Sunday, March 29, 2009
Consumerism
Standard of living has been increasing steadily since the foundation of America. The industrial revolution made the variety of consumer products available to the public much greater, and as a result, people owned more things. But when is enough enough. People now consume beyond their limits, and are allowed to do so thanks to credit cards and home-equity loans. Even with the environmental movement coming in, companies are still managing to get people to buy more and more stuff. The current attitude to environmentalism is "buy green." It is far too rare nowadays for us to hear a "green" corporation or organization telling us to "buy less." This is undoubtibly the more common sense approach, since even the green things that are purchased inevitably will end up in the trash to clear more room for whatever new green things we bought. Now these green products will end up in the landfill like every other piece of trash, and not to mention that the power and energy going into making and transporting the product is now wasted.
green as a smokestack
http://chevron.com/globalissues/environment/
The issue of chevron is one very near to my heart. In high school I was president of a club that was helping out people in the Amazon area in ecuador who were harmed by Chevron-Texaco's dirty drilling methods in the 1960's that left thousands of acres of land ruined, that polluted the rivers to the point that many of them smell strongly of oil now, and left open air pits filled with drilling mud (known to contain a large variety of toxins and carcinogens), which seeped through the soil and into the well water supply. There is currently a law suit against them filed by the indigineous community. It is therefore very ironic that on Chevron's website they point out so much how they value biodiversity and do everything to drill in an earth friendly way.
Another company that has a section about how environmentally responsible and great they are is McDonalds:
http://www.crmcdonalds.com/publish/csr/home/about/sustainable_supply.html
This article talks about their substainable food supply, and how they "envision" buying from food supplies that use green practices and are ethical and all that good stuff. However, according to Greenpeace (http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/files/pdfs/migrated/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport/7556.pdf) , much of the soya fed to McDonalds livestock is from the Amazon, and extremely biodiverse and important region. Massive farms are made in the amazon, causing huge amounts of deforestation. According to the Greenpeace article, if McDonalds continues at this rate, 40% of the rain forests will be gone by 2050 due only to soya crops. On their website they also talk about how they made a "green" restaurant in Sweden and one in the US. McDonalds has 31,000 restaurants, and while every change needs to start somewhere, it is very doubtful that more than 1% of these restaurants will be turned "green." Instead, the few that are turned environmentaly friendly will be strongly advertised to boost company image.
http://www.gm.com/experience/fuel_economy/emissions/
General Motors too plays off the public idea of green, promoting strongly their alternative energy campaigns. This is the same company that makes Hummer's and Escalades, telling the world with a straight face that they. They boast of an increased fuel economy over the past 30 years, although since the last regulation mandating that fuel economy needs to be increased to a certain amount, it is shown that fuel economy in the average car has risen very little. In addition, the picture on the webpage advertising the fuel economy is of a person driving a corvette of some sort. Is this a joke of some sort? how do you advertise for fuel economy by showing of an extremely wasteful car whose engine is much bigger than is necessary for a car that size.
The issue of chevron is one very near to my heart. In high school I was president of a club that was helping out people in the Amazon area in ecuador who were harmed by Chevron-Texaco's dirty drilling methods in the 1960's that left thousands of acres of land ruined, that polluted the rivers to the point that many of them smell strongly of oil now, and left open air pits filled with drilling mud (known to contain a large variety of toxins and carcinogens), which seeped through the soil and into the well water supply. There is currently a law suit against them filed by the indigineous community. It is therefore very ironic that on Chevron's website they point out so much how they value biodiversity and do everything to drill in an earth friendly way.
Another company that has a section about how environmentally responsible and great they are is McDonalds:
http://www.crmcdonalds.com/publish/csr/home/about/sustainable_supply.html
This article talks about their substainable food supply, and how they "envision" buying from food supplies that use green practices and are ethical and all that good stuff. However, according to Greenpeace (http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/files/pdfs/migrated/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport/7556.pdf) , much of the soya fed to McDonalds livestock is from the Amazon, and extremely biodiverse and important region. Massive farms are made in the amazon, causing huge amounts of deforestation. According to the Greenpeace article, if McDonalds continues at this rate, 40% of the rain forests will be gone by 2050 due only to soya crops. On their website they also talk about how they made a "green" restaurant in Sweden and one in the US. McDonalds has 31,000 restaurants, and while every change needs to start somewhere, it is very doubtful that more than 1% of these restaurants will be turned "green." Instead, the few that are turned environmentaly friendly will be strongly advertised to boost company image.
http://www.gm.com/experience/fuel_economy/emissions/
General Motors too plays off the public idea of green, promoting strongly their alternative energy campaigns. This is the same company that makes Hummer's and Escalades, telling the world with a straight face that they. They boast of an increased fuel economy over the past 30 years, although since the last regulation mandating that fuel economy needs to be increased to a certain amount, it is shown that fuel economy in the average car has risen very little. In addition, the picture on the webpage advertising the fuel economy is of a person driving a corvette of some sort. Is this a joke of some sort? how do you advertise for fuel economy by showing of an extremely wasteful car whose engine is much bigger than is necessary for a car that size.
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