pampelmoose Dave Allen of Gang of Four’s Music and Media Blog

Everything these days has to have green or a sustainable connection to it so of course the internet has gone green too with the latest Yahoo! website green.yahoo.com In it’s list of the top ten sustainable cities Portland ranks #1 so Portland Prius owners can rejoice, with the exception being the speeding Prius owners I wrote about in my post I’m Sick of the Co-opting of Green. I think the American public are getting confused about just what “green” and “sustainability” mean. If they connect the dots and realize that it is really about protecting the Earth’s resources then the only genuine solution is to significantly reduce one’s consumption of goods and resources. Unfortunately, buying more goods because they are labeled organic, green or harvested from sustainable sources just adds to the problem; we must reduce consumption. Therefore do not buy a Prius and feel good about it, buy a bicycle, a used car or buy a bus pass instead. And environmentalists should perhaps consider re-wilding.
Let’s consider sustainable resources, clothing and the Portland outdoor clothing company Nau. On their web site they say they asked themselves the question - “Does the world really need another outdoor clothing company? Not surprisingly the short answer was “no.” What did they do? They started another outdoor clothing company. If they really believed and lived true to their philosophy and their mission statement they would have opened an outdoor clothing recycling company instead of opening a new business that uses more of the world’s resources. Just as fat-free cookies did nothing to halt the rise in the number of obese people in the USA, buying more green, organic or sustainable products will not save anything. So, Portland can pat it’s self on the back for being number 1 but we need to be more aware that less truly means more when it comes to our natural resources here on the globe….

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