fjällräven backpack. Everything in the world of consumerism revolves around image, brand distribution and brand loyalty . The influential marketing and distribution of large (often very polluting and / or unhealthy) players determines what the offer is, from villages in the farthest corners of the globe to the high street retail chains.
The whole system is based on increasing consumerism, looking for new ways to get people to buy things they didn't even know they needed.
Coca-Cola is a good example of this. The brand, with 1.9 billion units sold per day and the production of 200,000 plastic bottles per minute, is, often literally, part of the furniture wherever children go. The brand is inextricably linked to our (Western) existence. The loss of market share to healthier alternatives has been quickly spotted by the soft drink company and cleverly offset: Coca-Cola and other food giants now own the world's best-selling plastic pre-packaged watermarks.
The whole system is based on increasing consumerism, looking for new ways to get people to buy things they didn't even know they needed, and deliberately marketing unsustainable products.
I experienced it myself for years when I was still working as a lawyer in the business world: companies benefit from things having a short lifespan so that you quickly buy new ones, or privatize a public good such as water and turn it into a profitable and polluting product. make - a product that didn't even exist a generation ago.
ENCAPSULATE
Another part of marketing is the interweaving of major polluters with 'legitimate' parties, something called greenwashing. The goal is to encapsulate people, preferably critics, with reach or authority, at the very least rendering them harmless and working for you at their best. Take the 'sustainable' Instagram starlets who give doom sermons about melting polar caps under a glam photo in which they, in an organic cotton dress, advertise a new, 'healthy' drink from a multinational company.
Maar ook de allergrootsten zwichten. Toen Michelle Obama in 2010 als First Lady haar strijdplan tegen obesitas introduceerde, trok er even een huivering door de voedingsindustrie. Door slechte voeding was kinderobesitas in de Verenigde Staten in dertig jaar tijd ruim verdrievoudigd naar 17 procent, met angstaanjagende stijgingen van chronische ziekten en Diabetes-2 – onder met name de armste bevolkingsgroepen.
Her first speeches made it clear who Obama held partly responsible for this: the food industry, with their excessive additions of sweeteners and fats, their deceptive ads aimed at children, their iron grip on the food supply in schools, hospitals and sports clubs, and the propagation of the frame. that obesity is due to a lack of individual willpower. Her tough talk did not last long.
The industry was quick to enter into "partnerships" with Obama - Coca-Cola, Walmart, Walt Disney, Nestlé and others. For Big Food, as these multinationals are also called, it is of vital importance that it remains self-regulating, and everything was done to prevent actual policy change and regulation. The lobby budget was doubled, an addition of 'light' options to certain product lines was promised (in other words: an expansion of the range, with corresponding revenues), and then it was enough.
If Michelle Obama kept targeting Big Food, the companies would withdraw all cooperation. Michelle bowed her head, and until the end of the Obama presidency you could see her playing sports in public with overweight children, under the slogan 'our youth must move more'. The childhood obesity rate in the United States is currently 18.5 percent.
If you look closely, you can see that insidious intertwining everywhere, and it effectively sows confusion. An interview (branded content) paid by Shell with a scientist in NRC Handelsblad about the importance of individual choices in the fight against climate change. An interview paid by ABN AMRO by the editor-in-chief of the business magazine Quote with people from Coca-Cola and McDonald's about sustainability. How serious is a controlling power that reports daily about the urgency of climate change, but right next to it offers a platform for its main causes with uncontested interviews?
GOVERNMENT INFLUENCE
Another aspect that disrupts the supply-demand balance is government influence in the form of subsidy flows, tax benefits or excise tax exemptions. Subsidies stimulate supply by producers and have a direct effect on the selling price and thus on the purchasing behavior of consumers. As long, for example, as fossil fuels receive twice the benefits of their sustainable alternatives, the choice is easy for a large group of people.
A whole range of knowledge and choices remains invisible, without the user noticing.
Millions of EU money are pumped into the promotion of the meat industry, and consumers don't even know what the 'real' price of meat is - it can be up to 40 percent higher without subsidies and with social costs passed on. This distortion of competition is unknown to most people, and it seems to me unfair and quite unworldly to label the group that continues to choose these products as immoral or wrong.
The influence of algorithms on consumer behavior is relatively new. Based on the collected and connected data of billions of people, companies can use custom algorithms to influence buying behavior down to the individual level. Because the large tech companies refuse to disclose the composition of their algorithms, it is completely inscrutable to the consumer why he or her is offered or withheld certain things. Search results, displayed news items or products presented on all possible online channels are tailor-made to optimize the chance of success (a transaction).
A whole range of knowledge and choices thus remains invisible, without the user noticing. For example, someone who made choices aimed at sustainability in the past will be presented with a completely different online menu than someone who did not make those choices for years due to lack of knowledge, interest or purchasing power. The latter user has a completely different view of what the world looks like and what is for sale.
With all these unequal, sometimes invisible and manipulative forces, it is untenable to address individuals from the simplistic starting point 'sustainability is a choice', or 'with your wallet you determine what the industry does'.
ELITIST WAY OF IMPROVING THE WORLD
Averting a climate crisis requires forced, radical system change from above. What consumer activists themselves fail to realize is that their ideas are advocates of the system they think they can combat. That system thrives on a world view in which people are no longer seen as citizens, but as consumers, on a planet called the Free Market. Wallet fighters go along with the myth of the Makeable Man, who in 2019 shapes life and well-being with his own actions.
That individualistic 'everything is your own fault or merit' philosophy was once reserved for the conservative corner, from Reagan's American Dream to Thatcher's ' There's no such thing as society' , but has now been accepted across the board, with the left-wing intelligentsia not rarely as fanatical torch bearers. Like The New York Times shit-chic fashion critic Vanessa Friedman, who recently sighed in an interview about environmentally polluting fast fashion : 'The big question is: how do we get consumers to think about what they buy? That they realize that one $ 20 T-shirt will last longer than ten $ 2 shirts each. ”
It's a rather exclusive, elite way of improving the world, because not everyone has the opportunity to talk to their wallet. Safran Foer, Friedman and their privileged group of fellow believers are a minority in this world.
A pitch-black example of what happens when you see people purely as consumers was the fire in the Grenfell Tower on June 14, 2017. In a chic London neighborhood, most residents had successfully and safely designed their lives with a well-stocked wallet. The red and white Victorian houses were fitted with decent fire alarms, fire-resistant insulation and functioning emergency exits. Above it rose a concrete tower block for the poor.
Precisely the group that, as a citizen and as a consumer, fell between the cracks: the state, after decades of eroding its public tasks, no longer felt responsible for their well-being, and the free market could not make any money from them. A series of private subcontractors, focused on saving time and reducing costs in connection with profit maximization, renovated the building, resulting in failing smoke detectors, fire accelerating panels and untested fire extinguishers. That night at least eighty people burned alive.
Consumer activism ignores the fact that there are so many people who do not have a choice between a two or twenty dollar shirt, between meat once or three times a day. In fact, the group that is so indignant about other people's buying behavior has a lifestyle that is usually more polluting than that of a less prosperous person with all his 'wrong' choices.
A three-high-back welfare mom who shops at Primark, rides an old moped and serves floppy chicken once a week, has a smaller footprint than the average sustainability book writer, with all the dinners, speaker events, social gatherings and sponsorship deals featuring 'sustainable' product lines . That the latter reads the lesson the first is a travesty.
If you inflate that principle to a global scale, it gets even crazier. The globalized free market has brought wealth to Western countries and lifted millions of people in developing countries out of poverty. People for whom things like eating meat, driving a car, buying clothes and other expressions of Western consumerism have become accessible for the first time. And then, after taking advantage of it themselves for decades, a few snobs hold up a stop sign. With serious books, articles and evenings of debate about how emerging countries should do more about overpopulation and how 'everyone should do their part' to save the world.
The fact is that the top, richest half of the countries on earth are responsible for 86 percent of total CO2 emissions. The richest people are 175 times more polluting than the poorest 10 percent, and the arrival of several billion more people in low-income countries would only add a few percent more emissions. The fact is, too, that it is the most vulnerable who are hit first and worst by the effects of climate change - drought, hurricanes, floods or deforestation.
"Oh no, I don't mean those people," consumer activists often back down when you put this to them. But that's not how a theory works. If you posit something with a lot of fanfare as a solution and publicly call for action, you cannot then say that you were really only addressing your own circle of friends. 'Those people', with a different wallet or from another country, also read books, newspapers and Instagram posts. 'Those people' also fall prey to the cult of shame that consumer activists speak about them. And 'those people', consumers or not, as citizens also have the right to protection against the excesses of a system that is only left out of harm's way by consumer activism.
CONSUMER ACTIVISM AS A LIGHTNING ROD
Switch to a plant-based diet, as Safran Foer wants? Buy better-made, more expensive clothes, as Friedman wants? I will definitely recommend it to a small group of lucky guys in my area; those who have the money to say no to the majority of all products on offer, and the time to read about all the production chains and their associated footprints.
But in response to the climate crisis, consumer activism is just a lightning rod eroding civil rights, costing money that could have been spent elsewhere, and conforming to the system that brought us to this point. Shaming people on the basis of their purchasing behavior also testifies to a misplaced moral superiority, which increases rather than decreases injustice and inequality. While citizens are targeting each other, the most harmful industries are strengthening their power every year and governments are leaning more and more on the trend of individual responsibility in their climate agreements.
We can put to good use the people who are now speaking their doomsday about other people's purchasing behavior, with their reach and influence. But then for a less safe way of campaigning than they are used to. A way that usually does not produce 'partnerships', speaker invitations or interviews. People who speak directly about industry and government are actually seen as a threat and in many cases are more likely to end up with enemies than a revenue model. Look at lung doctor Wanda de Kanter, with her fight against the tobacco industry and reprehensible government policy, Evgeny Morozov, who attacks the omnipotence of tech companies and the cowardly response of politics, or Olivier van Beemen who exposed Heineken's corrupt practices.
Systemic criticism may sound vague and elusive, while 'ethical' eating and shopping gives a pleasant feeling; the immediate idea that you are contributing something. But there are enough concrete battles to engage in. Think of the redirection of subsidy and investment flows; the disclosure of algorithms and their possible use for sustainability; uncovering and regulating lobbying activities; a discussion of ad revenue by the same media that is sounding the alarm about the climate crisis; or lending legitimacy to polluting or manipulative industries through greenwashing.
Let us end the cult of shame towards individuals who do not make the 'right' choices, and publicize the fact that most people would indeed want to live a more sustainable life, but cannot do so because of environmental factors consciously be maintained.
Because despite all good intentions: every book, every article and every day spent more on consumer activism distracts not only from the real problem, but also from the solution.
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