Book 03 - Green Gone Wrong - Heather Rogers

I am the King of Procastination! I finished this book over two weeks ago, but I'm just now getting around to blogging it. The only reason I forced myself to do it today was that it needs to go back to the library by the end of the day. So much for my resolution to stay on top of my reading and writing!

Book 03 - Green Gone Wrong - Heather Rogers

In Green Gone Wrong, Heather Rogers explores how economic factors taint the current offering of supposedly "green" products and services that are widely available, as well as how these factors prevent goods and services that are truly sustainable from finding a place in the marketplace. She explains how many of the labels such as "Organic," "Green," "Carbon Neutral", and "Fair Trade" are often more about making western consumers feel good about themselves than they are about creating sustainable practices, and how good-intentioned efforts to create sustainability are often perverted by the marketplace to a point where they actually may do more harm than good. She shows how a lack of appropriate standards and regulation allow corruption and fraud to run rampant, and shows that when regulation does exist, it is often ineffective and poorly funded.

Rogers starts off with local organic food, explaining the problems that farmers raising sustainable grass-fed meat have in gaining access to slaughtering services, due to the massive consolidation of the business by conventional industrial farming. Someone going to the trouble and expense of raising cattle that aren't wallowing in their own feces does not want them slaughtered in a facility where most of the cattle fall into that category, however USDA rules, written by and geared toward the owners of large slaughterhouses, make it prohibitively expensive to open a smaller facility dedicated to these hormone-free and generally disease-free animals. She explains how lack of access to supply chains, as well as land price inflation and sky rocketing tax rates from exurban sprawl make sustainable vegetable farming expensive as well, to the point where often the only people who can afford to buy locally grown food farmed with sustainable methods are the very wealthy. Meanwhile the ever-growing desire for "Organic" products is fueling the destruction of rain forests and other diverse biomes in the third-world, replacing them with monocultures that may be pesticide free (or maybe not), but certainly not sustainable.

Rogers exposes the sham of the "Organic" labels as well as those indicating "Fair Trade," especially when it comes to third world food production. Standards and regulations, if they exist, are geared to the advantage of large producers. The certification process for permission to use these labels to describe one's food is too expensive for the local peasant farmers, so large corporations apply for them, and then engage the farmers in a sharecropping arrangement where they are forced to sell their product to the corporation for whatever the corporation agrees to pay, regardless of the market. In the case of "Fair Trade" farmers, they often receive "Fair Trade" prices for only 20 percent of their crop. Certification for these labels is performed not by government entities, but by private companies, who are direct clients of the corporations they certify, creating serious conflicts of interest. The companies that perform certifications are not anxious to alienate the companies they work for, for fear they will be replaced with another certifier. Furthermore, the more the certifiers spend performing their task, the more it cuts into their profits. The combination of these factors make for an environment in which fraud and corruption can and does flourish.

There is a brief section on "green" architecture, showcasing several communities in Europe that have had varying degrees of success and failure, and a lengthy section about transportation, which seems to encompass some general energy concepts as well. She explains how in the mid 20th century car, tire, and oil companies banded together to buy up transit systems and dismantle them, in order to foster the growth of the automobile business. She tells us the simple economics of why American car companies make more SUVs than green automobiles (it's not necessarily because the public wants them). She talks about the fraud that runs rampant in the trade of "carbon credits", as well as the unintended consequences of these "carbon offset" projects. In addition, she explores unintended consequences of biofuels: food shortages, destruction of rain forest, etc.

But the news is not all negative. In addition to the success stories of sustainable architecture, there is a section which outlines things that work, and actions that could put the ineffective strategies on the right track. However, this won't happen without effective policy decisions at the national and global levels, and if the market is left to its own to bring about these changes, they will likely come too late or not at all.

This is a well-written and thought-provoking book. It should be read by anyone who thinks that just because something is labeled "Organic," it means that it is good for you or for the planet, or that thinks that anything labeled "Free Trade" means that a peasant farmer is guaranteed to be receiving anything close to what we would call a fair price for their goods. It should be read by those who think that florescent bulbs and driving a Prius is a substitute for effective sustainable energy policies. And it should be read by those who think that the free-market will solve our planet's environmental problems before it is too late.