Wait, Can I Buy Something About It? February 14
I came across this advertisement on Treehugger by Simple Shoes selling little walkers that will “reduce our environmental footprint” because they are manufactured using sustainable materials like recycled car tires, cork and bamboo while reading about German recycling programs (which rock the globe over!). Seems cool, despite a rising obsession with buying our way out of our environmental disasters – and I don’t just mean so-called earth-friendly shoes. It’s getting more and more in to buy “green” when overconsumption be it “green” or not is a problem in and of itself. That thought was secondary to a bigger font:
I’m not an environmentalist, but I care about the environment.
Hold up! Isn’t that what, in essence, an environmentalist is? Why make such a declaration? And why on treehugger? Treehugger says they’re committed to making sustainability mainstream, and if you are looking for “doom & gloom, this is not the place.” Just makes me wonder if an axe has dropped and a wedge edged between environmentalists and another crowd of those cool to care. The environmental movement has been ineffective in going mainstream, but is it because of negativity? No, Simple Shoes isn’t Treehugger, but it is the consequence of an environmental movement that can be very real, and not always concerned about being pretty.
Their shtick — simple shoes for a happy planet — doesn’t really stick. Wouldn’t polar bears, who are drowning in the Antarctic because the ice won’t hold them anymore, be a whole lot happier if they were environmentalists and it was cool to say so?