Consumers appear to be wary of companies who label
their products as being “green,” says a recent Ipsos Reid study
conducted this Spring on behalf of Icynene, a spray foam insulation
brand. Between 60 and 70 percent of North Americans either “strongly” or
“somewhat” agree that calling a product “green” is usually just a
marketing tactic.
I think there is a message to
governments in this finding that a significant percentage of people view
green labeling as little more than a marketing tactic. In this
hyper-frenzied era of greenupmanship, political leaders everywhere have
jumped onto the green bandwagon, sensing they would experience death at
the polls if they didn’t.
And so we have George W. Bush’s Clear Skies Act and its
carbon intensity-based “fix” for global warming. Sounds green, except
that measuring the ratio of carbon emissions to economic activity
doesn’t actually reduce carbon emissions. According to the Earth Policy
Institute, from 1990 to 2000 the carbon intensity of the American
economy declined by 17 percent, yet total emissions increased by 14
percent. Of course, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has eagerly
followed Bush in championing this sham so he doesn’t have to upset his
Alberta oil tar sands buddies with real caps on emissions.
But he has taken the greenwash act much
further, proclaiming himself the greenest of them all and vowing his
government is concerned about climate change, even though he has
actually come out on the denial side of the issue in the past. Awhile
back, at an international climate change meeting, he even had the
audacity to suggest that the world should follow Canada’s wonderful
example. Maybe we were supposed to be so blinded by that dazzling
presentation we wouldn’t notice as he slashed spending on various
environmental programs and ignored his government's Kyoto commitments.
For instance, this fall, he virtually
gutted the Environment Canada’s Ecological Monitoring and Assessment
Network. EMAN is a partnership of over 600 organizations and individuals
who undertake ecological monitoring with the help of a volunteer network
of “citizen scientists” – schools, community groups, individuals,
naturalists, backyard enthusiasts, Scouts and Guides – who collect
information about things like soil, air, water, wildflowers, frogs, ice
and worms, which is then analyzed by scientists in order to track the
influence of climate change. (We published an article describing these
programs in
Natural Life’s May/June, 2005 issue.) The cuts were reportedly
due to budget problems. Trouble is, around the same time, the government
announced a budget surplus of $15 billion and hinted at tax cuts. I am
betting that the thousands of community volunteers involved with the
programs coordinated by EMAN will smell something foul here...and that
they won’t take this scandalous blow to climate change monitoring lying
down.
Politicians should be
wary of painting themselves green while ignoring the real issues and
cutting environment programs behind the public’s back. We know green
when we see it. And, according to that Ipsos Reid poll, we recognize
greenwash when we smell it.
Wendy Priesnitz, Editor
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