Todd Luger :: Blog :: Green Noise

An article in The New York Times raises a concern that has been in the back of my mind for some time. Basically, are we on the cusp of real change or has the green movement already plateaued? Well, consider this recent survey:

A study by the Shelton Group, an advertising agency and market research company based in Knoxville, Tenn., that focuses on environmental products, showed that consumers surveyed in 2007 were between 22 and 55 percent less likely to buy a wide range of green products than in 2006. The slipping economy had an effect, but message overload appeared to be a major factor as well, said Suzanne C. Shelton, the company’s president.

“What we’ve been seeing in focus groups is a real green backlash,” Ms. Shelton said. Over the last six months, she added, when the agency screened environmentally themed advertisements, “we see over half the room roll their eyes: ‘Not another green message.’ ”

People are experiencing what is being called green fatigue from all competing ideas in the marketplace today:

An environmentally conscientious consumer is left to wonder: are low-energy compact fluorescent bulbs better than standard incandescents, even if they contain traces of mercury? Which salad is more earth-friendly, the one made with organic mixed greens trucked from thousands of miles away, or the one with lettuce raised on nearby industrial farms? Should they support nuclear power as a clean alternative to coal?

One consumer had this recent experience:

Eddie Stern, 38, a media strategist in Durango, Colo., said he recently “went nuts, just trying to buy a car” because of the “overload of info, from the news, from the Internet, from quote-unquote experts on the street.”

Every new tidbit of research seemed to contradict the last. Some environmentalists made the case for a new hybrid, others insisted that buying a used model with a standard engine would save the huge amounts of energy that go into manufacturing a new vehicle. Other environmentalists supported biodiesel, on the grounds that it means, essentially, growing gas. Others countered that biodiesel still pollutes.

Mr. Stern said he finally settled (after a coin flip) on what seemed like the ideal compromise, a used Ford Escape hybrid. Ideal, until his brother, who works in the solar-power industry, asked, “Where are you going to bury the battery?”

These are all valid questions, and like those from a recent post on my personal blog on the efficacy of carbon trading, raise concerns that profit is becoming the prime force driving the movement. Obviously, whatever choice Mr. Stern would have made benefitted a different sector of the economy. In other words, one of the reasons we have competing messages (and thus message overload) is that people want to sell us stuff. It is even more evidence that the market alone cannot be trusted to solve this problem. It is vital that an independent group with no prior agenda sort through the morass and prioritize for people what to do. It may be that all of Mr. Stern's options were essentially equivalent, so there was need for angst. Perhaps he could have made any of the choices and felt OK. But,such an entity would have to be truly independent. For example:

Leaders of Greenpeace ... decided to help its audience prioritize environmental concerns, said Kate Smolski, a senior legislative coordinator. So instead of asking people to juggle disparate concerns — including nuclear waste, coal pollution, deforestation and ocean wildlife endangerment — the group now tries to bundle them under the umbrella of climate change.

So now, when the group campaigns against nuclear energy, it labels reactors a “false solution” to global warming. When the group talks about deforestation, the focus is on its contribution to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

“It’s very helpful,” Ms. Smolski said, “to show that it’s all connected.”

Now, the problem here is that Greenpeace is a longstanding anti-nuclear activist organization that is viewed negatively by a large percentage of the population. While they no doubt have good advice to offer on some accounts, they certainly have a biased view on nuclear power, as evidenced by the quote above. Personally, I don't have enough information to make up my mind yet about nuclear power. What I do know is that a number of other environmental organizations are more open-minded, albeit not unequivocally. A truly independent agency would offer solutions that had widespread consensus rather than doing the non-profit equivalent of a big corporation—using the crisis to advance their own interests regardless of the actual facts.