Consumers have become more cautious and conscious about their purchases – and these traits are here to stay.

Our global economy has taken a beating and consumers everywhere are changing their buying habits to adjust to our new reality of insecure jobs, reduced real estate values, mistrust in business and government, and an uncertain economic future. Consumers are saving more, spending less, buying items when needed, and patronizing companies that care about more than just business.

Businesses wanting to survive this prolonged economic slump are paying attention to these new buying patterns and are adjusting accordingly. Will these new habits continue once the economy starts to recover? Studies predict that the longer these frugal economic conditions persist, the more ingrained the habits could become. Recovery has been much slower than many anticipated, but while things may not get worse, they might not get better anytime soon, either.

There are more important things than money

When the economy began its rapid downshift, one of the consequences was a spotlight on a society that had been chronically overspending on material goods and living precariously on credit. Eyes Wide Open, Wallet Half Shut, a 2010 study by Ogilvy and Mathers, found that three quarters of post-recession consumers surveyed were disenfranchised with the pursuit of money, responding that they no longer cared to climb the corporate ladder, would rather spend more time with family, and would choose job security over an insecure job with opportunities for raises.

Authors John Gerzema and Michael D’Antonio told brands to bid goodbye to the inflated wealth and hyper-consumerism of years past and say hello to “a lifestyle more focused on community, connection, quality, and creativity,” in The Power of the Post-Recession Consumer. Consumers are moving from “mindless consumption” to “mindful consumption,” specifically purchasing goods and services from vendors who echo their values and live up to their standards.

“More recently, the BAV [Young & Rubicam’s BrandAsset Valuator] surveys show sharp increases in the number of consumers who want positive relationships with marketplace vendors and who focus more on corporate behavior. Between 2005 and 2009, a growing number of people rejected status-driven values such as snobbishness and exclusivity, and embraced attributes related to bringing people closer together or making the world a better place. Among the once-prized brand attributes that declined in this period were: “exclusive” (down 60 percent), “arrogant” (down 41 percent), “sensuous” (down 30 percent), and “daring” (down 20 percent). On the opposite side of the scale, the brand attributes Americans found more important as they began to sense the impending recession and then suffered through the crisis were: “kindness and empathy” (up 391 percent), “friendly” (up 148 percent), “high quality” (up 124 percent), and “socially responsible” (up 63 percent).”

Frugality is cool

When faced with an increasing climate of job insecurity and falling equity, many consumers were forced to examine their own economic situation and revise their spending habits. People began economizing everywhere and both price and quality became key drivers for many purchases.

A Booz & Co. study, Forever Frugal? found that since the recession consumers are becoming extremely conscious about what they buy. They are spending less on household items, embracing less expensive private brands and buying fewer, high-quality items. The Ogilvy and Mathers study shows that 92 percent surveyed are using coupons, 91 percent are shopping at less expensive and/or discount stores and 90 percent are buying more store brands.

Buy now, use now

Finally, a good reason to curb the creeping Christmas shopping season that has managed to weasel its way into October (Editor’s note: a few clueless companies might take note. This morning – August 31 – we received a Christmas pitch). Brands could count on consumers to buy early and buy a lot on credit, but along with buying less, consumers are waiting until they need something to buy. Savvy companies are readjusting their seasonal selling to accommodate this recent trend. CEO of Newell Rubbermaid, Mark Ketchum, told the  Wall Street Journal that his company changed its back-to-school selling season from its normal early July to mid-August range to late July through September to capitalize on the consumer’s desire to buy supplies later.

Consumers are also making their way through all the inventory they already own in their pantries, makeup cases, and bathroom cabinets, and restocking with smaller packages and less variety. Warehouse stores like Costco and BJ’s (based in MA), have noticed that shoppers bought less but shopped more frequently. Ahead of the curve, in 2008, BJ’s had already begun shrinking its package sizes to appeal to smaller households and people who wanted to stock up weekly, rather than monthly. These clairvoyant changes resulted in increased sales and memberships. As this economic climate persists, these changes might become the future standard.

Green is still good

Despite the sometimes higher price of green products, environmental consumerism is still going fairly strong. A 2011 UK study commissioned by Amex found that consumers place value on ethically sourced goods, and a Mintel study also reports that more than 35 percent of consumers surveyed said they would pay more for environmentally-friendly products. Green customers aren’t the majority, but it is a strong segment nevertheless.

As many consumers try to lead more conscious lifestyles, studies project that demand for ethical products will continue. Consumers want to buy from companies who implement internal environmental policies, work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and commit to environmental targets.

Consumers want companies who care about the community…

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has gained visibility and momentum in the last several years with no indication of slowing down any time soon, but more than ever before, companies need to be strategic about their CSR efforts so they are complimentary to both the community and business growth. CSR isn’t simply about a company donating money to a worthy cause. CSR, implemented effectively, attracts both customers and employees, helps retain talent, and benefits both the company and the community. More than ever before, consumers are doing more research into companies and products before buying, requiring brands to be more transparent, ethical and accountable to customers in order to gain their business.

Each company defines CSR for itself. Intel focuses on energy conservation, emerging as one of the largest purchasers of renewable energy credits in the past few years, committing to 2.5 billion in 2011.  The semiconductor manufacturer has also invested significant efforts toward creating clean energy solutions in several locations and employee education around their efforts. This helps the company save money on energy costs, reduces its impact, and engages its employees in energy saving initiatives.

ExxonMobil focuses on women’s education around the world. ExxonMobil Foundation’s Lorie Jackson explains that it’s good business because it broadens ExxonMobil’s pool of talent in the countries where it does business. This, in turn, helps ExxonMobil, and it helps communities worldwide. PepsiCo was looking to improve the nutritional value of its snacks. One solution, replacing palm oil with high-oleic sunflower oil (HOSO), will improve the economy of a Mexican region and the financial picture of 850 families, lessen its environmental impact and stabilize operating costs.

…and about customers, too 

Although customers are more discriminating about their purchases and want to pay less, they still expect to be treated well by the companies they choose to patronize. Many organizations have cut back on easy return policies, shipping policies and customer service, but that has proven to be a mistake. After reeling from the large-scale meltdown of the financial industry, the last thing customers want to hear from a company is that they want their business, but don’t have the staff, time or inclination to treat customers well.

Companies who put customers first, versus those who sacrificed customer satisfaction for short-term relief, actually performed best according to Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s Third Annual Customer Service Champs list. Companies like Hertz, who had to cut back on services at some locations, angering travelers who already faced more aggravation in airports and more fees when flying, scrambled to find the right balance between making personnel cuts, and making sure those cuts weren’t so visible to customers that lack of service drove them away. Other companies like USAA found that cross-training call center reps, so that they had expertise in more than one area, helped them to keep their customer service level high, even when they had to cut back.

Although gaining new customers is important, companies have found that retaining already loyal customers is crucial. Zappos used to quietly upgrade both new and return customers with overnight shipping, but decided to shift those costs toward benefits for repeat customers. Dell has struggled with customer service woes for the last decade, and is still working to regain trust.

The Great Depression spawned a generation of savers. This recession is also affecting the buying habits of the next generation. Mindful consumerism may very well be here to stay.

image: Stevendepolo, the cleveland kid, martino!

It’s time to reconceive environmentalism and sustainability and help them evolve into a larger movement.

*Author Richard Louv is the author of The Nature Principle: Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit Disorder and Last Child In The Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.

Martin Luther King Jr. taught us, by word and example, that any movement — any culture —will fail if it cannot paint a picture of a world that people will want to go to. As others have said, his speech was not called “I Have a Nightmare.”

For decades, our culture has struggled with two addictions, to oil and to despair. It’s pretty clear by now that we can’t kick one of those habits without kicking the other. Yet, for many Americans, perhaps most of us, thinking about the future conjures up images of “Blade Runner,” “Mad Max” or Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”: a post-apocalyptic dystopia stripped of nature. We seem drawn to that flame.

It’s a dangerous fixation. Think how children and young people must feel today, growing up in a time when so many adults seem to accept, with a shrug, only darkness ahead. The key question here is: How do we change our vision of the future? Where do we start? Here’s one suggestion: reconceive environmentalism and sustainability – help them evolve into a larger movement that can touch every part of society.

Here are seven reasons for a new nature movement:

ExclusiveArtist Alicia Escott’s intensely humane explorations of loss, longing, commercialism and ultimately, love.

“The best way I can express this is that I have lost enough hope to find a new hope.”

San Francisco-based artist Alicia Escott tells me this over coffee at The Summit, a popular cafe in the Mission District. We’re talking frankly, not philosophically, about pragmatic challenges of creativity and environmental issues, specifically, how one can retain any sort of optimism, much less focus, in the face of the enormous ecological challenges we face. (There have been six great “die offs”; we are poised for another.) “I heard an environmentalist being interviewed once,” she is saying. “The journalist asked him how he was okay with eating meat or some other destructive behavior. He answered, something like, ‘You know, you wake up in the morning, you take a shower then you walk around the corner to get coffee. It’s 9 a.m. and you have already walked over a mountain of skulls.’”

Escott is thoughtful, though not measured. She pauses for fresh lengths between questions.

“I function with a dichotomy that is extreme in a sense – I both think it’s perhaps ‘too late’ for humans but I also think about things from an evolutionary point of view,” she says. “Humans came out of great tumult. We are on the verge of another tumult. So I feel daily heartbreak; yet I also feel hope.”

Escott has already made a name for herself in environmental circles for her subtly captivating pieces that use disposable packaging as a medium for transcribing objects of both life and destruction. There is a bear on a bag seemingly expiring in undergrowth, a trout as litter in a stream (literally a fish out of water), and an atom bomb test on a to-go sushi container. (The last was too popular in a sense, says Escott. “They are so optically beautiful they trick you. That was a distraction from what I’m really wanting to talk about, so I did not make more.”)

The work, most notably that created on plastic sacks and film, is so fragile as to be temporary; the fleeting hand-drawn images are something like a compassionate catalog of the living past, or what will soon be our past. The art will not survive, and in fact, is not meant to – Escott has entire series expressly created to be recycled. But to describe her as an environmental artist or to view her work as somehow ironic is to miss the point.

“My approach is one of a thoughtful person, not only as an environmentalist, activist, or green advocate,” Escott says. “I am very hesitant about labels. I think we are making mistakes, and I have a lot of pain around these issues…but it’s really not for me to say. Us poisoning our oceans may return us, simply, to a primordial soup. Perhaps something better can come out of it. So my approach is holistic.”

There are eternal, contextually unsettling and shamanistic themes in Escott’s work. In a recently commenced series, she sends “Love Letters,” dated from the past, to acquaintances and friends alike. The letters include faded sepia and black and white photographs of simple scenes like children in yards and flocks of birds. The letters are poetic, eerie, profoundly haunting – and just slightly creepy. “It’s interesting playing with that tension,” she says with a mischievous smile. It’s clearly also enjoyable. My own Love Letter (“Love Letter to a Thick Billed Ground Dove. Extinct 1927.”) begins with “Last week I set the clock on my iPhone to December 18th, 1914″ and includes the following line:

“Then came rock n roll. More than anything I wish I could show you rock n roll, you would love it, I’m sure. And there was the telephone, and then answering machines and call waiting and then caller id, and now you can have that with you always. Honestly.

There would never need to be these distances anymore.”

My notebook contains this list of words I jotted down before meeting with Escott, and I share them with her.

Bereft

Buddhist

Longing

Acceptance

Human

Lonely

Heartbreak

Healing

I ask if the Buddhist tendency is intentional. I’m the first writer to do so, and she considers it for a long moment. “My work tracks the heart – attachment, loss.” There is an unmistakable healing quality to the approach. “I work from the perspective of the human condition and more so the condition of life,” she says.

Alicia Escott

“I used to talk more about the evils of plastic and was focused on didactic aims,” Escott says. “Now, I am talking about something more esoteric, I view plastic as [among other things] a metaphor for talking about the packaging of our lives. Ideas are virtualized. They are commoditized – they are Likes on Facebook.”

The works’ comment on contemporary culture’s materialism and collective isolation is a compassionate treatment. She says she deals with complex issues simply, but her creations are pure more than anything else. Hence the trouble with labels.

“Consciousness must occur on many layers; it’s not just green. It’s easy to get bogged down by categories – but we shouldn’t stay too long.”

Images courtesy Alicia Escott. Works featured are from the series Littered Drawings.

What I know about Jesus is based solely on what I’ve heard and what I’ve read. My opinions on the man come from hearsay along with some good books, so to speak, that paint a fairly clear picture of his times and culture, if not of Him Himself.

Unfortunately, when having any “What Would Jesus Do?” discussion, this leaves me at a distinct disadvantage to those who apparently know Jesus personally. And it turns out there are a lot of people out there who are on more than a first name basis with the guy. Not only that, they’re also happy to tell us all what he thought and, to some, thinks, about a host of issues including environmentalism.

These very knowledgeable people have a number of oft-used arguments explaining why environmentalism is “against” Jesus and God and the Bible. While they’re not specifically limited to the fundamentalist religious right (just a couple years ago, for example, the Pope was warned by council of an Antichrist who is “a pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist”), they do seem to be in possession of the greatest amount of truth on the matter. Here are some examples of how green clashes with God:

• The End of Days: Coming soon to an ecosystem near you. Environmental disasters are canaries in our coal mine of sin (or blackbirds falling from the sky). Jesus is coming and the Word is there’s going to be some global warming involved, anyway.

• Who’s driving this bus? You? Me? No. Just ask the Representative from the Great state of Illinois, John Shimkus, who reminds us “God will decide when to end the Earth, not man.” Well, there you go. Stop that silly worrying and drill, baby, drill!

• Stop monkeying around! Many in the religious right see a distinct connection between environmentalism, evolution and humanism. Think of it like a domino effect – first we evolve and pretty soon we’re all wanting to save the planet. It’s a slippery slope.

• Greenies are all about the S-word. Environmentalists tend to rely on the cult of science that proves things such as the earth being much, much more than 6,000ish years old.

• Kill the competition. The far Christian right works to paint the Green movement as type of religion. Unsurprisingly, like most movements other than their own, it’s after our children and determined to undermine our way of life.

Many of these points are laid out in the recently released and much-covered video film series Resisting the Green Dragon, described by its creators as “a biblical response to one of the greatest deceptions of our day.” Watch it and get the “the armor you need to rise up slay the Green Dragon and promote the true gospel of Jesus Christ.” The storyline, celebrated by Glenn Beck and told by a who’s who of right wing religious think-tankers and Christian group leaders, paints environmentalism as “a threat to the Christian state” (Michigan? New Hampshire? Oh yes, the United States) and takes pot shots at the movement’s “gospel” – some movie called Avatar.

But back to our man.

While many of these know-Him-alls’ points are said to be based on the Bible, it’s pretty tough to pin an anti-green label on Jesus. In my own anecdotal research, I have yet to hear someone say “Jesus said it’s okay to trash the planet.” The truth is that most data, even some from the Good Book, leads us to an entirely different conclusion than God vs. Green.

What, briefly speaking, do we know about Jesus? What kind of lifestyle did he lead and embody? As near as we can tell, given the time lapse between his death and the emergence of scripture, what types of ideas did he champion?

Jesus, it seems, lived a communal lifestyle in a close-to-the-land manner. He shunned wealth accumulation at the expense of the poor, spoke of the meek inheriting the earth and of creation – all creation – as being a gift from his father, God. He identified with pain and suffering and sacrifice for the good of the whole, promoting a spirit of equal access to many, as opposed to special privileges for the few. Exploitation, he preached, was a sin. A good summation comes from The Reverend Stuart C. Lord, Dean of Dartmouth’s Tucker Foundation, who answers that he calls “The Lifestyle of Jesus Question” with four key concepts: inclusivity, community, integrity and humility.

Let’s take a moment to consider the tenets of environmentalism.

Environmentalism, says Merriam-Webster, is the “advocacy of the preservation, restoration, or improvement of the natural environment; especially: the movement to control pollution.” Inclusive? One people, one planet. Community? Is there anything more community-oriented than efforts to preserve, restore and improve its home. Integrity? What do they say about cleanliness? Where is it? Oh yeah. And what about that final concept, humility? Who are we to look a gift-God in the mouth. It’s enough, perhaps, to say thank you, give a bow if you wish, and refrain from defiling what’s been given.

If we dare ask the question of why anyone would want to paint the concept of environmentalism as anti-Christian, we have to be prepared to take a serious look at the co-opting of broad-based cultural and religious movements into corporate fiscal and political agendas. Other questions come to mind, like: Why are so many poor against national healthcare? Why are anti-spending hawks so gung-ho for massive military expenditures? When asking how so many have become convinced of the sheer nonsense that taking care of our Earth – our God-given home, if you like – is somehow heretical or socially dangerous, it would be folly not to consider the obvious. Read: follow the money.

That thesis paper aside, which would make note of Sliming the Green Dragon’s hackneyed brainwash-speech (constant repetition of terms like terms like “policy,” “new world order,” “liberty” and the dreaded “global governance”), isn’t it time to take a look at what The Man actually said and did? Indeed some Christian groups already are, as the Creation Care and Evangelical environmentalist movements continue to grow in the United States and around the world. Whether or not these groups will have the will to take on the well-funded Becks, Cornwall Alliances and Shimkuses of the world is another matter.

Having never dreamed that I would end a story with a quote from the Bible, I’m going to go ahead and throw down (I know, it’s Old Testament. So shoot me): “You shall not pollute the land in which you live… you shall not defile the land in which you live, in which I also dwell.” Numbers 35:33-34.

Amen.

Scott Adelson is a Jewish-born, Buddhist atheist. <ducks>

Image: Rodrigo Soldon

The Third Wave Green concept we’ve introduced at EcoSalon means taking a hard look at the environmental movement’s sacred truths and considering whether or not they exclude diversity of thought and, most important, hold up to scrutiny. Not always an easy or comfortable task.

Deconstruction – or probing an argument’s veracity by exposing even its most counterintuitive contradictions – allows ideas to evolve and survive over time. This approach is invaluable to creating a “sustainable” Green movement – one that can withstand the most savage attacks by short-term-focused corporate interests (and their legislative, cultural and media puppets), as well as the defeating apathy of a green-weary populace. We’re starting with 10 common green assumptions many of us subscribe to, and asking: should we?

1. Assumption: Vegetarianism and veganism are pro-planet

Reality? There’s a monocrop where that rainforest used to be

It’s true that consuming less meat is a sound way to help lessen your carbon footprint; but like most assumptions, the underlying truth is more complex. A hamburger may be worse than a Hummer (or so the oft-repeated refrain goes), but the mock-meat-processed-from-a-monocrop-in-Myanmar style of vegetarianism is no golden nugget of eco goodness. Better to eat ethically-produced meat on rare occasions as flexitarians do than abstain from the steak but make heavily processed (and unhealthy) faux meats a cornerstone of your diet. Further complicating things, there are numerous studies showing that what’s really sustainable is efficiency, and in some cases, that means meat production over other types of product manufacture – even vegetables. And then of course, there’s the fact that even a truck driving, Big Mac chomping “Average Joe” has a lighter carbon footprint, on balance, than a green-leaning parent raising American offspring.

2. Assumption: Vegan fashion is good; fur is murder

Reality? Dressing up the truth and let’s talk leather

A world without fur makes sense to many. But is wearing leather any different? How many advocates for banning fur eat meat or don leather shoes or coats? Is killing an animal for its hide ever okay? If so, when? Can someone who does still be Green? Fur is viscerally offensive to many – but by that same token, shouldn’t we recoil at all the boots made for walking? Further, how exactly did vegan get lumped in with green fashion when many vegan products are made of toxic synthetics derived from fossil fuels? If a plastic (vegan) jacket is really better for the planet than a wool one, let’s ask if it’s because it is truly more sustainable in terms of the resources required to make it. Or is it just more efficient today, in our current context of an ultimately unsustainable, but temporarily efficient and cheap, system?

3. Assumption: Environmental protection is the key to our survival

Reality? Go GINK (Green Inclinations, No Kids) or go home

Or: It’s not the hamburgers and Hummers, stupid, it’s the kids. While the Green movement focuses on wildlife habitats, pollution and greenhouse gas reductions, and other ways to save the planet, are its efforts moot if it fails on the population challenge? It’s easy to create a epic battle in our minds that pits us against our helpless environment. But might the real battle not involve the environment at all? Perhaps George Carlin was right when he said that if we get to be too irritating, “the planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas.” Might our existence be merely a tick on the planet’s back and if we don’t tread a lot more lightly – i.e., multiply ourselves in a sustainable way – we don’t stand a chance with our to-date agreeable host, environmentalism or no environmentalism.

4. Assumption: Globalization hurts the little guy

Reality? Globalization helps the little guy

Those bandanna-masked guys on the street breaking the windows of Starbucks and Nike shops got their stories straight, right? If they’re anti-The Man, they must be green. Consider for moment what proponents of free trade and globalization are saying: global economic growth, job creation, lowers prices for consumers, capital and technology infusion into poor countries, giving them development opportunity. How about a more transparent global business infrastructure that could promote human rights? Sound like some pretty green motivations? Maybe throwing stones first and asking questions later isn’t such a great idea.

5. Assumption: Locavore, Locavore, Locavore

Reality? Eat global.

Green food comes from where it comes from. If a “place” is highly specialized to make a food in an efficient, healthy and earth-friendly way, might it be better to buy from that source rather than buying the local resource-intensive butter from down the street? We tend to assume that environmentally friendly is somehow akin to being homespun or even quaint, but might our journey here be contingent on creating our own efficiencies, using our ubiquitousness to lessen the load on Spaceship Earth?

6. Assumption: Recycling. Of course.

Reality? Follow the money – and the resource suck

Companies profiting from the practice won’t tell you, and few will acknowledge that recycling is expensive, generates pollutants and is in itself a resource drain. Are there better ways to think about what we do with our used goods and trash – like worrying less about what we do with what we consume and more about simply consuming less? After all, there’s an answer to the taking out the trash problem: Stop making so much trash. This possible truth says forget the red herring cry of “recycle” and tell all who would listen: reduce!

7. Assumption: Organic. Always. Period.

Reality? Caution: Mad Men at work

In some grocery store aisles it’s common now see more “official” organic foods than the evil and bad “non-organics” that we’ve consumed since the invention of, well, the invention. As one stands gazing at organic pop tarts, one might well ask two simple questions: First, what does organic mean? Second, even if I do get a functional answer to question 1, can I believe what I’m reading on the box? Then, as one leaves the store with a couple hundred dollars’ worth of organic stuff, a really big question should loom large: Has this facet of the Green movement been hopelessly co-opted by broad definitions, false advertising and “greenwashing.” Also part of this Organic deconstruction: What about the war on pesticides? How well does that fit in with global health and nutrition efforts? Would the elimination of such chemicals, called for some organic adherents, make us healthier – or cause global famine?

8. Assumption: The green stuff is the good stuff!

Reality? All stuff is stuff

From high-tech to the gadgets designed to make you life more ecologically friendly, we’re bombarded with claims – many truthful – that the stuff we buy, from mining to manufacturing to fulfillment processes, is Green as grass. But what does that mean? More stuff is just that, and even the “greenest” of it requires raw materials, transportation and other resources dedicated to get that product into your hands – before it’s dumped when you’re done with it. Does buying Green help as much as not buying at all?

Of course, others have taken on some of environmentalism’s ”sacred cows,” as Wired magazine did when it took a look a issues specific to global warming, including:

9. Assumption: No nukes is good nukes

Reality? An inevitable option

A surprising number of the ecologically friendly are advocating what they say is clean, green, safe and inevitable. Is the Green tent big enough for these folks who say this fossil fuel alternative is the right way to go?

10: Assumption: Made in China, made by the devil

Reality? A big green ally

The Russians were coming. So were the Japanese. And now, enter the Chinese bogeyman. The fact is there are green-reputable manufacturers in China, and many expect the massive global player to be a leader in green tech and practices going forward. Could the new evil empire be a source of progress rather than just soot?

Some controversy for your environmentally focused brain? This is good. We pose such “alternate realities” not to come down on one side or another of any of these important issues, but rather to point to the eyes-wide-open self examination that must be absorbed into the movement at large if it is to escape the margins and permeate our thinking on a truly meaningful level.

Third Wave Green means not being afraid to question the norms and approach environmentalism from a variety of viewpoints. What are yours?

Special thanks to Sara Ost for contributing to this article.

Images: squacco, gfpeck, Tomorrow Never Knows

Great movements must constantly reexamine themselves if they are to evolve and survive over time. They must self-generate their own “waves” – like feminism’s First, Second and Third – to progress in an often hostile, reactionary world, to “make it” into popular culture. To count outside the cult.

It’s time to ask what this means to the Green movement.

While others have spoken about “third wave environmentalism” in different contexts, the way it makes the most sense is to look at it in terms of the feminist model. Beginning with woman’s suffrage, that movement’s First Wave took on many “officially mandated” inequalities, its Second added to the mix “unofficial” inequalities and lifestyle issues, and its Third is now embracing diversity within the movement and has taken a hard look at some of the shortcomings of earlier incarnations.

Consider First Wave Green to have been 20th century activity surrounding basic environmental laws and practices, such as the establishment of national parks and the advent of wildlife preservation, addressing the most easily identifiable deadly chemicals and carcinogens in the environment, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The current, Second Wave has targeted the consumer, focusing on lifestyle issues such as green consciousness and health choices made by individuals. It has also included the radicalization of the “Green left” and the rise of independent green media. But the evidence shows that green still hasn’t fully tapped into the mainstream; indeed, 2010 has seen consumer and political backlash. For scientists, progressives and the everyday citizens who read sites like this one, it’s both maddening and mind-boggling. Why? Is it time, if not money? Or something else?

It would serve us well to begin to discuss what a Third Wave would look like.

Why now? As we enter the second decade of the new century, many green assumptions are coming under increasingly brighter lights of scrutiny and (sometimes justified) attack. This is in part due the movement’s successes, which  are heroically generating such harsh and determined backlash from the very greatest powers that be – a money- and power-motivated science-denying corporate and pseudo-religious axis that would have the movement die at the next turn.

And here’s some more Why Now: Because green is still niche and has failed to grip the national consciousness in a thoroughly broad-based, mainstream way – something that needs to happen to manifest the kind of change required to “save” our planet. And ourselves.

So what makes a third wave work?

Third Wave Feminism provides an excellent model: It works when a movement has the courage to both embrace its diversity and look critically at previous incarnations and current paradigms – and then has the courage to evolve. This means accepting gains made and respecting the zeitgeist of past efforts, while – and here’s the tough part – deconstructing assumptions to find more resilient truths.

What we’re talking about is taking a look at some of our closely held beliefs and asking ourselves some hard questions: Are things what they appear to be? Have we been making assumptions that might not be based on objective reality? Are we taking important conclusions for granted? What Third Wave Green would embody is the examination of the movements “truths” about what’s good for ourselves and our planet and ask if they are, well, true.

The are many examples of “Green conclusions” that call out for reexamination to help the movement inch closer to more accurate and, if you will, sustainable truths. These sacred cows include environmentalist bedrock, from organic food to green technology, from no fur to no nukes, from recycling to “buy local.” Not even the movement’s core supposition of “environment-first” action should be spared scrutiny. While many of these ideas will hold up to a second look, the reality is that each of these now iconic assumptions have their counterintuitive antitheses that need to be addressed – and in some cases be invited into the Big Green Tent.

Mature movements, like feminism, can withstand unflinching self-examination and criticism from within. Otherwise, it’s a toddler with a tantrum, and the adults are bound to shut the door.

If the Green movement is to survive its continued savaging from the outside as a result of its progress, and in fact enjoy a Third Wave, it must open its arms to diversity of thought and practice from within, even to those points of view that might be outside the norm – for now.

Next week we will look at 10 of the most common green assumptions and their counterintuitive alternatives.

Image: Davichi

Sexism sure makes for strange bedfellows. Early this morning, one of my editors sent me a link to the new Renewable Girls calendar, along with a link to commentary posted on Ms. Magazine’s blog. The “environmental” 2011 calendar uses sexually provocative images of female models – complete with throwback Mad Men copy and props like aprons and bananas – to promote solar panels. The various posts from the blogosphere thus far are mocking, outraged, and most notably, confused. Is this a case of sex sells? Or a case of ironic sex sells? Or a case of justified sex sells? Or how about a case of tongue-in-cheek sex sells? Like, sexism is so empowering when it’s green!

It’s not inflatable. It’s renewable.

Let’s not greenwash it: sex. always. sells. Confusion is a gleaming hall pass for these marketers.

It’s hard for us gals to keep doing what we think is important when our supposed allies hate us (and themselves – I’m talking to you, Newkirk). Is it exaggeration to use the word “hate”? I don’t believe so. Just because it comes wrapped in some shiny Shinola about progress doesn’t make it acceptable. A rose by any other name, as it were.

Speaking of misogyny in marketing, here’s the latest advertising campaign from Bebe, that polyester brand of sexualized striving and low self-esteem, as featured in September’s InStyle magazine. (InStyle is among the most popular American women’s magazines.)

Hours after spotting this image, I was still upset, so I hunted down the email of the head honcho of marketing for Bebe, Sandra Alvarenga, and fired off a letter. If you look at Alvarenga’s LinkedIn profile, it appears she’s never worked for any company but Bebe, starting as a shop clerk and working her way up through production, then executive assistance, then advertising, and finally to the top of the heap of corporate marketing. If you’ve wondered what’s been up with the Bebe business over the last decade or two, now you know.

She never responded, of course. The gist of my “barnyard Lolita” letter I’ll include here:

I feel compelled to express that I believe your company has crossed a line with the image of an extremely under-age looking girl with gooped-up, wide red lips, her eyes hollow, her expression resigned, her tiny body spread-eagled and strategically covered, in a barn of all things. She is an object, nothing more, and the staging and design of the shoot clearly mean to convey this. Working in new media I see my fair share of crass content, yet I cannot shake the sick feeling this ad gives me. I’m embarrassed for bebe and whatever equally cynical agency helped you with this campaign. And, as a woman, I’m saddened to discover the person behind this is a woman herself.

Experiment: If I rip out a PETA page, toss in the Bebe ad, take a screencap from Renewable Girls, and scan ‘em all together, I am willing to bet that a good male friend who’s a media executive, much less my twentysomething brother, won’t be able to spot the difference. Only, this is kind of an unfair experiment because I’ve already conducted it, and you can guess what happens.

Hey, sex sells. And I don’t think that’s inherently a bad thing – it’s a pretty natural thing. I’m not one to complain about a shirtless James Franco for Gucci cologne ad. But sex in the context of contempt is degrading to everyone. (Renewable Girls, you see, “tend to go for the bling. Be it on their finger or on their roof. So if you’re going to please her with panels, you have to make sure the price is right.”) Success at any cost sure feels a lot like something else that’s not so polite to talk about. At what price green?

This is the problem with a culture that continues to worship at the philosophical altar of The Ends Justify the Means. You cannot beat hatred with hatred. You cannot end abuse with abuse. You cannot wage war on violence with more violence. And you cannot create a culture of sustainability – what we alternately call, depending on the decade, peace, love, or prosperity -  by flashing about as the other side of the same damn coin.

PETA’s notorious campaigns featuring nudity in the crusade for animal rights have been covered and criticized ad infinitum. The organization is the Sarah Palin of activism: savvy, desperate, focused, insane. The problem with PETA’s campaigns isn’t that sexy pictures of women are automatically offensive. (Hey, saying that would just be sexism of another kind.) The problem is that this strategy so enthusiastically seeks defeat. Objectifying creatures – in this case, women – for some purported noble end isn’t ironic and clever. It isn’t even cynical and clever. It’s exactly the same thing as the problem itself. If it looks derivative, or self-loathing, or sad, that’s because it is.

Welcome to the era of ecosexism.

“It is difficult to realize how great a part of all that is cheerful and delightful in the recollections of our own life is associated with trees.” – Wilson Flagg, Naturalist

There’s a sadly familiar pattern that comes with environmental news stories about the world’s great forests. “Here’s why they’re too precious to squander. Here’s why we’re squandering them. Go see them while you still can.” But take heart – because on Thursday, the trees won.

The boreal forest of Canada is a natural marvel on a staggering scale. Covering well over half of the entire country and storing twice as much carbon per acre as tropical forests, it’s – you guessed it – way too precious an environmental resource for us to squander. Yet that’s exactly what some people have been trying to do – with oil and gas exploitation, hydroelectric development and loosely regulated logging galore. Thankfully, these efforts have to date been too puny to make much of a dent in this 1.3-billion acre behemoth. Given time, this story might change for the worse.

For any unscrupulous developers casting an avaricious eye over all this natural wealth – time may have just have ran out. On Thursday, members of the Forest Products Association of Canada and nine environmental organizations, including ForestEthics and Greenpeace, announced their backing for the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement. First up – the suspension of 29 million hectares of logging to protect caribou habitats (and as a trade-off, environmental groups are dropping a number of “Do Not Buy” campaigns.)

So yes, go see the stunningly beautiful boreal forests of Canada. But don’t feel in any great hurry. Because thankfully, they’ll still be here tomorrow.

Images: pentaboxes and axiepics.

Why condemn the condom? Lately, male prophylactics and their packaging have come under scrutiny as an environmental menace, just one more tiny – albeit commonly used – item to clog our landfills. In 2005, 10.4 billion male condoms were used worldwide. That’s one small mountain of rubbers. Yet for those who are committed to shrinking their daily trash heap, chucking the condom in an effort to go green could potentially have the opposite effect.

In an interview with Bitch Magazine about contraception, Laura Eldridge, a women’s health writer, said this about the male condom, “with the barrier methods we have the issue of waste”¦A latex condom probably won’t biodegrade – but a polyurethane one or a synthetic rubber one definitely won’t – they are just with us forever.”

And on Columbia University’s online Q&A health service called Go Ask Alice, a student wonders if there’s an eco-friendly way to have safe sex, asking “is there a condom that is biodegradable?”

Just the Facts, Ma’am

Let’s get a couple of things straight. Most male condoms are made of latex, a natural substance from rubber trees. While latex is biodegradable, the jury is out on whether condoms will decompose, since they’re also made with stabilizers, preservatives, and hardening agents. Polyurethane prophylactics, or plastic condoms, won’t biodegrade. Nor are they recyclable. Lambskin condoms, which are made from the intestinal membrane of a lamb, will decompose. But they won’t protect you from STIs.

Though there’s no research on how long it takes condoms to biodegrade, sexperts and environmentalists alike recommend tossing latex condoms in the trash or in the compost bin rather than flushing them down the toilet. Latex won’t disintegrate in water. And The Ocean Conservancy has warned [pdf] that condoms found along coastal beaches indicate poor water quality.

The Single Most Important Environmental Innovation

So what’s a sexually active environmentalist to do? Keep using condoms. Why? Because, in spite of their bad rap, condoms are “the single most important environmental innovation,” according to Hank Green, a blogger at EcoGeek.org. “Condoms aren’t solar powered or reusable or even recyclable, but they’ve made the environmental revolution possible. As simple birth control continues its spread across the globe, it leaves behind happier healthier societies with significantly less impact on the planet. That is the power of true innovation.”

All that hazardous condom debris we’ve been reading about? In the scheme of things, it doesn’t matter. Not when an unplanned pregnancy can derail a career or a family. Not when opting not to have a child means you’re doing something 20 times more effective than recycling. In fact, by 2015, even more condoms will be needed – an estimated 18 million for low and middle income countries alone – to protect against pregnancy and STIs. So pile “˜em on. (Er, actually, don’t. One condom alone is more effective than two.)

Image: meddygarnet

If green parenting web sites, organic applesauce, and reusable diapers are any indication, eco mommies are on the rise. But so are women who say that even baby feet leave a major carbon footprint. And they’re opting not to have children as a result.

Last year, Oregon State University released a study showing that going childless is a better way help the environment than recycling, driving an energy-efficient car, or using compact fluorescent bulbs. It’s 20 times more effective, in fact. Raising a kiddo in the United States can tack an extra 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to a person’s carbon legacy. By having a single child, one individual’s environmental impact will increase almost six-fold.

While some women cite the environment as their primary reason not to have children, others say it’s an added benefit to the childfree lifestyle. These women are part of the GINK movement (that’s Green Inclinations, No Kids) as coined by Lisa Hymas in an article for Grist last week. GINKs opt not to procreate for many reasons – not enough time, money, or desire, to name a few – and they see their decision as a boon to the environment.

“Here’s a simple truth,” said Hymas. “For an average person like me – someone who doesn’t have the ability of an Al Gore to reach millions, or of a Nancy Pelosi to advance (if not actually enact) landmark environmental legislation, or of a Van Jones to inspire (and piss off) whole new audiences – the single most meaningful contribution I can make to a cleaner, greener world is to not have children.”

In a 2007 article I wrote for the Colorado Springs Independent, Peter Wenker, a member of a social club for childfree couples called No Kidding, cited similar feelings. “If you are not the kind of person who wants to [parent], it’s not going to be fair, given the fact that the planet doesn’t need your kids. It’s important to make sure that if you do have kids, that it will be good for you and the planet.”

Whatever the rationale, GINKs are not alone in opting not to have children. According to U.S. census data, in 1980 just 36.7 percent of women between the ages of 18 to 44 were childless. Thirty years later, we’re up to 45 percent for a similar age bracket (15 to 44).

Going childfree isn’t for everyone, of course – most people don’t do it. What are your thoughts?

Image: kevindooley