Can Switching to Hybrid Cars and Organics Really Save the World, or Is It Just Lazy Environmentalism?

Over the past few years, more and more so-called green solutions have emerged to address environmental crises within the context of the current economic structure. But author Heather Rogers suggests that some of these solutions amount to lazy environmentalism and may actually camouflage a larger problem. In fact, Rogers argues that our current socio-economic system depends on pollution to maintain its own well-being. If that's the case, what are the real solutions? Rogers' latest book, Green Gone Wrong: How our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution explores this idea and digs a little deeper to see the effects of the green industry.

Maria Armoudian: You are very critical of 'lazy environmentalism' or 'armchair activism.' What do you consider lazy and what is the harm done by it?

Heather Rogers: It's a term that has some currency in the newer generation of environmentalism which eschews the guilt and the sacrifice of the environmentalism that came up in the 1970s. This next wave was saying, "Okay, we don't have to suffer. We don't have to go live in Earthship houses and run our bath water through homemade wetland systems into our toilets and be totally off the grid. We can live in nice houses, live well, drive where we want to drive in hybrid cars and enjoy ourselves. We can enjoy the market mechanisms in order to have a good life and save the planet." And what I'm doing is investigating that a little bit more and saying I don't know if that really works.

MA: It seems you are arguing that it even might make it worse in some ways.

HR: Right. Well, the way that the market works is that it has to grow. In order to do that, it has to utilize materials in nature. So [the market] can't stop extracting and affecting the natural environment -- ecosystems that we need in order to hold back climate change, keep our water clean and keep diverse species on the planet. But there's this idea that we can somehow make capitalism behave itself. What I'm saying is that we can't undo this fundamental logic by replacing green products for dirty ones. That fundamental logic is still there. And where wealth comes from is still there.

MA: I wonder if it's just part of being human that we are exploiting nature. And if so, how do you counteract that?

HR: Right, we have to use resources, and I'm not saying we don't take anything from nature, because we do. But we have an inter-relationship with nature and there's a term for it: socio-ecology. This is a very useful concept, taught by Miguel Altieri at UC Berkeley. It's the idea that social networks and environmental networks do co-exist. We've always used nature to support life. So how can we do that without wrecking the place? We know that it can be done because societies have done it in the past and are doing it in varying degrees now. It's just a matter of looking beyond the role of ourselves as individual consumers and looking at the larger picture. What are the options? We don't just have capitalism. There are other ways that we can get the things that we need and use in daily life.

MA: Do you think that a tamed version of capitalism that doesn't need constant growth would still be as destructive?

HR: I don't know that you can have a capitalism that doesn't rely on growth. I don't know what the political system is that we need, but I do know that we need one that's more balanced, and that integrates the social and environmental costs of how we live, and that means, simply put, consuming less. But it doesn't mean we have to sacrifice and suffer. Americans throw away 25 percent of all our food--just throw it away. There's a tremendous amount of waste.

MA: So, what you're not arguing is that people should stop doing the green things, like the reusable bags and the reusable cups and any of that. You're saying, it just may not be enough.