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03/07/2008: "Consumerism is anti-green"

When renowned environmentalist Paul Hawken is asked to comment on the new green consumer, he says, dryly, "The phrase itself is an oxymoron."

They subscribe, in other words, to a destiny laid out by economist Victor Lebow, writing in 1955: "Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction . . . in consumption. . . . We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate."

Really going green, Hawken says, "means having less. It does mean less. Everyone is saying, 'You don't have to change your lifestyle.' Well, yes, actually, you do."

But, but, but -- buying green feels so guilt less...

[ Excellent article, with one crucial omission: population times minimum resources = environmental damage, so even all of the first world actually going green (living in mud huts without fires) will not offset the third world's rise to industrialization. ]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/04/AR2008030403198_pf.html