Musings from an Irritated Student

With my third and most enlightening University semester completed, I have had some time this winter break to reflect on the themes that I learned about, explore the horrifying (Israel) and inspiring (Obama's appointments) in the news, and read Howard Zinn's graphic adaptation of A Peoples History of American Empire. It was the simple watching of the Celtics on TV that invoked this particular stream of thoughts. It all started with a pepsi commercial, where a blue and red colored ball bounces around the screen joining buzz words such as "change", made so popular in the Obama presidential run. For most of the ad, I am reminded of Obama as pepsi's new logo resembles it so closely. After taking a moment to look, I discover that the Super Bowl XLIII logo is also eerily similar to Obama's logo. It is no secret that the future president has captured the nation's heart, but it was more surprising to see how blatantly his success has been commodified, with companies vying to sap some of his appeal through their marketing techniques. This just served to remind me of how anything that can garner public support is exploited for the purpose of capital accumulation, no mater how contradictory the commodification is to the movement itself. Nowhere is this more evident than in the environmental movement, where "green" surely is the new black... just the trendiest thing. What does this actually lead to though? Surely it is absolutely imperative that mainstream American culture has a dramatic shift in both its attitude and behavior towards the environment, but I question how much this explosion in the trendiness of (i.e. the marketing directed towards) being "green" actually does for the environmental movement. When the only way most Americans experience the environmental movement is through the heavy bias of capitalist advertisments, there is no space to learn about environmentalism, as advertisements serve no purpose but to coerce people to spend their money, honesty, responsibility, sustainability be damned. Thus, while what the environment really needs is a dramatic shift away from the ever increasing rates of consumption, the public is told that the best way to be "green" is to buy a 20mpg Cadillac Escalade Hybrid or a "eco friendly" Poland Spring Water Bottle that saves 70% of plastic. So how much plastic does that save compared to simply reusing a water bottle? And how much money could be saved? - don't tell me its a luxury to be environmentally conscious. The fact is, someone had to convince us that our tap water isn't good enough, even when we have the blessing of living in a country where the tap water is largely the same as the bottled water. We were convinced of this because the fact of the matter remains that the loudest voices in the ears of the American public are those of the vendors, the retailers, those vying to capture the consumers within us. These capitalist interests have no stake in environmental preservation, as environemntal degradation takes nothing from their "bottom line." The neoclassical consensus on business, which is bening forced beyond our borders through the imperialist World Bank and IMF, teaches that if more capital profit can be gained trhough the clear cutting of a forest, the erosion of a once fertile plain, the pollution of a watershed, or the shipping of comparable foods/products huge distances than through the environmentally conscious alternative methods, the damaging behavior is to be encouraged. No one makes money for being environmentally friendly - and if you don't exploit where you can, someone else will -probably putting you out of business in the process.

Thus, the neoclassical consensus on free market fanatacism cannot be leaned upon to guide public policy - capital accumulation must come second to environmental preservation. This requires another force to make businesses feel the cost of polluting enough to make the environmental alternative more profitable. This force must be a governmental one, as the government is the only institution that enjoys a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. This kind of governmental regulation of the market flies directly in the face of the dominant rhetoric of this country, encapsulated in the Cold War by the Red Scare and McCarthy's communist witch hunt. This fear of all things communist or socialist was deeply engrained in the minds of a generation, and is still reflected today in a powerful fear of big government coupled with an embrace of free markets. Thus, a political climate was born in which restricting pollution or dare I say decreasing the production of more unecessary consumer goods is like an act of a terrorist taking away our freedom. Since when has freedom of being been equated to freedom of capital? If we can subsidize the hell out of the fast food industry through the agrobusiness lobby, why can't we discourage environmentally and socially irresponsible behavior through a similarly sizable yet sustainably sensible allocation of capital? Already I read about Obama's huge economic stimulus package including large provisions for the construction and increased production of factories. I wonder if these factories are going to be more of the same governmental investment in short term economic growth at the expense of environmental or social concerns that has been so prevelant in our recent history. Why can't the money be spent developing a thorough and affordable public transportation system instead of revamping the production of more automobiles? Is the production and consumption of autos just that much better for the overall growt of our GNP, no matter what the social and environmental costs are? Wouldn't both our social fabric and social equality be that much stronger if we could learn to subsidize local farming (urban gardens, farmers markets) instead of factory farming and public transportation instead of increased auto production. We could build community while sharing both transportation and food production. When Josh Farley tells us that we should be taxing environmental bads (pollution, erosion, clear cutting) and subsidizing goods (the alternatives without these externalities like farming organically or building with recycled materials) it seems so simple, yet what is getting in the way of this becoming a reality. Is it the power of the wealthy lobbies that profit from the status quo? Is it the fear of big government? Is it the shortsightedness of the leading economists?

What are Obama's real goals? Does he realy want to radically shift towards a sustainable scale and just distribution of goods, and is he attempting to do this in the most politically feasible way? Is it possible to take some power away from the market as the driver of governmental policy without killing any hopes of reelection? Would the lobbies he upsets by changing the status quo be powerful enough to ensure he is not reelected?

If anyone has answers, or even some thoughts, I would love to hear them.