EDITOR:
In order to get serious about improving our environment, we need to understand the things that have prevented our society from making real environmental improvements over the past 30 years. We have had time to mend our ways, the red lights of environmental degradation began flashing 30 years ago. To understand the lack of environmental advancements, it is useful to compare the other social challenges we have made progress on during the past few decades. Take, for example, equity for people with disabilities. While realizing there are many challenges to overcome, one must admit that progress has been made. In contrast, progress in justice for the land and water, in relative terms, has been minuscule.
There are many reasons for this: the unwillingness of government leaders to create and enforce strong environmental laws and the willingness of corporate elites to prioritize money over the ecosystem. But there is another factor – the downloading of an environmental guilt trip through the mainstream media’s implied shaming of individuals’ lack of action to save the planet – as if individual action alone can save the planet. Downloading environmental guilt to citizens serves to confuse, frustrate and ultimately make individuals feel helpless and guilty in the face of ecological collapse.
Take the issue of plastic pollution. We are, by any measure, drowning in plastic. Why? Because the majority of plastics are cheaply made, difficult to recycle and there is little or no corporate cost or consequences for their throwaway packaging. Coca-Cola produces 110 billion bottles per year yet the cunning communicators at Coke HQ have, by and large, made only promises about recycling programs, implied that it’s those careless trash tossers that are the problem while ignoring their decision to generally leave glass bottles behind. In the end, Coke Inc., by their actions, show that higher profits trump the environment. Is it not time, in this era of ecological collapse, to recognize big business’s green washing techniques and the negative effects of well crafted media manipulation, through their downloading of the environmental guilt trip.
David MacKay,
Johnstons River
