The Green Delta: Mass-Producing the Environmental Revolution

WRITTEN BY BEATRICE PANLAQUI

REUSABLE, ORGANIC, FAIR TRADE, 100% plastic-free, paperless, zero waste. With increasing global tensions about climate change and pollution, more and more people are subscribing to “environmentally friendly” practices promoted by conscious consumerism movements which, more often than not, only repurpose environmentalist sentiment into commodities such as metal straws, reusable cups, and tote bags. Although these efforts are wellmeaning and admirable on the part of the consumer, individualized strategies combating worldwide problems are not enough to create significant change. Corporate institutions, however, have successfully managed to make us think otherwise.

Green capitalism relies on the notion that choices made by individual consumers are the root cause of environmental destruction — and, when shifted to the right product or the better, greener alternative — the answer to saving the environment. This allows corporations to deflect responsibility for the continuing environmental crisis while capitalizing on the upsurge of people who are looking for a way to help by providing them with goods sold as “environmentally friendly” – when, in fact, according to the CDP Carbon Majors Report, an alarming 71% of global carbon emissions were found to be from just 100 companies in 2017. On the part of the producer, this generates profit while bypassing legal and ethical regulatory controls and passes the blame onto the individual consumer. Personal culpability is grafted onto the consumers’ conscience while making them believe that what they are doing is enough. Thus, the consumer mindset: “Plastic waste in the ocean? That’s our fault for not being more conscious about our plastic usage. I confess that I’m guilty of contributing to this problem; therefore, it’s also up to me to resolve this. In my own little way, I can help by switching to bamboo toothbrushes instead of plastic ones.”

To most consumers and businesses, green capitalism seems like the only viable option against environmental disaster because it fits into the existing socioeconomic order. Followers of the conscious consumerist lifestyle argue that the demand for more environmentally friendly goods will drive industries to adopt environmentally-friendly practices on their own. However, the notion that we can drive demand to our will in such a way is improbable when faced with the fact that most people are not privileged enough to choose between green products and their cheaper alternatives. In the Philippines, for example, the bulk of our population struggles to meet their basic needs on a daily basis and simply does not have the financial means to make the switch from buying sachets of goods every day to purchasing large reusable containers. This discounts the argument that it is possible to enact significant change when the individual actions of consumers pile up, given that it is already the majority who cannot afford to do so.

The environmental crisis is a systemic issue that cannot be addressed by simply consuming and purchasing our way through the problem. Green capitalism, in as much as it portrays itself as the solution by providing consumers with an alternative, will not be capable of achieving what it seeks to achieve. The process of producing and purchasing environmentally friendly goods still moves within a system that heavily relies on maximizing production in order to generate the most profit. Capitalist social relations of production and consumption dictate the aggressive extraction of resources for the interests of the few who hold a staggeringly large amount of capital, directly resulting in environmental destruction. The end goal of capitalism is the monopoly of production, resources and capital for the maximization of profit; although green capitalism recasts itself as the peaceful crosshatch between current socioeconomic conditions and the solution to our environmental crisis, it only does so in order to lull consumers into a sense of satisfaction. It will stop at nothing — even in the face of environmental crisis — as long as it can expand for more profit, relentlessly uprooting and boring into the earth’s natural resources.

Rather than pointing the blame to ourselves, an epic shift in the longstanding narrative that has been ingrained into us can be undertaken. Trying to convert into a greener lifestyle is not meaningless or wrong, as these actions remind us about the impact the environment has on our daily choices and our day-to-day lives, and not the other way around. However, we must recognize that these individual actions, on their own, will never amount to a considerable change. The destruction of the environment is rooted in a systemic and institutional deficiency that is most often overlooked, and it is only through the negation of such can we succeed in overcoming this. Our goal should be to transform our relations of consumption into relations of interdependence, recognizing that it is through collective action to overhaul the system that birthed environmental destruction will we succeed. ●