How I became radical: From being an ecologist…to a queer decolonial eco-feminist

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Ebène l'Adelphe

Adventurer, ‘weed’-writer*, research-creation activist & poet, interested in tales of intersectional ecological utopias. * ‘écrivain en herbe’ (from French)

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04/03/2024
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Ideas, Politics, Stories

How I became radical: From being an ecologist…to a queer decolonial eco-feminist

Stories of ecological transition: Ebène l’Adelphe

1st lesson : when adults tell me everything is fine, I should probably worry

At the beginning of this story, I was an averagely politicised kid (citizen) – meaning that I didn’t ask myself too many questions. Like everyone, I was “for” sustainable development, “for” gender equality, and for the rest, I trusted that my parents were doing the right and fair things for any problems to be solved before I enter the adult’s world.

As time passed, I came to doubt. If the situation was “under control”, that most people were very aware, why did adults felt so compelled to endlessly and gravely talk about domestic violence and global warming in the news, diners and birthday parties ?

I was taught to believe we had powerful technologies, smart engineers and good will politicians promising ambitious policies – how come didn’t they find a solution yet by the time I turned a teen ? Despite us being careful to turn off the lights when leaving the classroom and conserving water while brushing our teeth, it seemed that climate change persisted on wanting to become a bigger and bigger problem.

We understand that blue wasn’t just for boys and pink for girls, but I could still hear more and more stories about gender based violence. Every evening, my family watched the news while eating a desert and small talking. In those moments, I often fell my body-mind dissociate in the too-fast juxtaposition of news: the latest money-laundering and sex abuse scandal of some 50-years old white rich man (background noise of my sister noisily enjoying her ice-cream), to a report on the making of foie gras (my mum complaining about her colleagues), to the Gaza Strip in the midst of bomb attacks (my brother asking whether he coud eat another sweet).

Once day, it became unbearable to powerlessly look at forests ablaze, capital cities flooding and climate refugees leaving in disaster their homes while my relatives commenting the great taste of the chocolate cake. Was this mental dissonance “eco-anxiety”?

My dad does not care about climate change effects : he knows he belongs to the more privileged people in this planet that will not be directly affected by the natural disasters – he thinks that nature just does its job selecting the more able to survive… That is scary, because it is probably what is going to happen if most people believe like him in this Malthusian theory. In the same time, as an engineer, he also believes in the techno-solutionism : carbon capture, SUVs, etc… sadly, I am more than doubtful. I should offer him this interesting book that just came out called “letter to engineers who have doubts” (1).

I also asked my parents what they thought on gender equality. My mum built herself as a warrior : she fought to be paid as a man would, treated with the same respect, valued similarly in her job. As a result, she believe strongly on equality : “we are all the same” means for her that there are no differences to be considered. Woman of man, it does not matter. My dad thinks the same. When I asked them if they thought the education they gave my siblings and I was gender emancipating, they said : “you all had access to the same education, clothes, and toys”.

I remember though that my brother was always the one “naturally” invited to work in the garden by my dad, while I had to ask permission if I could join. My brother is the one obsessed with computers and who was the one who could benefit from the teaching of my father on IT skills. He likes table football, video games, virtual reality, taking care of his muscles, wearing strong deodorant and eating Nutella and bananas. My sisters were encouraged to draw, play with horses, involve with housework and laundry. Now, my mum’s starting to think she’s old and ugly, so she wears make-up and looks for clothes that don’t look too “old people fashion” so people don’t mistake her age. She is emotionally driven, caring and mindful, self-sacrificing. My dad is a geek, doesn’t give a damn what people think of him, sits at home in his slippers, takes naps at lunchtime, earns more money than my mum, pragmatic and emotionally rubbish. My brother works in construction, likes hanging out with his friends, to mountain bike, and eats steaks. My sister does pastry, likes interior decoration, reading, and painting. But sure, we had an egalitarian education… just not a feminist one. I did not know yet I was queer, and I did not know words like cis* and straight**. I just had a mere intuition that something was scary on how the pattern of their personalities matched the pink and blue marketing despite what they said.

* Cis(gender) refers to a person’s gender identity corresponding to their sex assigned at birth (vs transgender). It is also a political organisation of society creating “normal people” (= gender conforming) and “monsters” as supported by the philosopher Paul b. Preciado in their book Testo Junkie. (2)

** a heterosexual person, someone having a sexual orientation to persons of the opposite sex and according to the French philosopher Monique Wittig, a political ideology, in her book the straight mind, she writes : “heterosexuality is the political regime under which we live, based on the enslavement of women [it] is a cultural construct that justifies the entire system of social domination based on the function of obligatory reproduction for women and the appropriation of this reproduction” (3).

2nd Lesson: just "ecology" is white dude ecology

Some years later, I learned that Gaia – the living planetary system (4), had the ability to absorb a certain amount of “waste” produced by humans. However, what we were producing in the Anthropocene era far exceeded what it could absorb. Anthropocene is the name of a geological epoch highlighting the idea of mankind as a significant force driving climate change and ecosystems’ destruction. As I discovered later, this concept could be criticized because it implies that all humans contributed the same in creating planetary unbalance. However we now know that this responsibility is not shared equally between social, cultural and political groups of people in this planet. This is what I found out by calculated my ecological footprint. I realized that the toothbrush and the light switch had nothing to do with ecological awareness. The real questions were: how many people do I live with in how much space, how to I use energy and what source of energy, how do I get around, and what do I eat ? This is when I embarked (to the despair of my family) on a true eco-transitioning reflexion:

Regarding housing, we were not too bad; my family shared a house with 7 people in an old farmhouse renovated with good insulation and underfloor heating from a wood stove. My dad also created a garden where we grew vegetables, we had fruit trees, and a pond for birds to come and drink. We even had a rare species of toads taking refuge in the natural stone wall of our backyard. I convinced my dad to have chickens, but they got eaten by a wild carnivore (cries) – but it had the merit to make my sisters and my mum more sensitive to antispecist issues which I will tell you more about later. The backflip of all those efforts is the 40° heated inflatable pool my dad insisted on installing on the terrace making our family ecological footprint back to 0…

I became antispecist some years ago thanks to the whistleblowing work of the association L214 in slaughter houses, and readings of the Australian philosopher Peter Singer and of the French buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard (5). Their concepts of “limited empathy” really struck me : we love and value only those closest to us – beyond this boundary, the fate of other beings is of little importance to us. This circle depends on our affinities: for most humans, it seems that it includes human relatives and friends. For others strange beings like me, it did include horses, trees, and – in spite of myself – arachnids. As frightened as I was by the spiders in my room, I couldn’t help but freeze, my shoe on top of their frail bodies, questioning the divine right of life and death I’d granted myself over them, ethically analyzing the possibility of peaceful cohabitation. There was indeed something on the order of empathy that led me to consider their point of view, even if the mere sight of them made me shudder with fear.

Anyway, all that to say that the day I told my family I was vegan was a real coming-out. My family was eating meat every day and was not ready to change that habit. Bringing up anti-speciest questions at the table created divide between us. Being vegan was a betrayal of the French commensality, something that brought us together despite cultural difference. Moreover, my mum was concerned about my health : we indeed learnt at school that a healthy diet implies to eat everyday dairy product and animal proteins. So, I learnt again entirely about nutrition to make sure I had the good input in my body and prouve my mum I wasn’t putting myself in danger. She was right on that on the way to become vegan, I spend some time being vegetarian, and compensating the lack on protein with cheese and eggs. However, this is neither good for the animal cause (producing milk means killing the offsprings for whom it was intended, which is strongly linked to the meat industry), nor for my health or that of Gaia. I also had iron deficiencies because modern French cuisine doesn’t have recipes that are easily adaptable and balanced, especially when you lose 50ml of blood every month… in short, those “mistakes” in the way of understanding vegan philosophy has enabled me to be more attentive to my body and look for ethic and balance in my diet.

My dad was not very concerned about philosophical concerns but with more practical issues : if I cooked for myself, he didn’t see a problem of my change of diet. However, as a decent of prehistoric hunter (as all French males apparently are…) he though that eating meat was the natural order of things and he was not going to change that. Well, you would be surprised that in fact, my father was the one starting to gradually change our family meals (he is the one cooking at home) because he read articles discussing health issues related to meat consumption. Moreover, as I discovered how to enhance the flavors of my plant-based proteins, spices, and leafy greens, my siblings began to want to taste my dishes ! The incredible chef Jack (that you well know) played a significant role in all of this: he was the one who rekindled my joy of eating by transmitting his (buddhist) philosophy of colors and cooking methods. Thanks to him, I understood that food was the first care I provided for my body. Finally, I enjoyed on the way to learn about French and global traditional cuisines are often vegan (before the industrial revolution, meat was an occasional meal), healthier (because less processed), and more ecological (more local). So, go vegan now 😉

The last challenging topic in my family was my choice to boycott the holidays in plane : my decision was perceived as an abandonment. I kind of felt sad too and it made me wonder whether “saving the planet” deserved that I broke my family relations. Definitively, no. So I wondered why my family had this urge more than others to travel internationally. Indeed, my “French origins” friend didn’t “need” to travel so much abroad : tourism VS family – the stakes were not the same. This made me thoughtful on the carbon footprint of the western imperialism and the slave trade history that leads today my family to be so far apart. That is what the French thinker Malcom Ferdinand calls the Plantationocene (6) : to believe the ecological responsibility of having destroyed the ecosystems is equally shared between nations is an illusion perpetuated by the word “Anthropocene”. This hinders our understanding that the real problem lies in our colonial and extractivist system which benefits still today’s descents of the slave traders. Thus, they (we?*) have the biggest carbon footprint (linked to their ancestors) and so the most power to make a change in the system.

* I also have colonial ancestors and consider myself beneficiary of the slave system as I have French white papers and citizenship.

Well, about transportation, I am now in a dead end : I did my research about alternatives to the plane but it was not very successful. If you know reasonable options, please, let me know ! Reasonable means for my family : a travel mean over the summer vacations (1 month) and within 6000€ (ticket plane back and forth).

. By sail-boat : first, you need a boat and to know how to navigate. Otherwise, you need to rent the boat with a skipper – budget is at least 3000€ just for the skipper and 6000€ for an average boat for one month. The length of the trip is not very predictable (depends on the forecast) and it takes for sure more than one month to go to Mauritius or Korea by the sea…

. By cargo ship : once, it was accessible for free, but now, business made it a luxury experience accessible only to few, it’s pretty long and you can’t chose your route.

. By hot-air balloon : 40% of accidents, 20% of mortality rate.

Now, I would like to bet on slow travel, but it implies a radical life change that my family is not ready to make. If you have any other ideas, please contact me haha !

On my path of radicalization (etymologically, trying to get back to the root of issues), I have sometimes felt a bit alone. So I went to meet groups of young people facing the same problems in the French Young Ecologists. After some month of activism, I felt something wrong. The main concerns about my peers were nuclear power and the Common Agricultural Policy (which were very interesting) but nothing seemed to disturb them about their parents having a SUV-car, an apartment in Paris, a second home in Brittany, and their lifestyle of going in vacations in Balearic Islands every winter, studying engineering or political science to work in Brussels. For me, ecological activism was fundamentally starting by questioning myself and my relation to other beings. It was indeed important to talk about COP and global energy policies, but how come we did not have any answers about why people were fighting in shops for pots of Nutella, migrants freezing in our streets, elderlies dying of isolation in our retirement homes ?! Had I become a socialist without realizing it ? To me those questions were deeply linked to ecology.

As for gender issues… when I began to understand what mental load was and I discussed it with my mum, she outrightly denied it; it was as if I was questioning her entire life. Before admitting later that indeed, she would like my father to be more involved in handling everyday life small and necessary caring tasks. I suppose that my mother’s burnout is somehow also linked to this load, whereas my father admits to be quite emotional illiterate himself. Sometimes, it saddens me to feel a lack of empathy on his behalf towards other beings suffering from climate change effects (“it is your generation’s problem, I don’t care” he told me – thanks dad). Or maybe is it just a protective denial strategy ? Although he has more practical sense than my mother, this seems a bit heartless sometimes – noticing that, I feel like reinforcing another stereotype.

But how come my parents, claiming to have raised boys and girls equally could reproduce so much gender rules ? This makes me realize that, contrary to cis-straight people, I do not believe anymore that it is possible to achieve equality while keeping strict gender boxes. For exemple, my mum claimed she did not experience femmephobia (7) until she finally admit that she was often taken for a sex-worker in the street. When I discovered the extent of violence against women, with #MeToo, I began to feel deeply wounded. I hold a grudge against my mother for erasing her own memories of violence and choosing to submit to patriarchal/rape culture by urging me not to go out in a dress at night, repeatedly asking where I was going (unlike my brother), and constantly judging my weight and outfit. And the more I was outraged by the state of the world seen through my feminist lens, the more my parents seemed to detach themselves from my conclusions with an air of “but it has always been like that.” As if violence was normal. Indeed, I slowly understood that in my genealogy, like many others women’s herstory (8)… traumas were ordinary.

One day, I did my mourning and accepted the truth : even if they believed in equality, my parents had contributed on reproducing patriarchy – they were never feminist.

There you go. I had become a feminist and a radical socialist and ecologist. Those 3 fights were all important to me, and despite my belief that ecology embraced them all, I did not see the expected convergence in ecologist groups. Moreover, when I asked my activist peers what was ecology for them, many didn’t quite know, there was no consensus. I was quite disappointed about those people (I am not gonna lie, there were mostly white rich cis dudes) fighting for something they could not quite define. For me, ecology was about links between living beings, so if inter-human solidarity was dead, how could we claim to take care of our connection with the rest of the living?

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3rd Lesson: Intersectional queer ecology, alias ecofeminism

If you’ve made it this far, you have probably asked yourself the same questions as I have. I hope this final part will bring you as much pleasure as it did for me: every time I discovered the thinking of the following authors, I felt an electric current running through my entire body ! Well, have a nice electrifying experience while reading !

As I wrote before, I did not understand how come we could claim to “save the planet” while not even being able to take care of our neighbors. In French society, Muslims are spat on, the poor are called lazy, the disabled are locked away; how are we going to take care of others with that if we can’t even respect each other ? That were my thoughts when Sandrine Rousseau appeared in the public arena : she was the first female politician to claim to be an eco-feminist. A good introduction to this train of thoughts was written by the author Jeanne Burgart Goutal (9). At a time, I had almost given up on ecology, but she reignited the flame: raped by a man, she quitted politics before to come back to say that she would not let herself be defeated by the silence. In her discourses, she supports the idea that women, like the Earth, are used, exploited, raped by men ; that patriarchy boiled down to BBQs and gold mines, a predatory regime on the rest of the living. Wow. Explosion, revelation. That was maybe the reason I felt personally offended by images showing destruction of Gaïa, that was the reason why my first fight was against islamophobia directed toward sexualized muslim women, that was the reason why I feel so deeply affected when I see an non-human animal suffering. That is how I found a name for what I felt inside : I can not be an ecologist, I am an ecofeminist.

Belonging to a movement is useful in that it gives a story to be attached to, thinkers to be inspired by. So as I dug into this school of thought, I came accros the philosopher Donna Haraway (10) who talks about this quality of friendship we could develop to other species. I like to think that this awareness is also linked to a neurodivergent queer approach to the world… the following thinkers are related to those. The first one is Paul B. Preciado that I already previously mentioned writes in Dysphoria Mundi (11) that dysphoria is not just a matter for transgender individuals, but rather a global concern. Rather than trying to “treated” the planetary dysphoria (which he criticizes psychiatry for), transitioning could be the opportunity to build something different. Indeed, in that moment of chaos where everything is questioned, anything becomes possible. While this situation is certainly not easy, it provides hope to get out of a thanatopolitical world (a concept from Foucault). Preciado (and Judith Butler) highlights that most humans (outside the western world) developed much skills and knowledge on vulnerability, meaning on how to survive in a harsh context. In short, those 3 thinkers were my introduction to a queer ecological thought, even though they do not particularly claim to align with this movement.

Although I aligned more with queer ecology, there was a spiritual aspect my linkage to the living that I could not let aside to give anchoring and meaning to my activism : my ancestors. Connecting to them reminds me how my privileges everyday are bonded to a responsibility : I owe them the power I have. I can not forget that the wealth I am surrounded by is the result of the biggest historical continental plunder. Malcolm Ferdinand’s decolonial ecology (that I previously mentioned) reminds me of it : the Anthropocene is a lie. Today, most people in poverty are women of color (and most often disabled/migrants/sex workers). They are the first victims of climate change though they are the ones who must maintain households and ensure the survival of the human species.

That is why I liked eco-feminism : its plurality allows all voices to be heard, from center to margin (1). Dynamic processes of poetic-political self-reflexive knowledges circulate between eclectic spaces creating convergences between western writers, african philosophers, latinos’ witches and asian activists. Thus I came across the inspiring Indian activist Vandana Shiva who created a movement for tree protection. I liked to listen to the sparkling and vivid thinking of the philosopher Myriam Bahaffou in podcast interviews (12) : she tells that where women live, nature is better off. She does not essentialize femininity (supposedly having a stronger connection with nature) but she explains that it is a cultural reality that today women are responsible for subsistence in agricultural economies and so have every interest in environmental stability. Thus, they ensure resilience, abundance, and protection. Another insping figure is the Kenyan biologist Wangari Muta Maathai who created and promoted a project called the Green Belt to stop the progress of the desert. She created women collectives to fight the masculine logic (also perpetrated by some women) to exploit all resources. That led villagers to cut down all the trees to use them for fuel. As a result, the desert sand was no longer stopped in its progression and began to dry up the soil making it uncultivable. Wangari passed on to the women of her community the desire to plant trees and turn villages into orchards to provide shade, moisture, and cultivability to the soil in the long term.

Something else I learn with Myriam Bahaffou was the danger of eco-macho rhetoric of “rewilding” spaces. Often, this was used as an excuse to drive local tribes out of their homes. Bahaffou argues that what is needed is a caring policy: women in communities know how to find a third way between over-exploitation and abandonment of the land. They have practices allowing the regeneration of the land and perpetuation of economic dynamics. They are better planners on the long term because they are responsible for raising children, whereas men are in a short-term “off-the-ground” exploitation logic. In one the the many previously cited podcast, Myriam Bahaffou (find her book reference in footnote 12) also describes the way women have been exploited like non-human animals throughtout history. For exemple, the first doctors were following Descartes’ theory of the mechanic animal as an excuse to vivisected living beings. Some centuries later, the first gynecologists experimented the same on black women and slaves… today, those people are “coincidentally” animalized as “gazelles”, “leopards”, or “deer”. Another exemple from Myriam Bahaffou : nowadays, makeup tests are often carried out on non-human animals and as vaccine tests are on precarious Latinos or Africans. If one has to classify living beings, it seems that the division lies more between the rich white Men and the rest of the inhabitants of the Earth than an inter-species separation. Eco-feminism is not an essentialization, but an invitation to think about the articulation of our biological reality with what we want to make of our culture and society. Eco-feminism recognizes that strategically, women and the rest of the living have suffered common mistreatment from similar oppressors. They may so have more interests in considering themselves as a community united against the ideology of the dominant – this is well explained by bell hooks’ (13) concept of margin VS center (western-valid-rational-white-cis-heteropatriarchal-capitalist-masculinity, etc.)

With these new references, I felt more legitimate to openly stand for an intersectional activism : it seemed obvious to me that all oppressions had common roots but I did not have words to think it. Theories but also tools like the Fresque des Résistances proposed by the Laboratoire des Résistances (14) helped me to articulate it with friends and (activist) relatives. Do you know the gender-race-class triptych? It is a sociological lens useful to apply on any (ecological) issues to think it in a situated way. For exemple, it helped me to carbon footprint is directly correlated with one’s positionality (15) or social gear (concept developed by the previously mentioned Laboratoire des Résistances). I understand that our privileges are directly correlated with our responsibility in the environmental crisis. Paradoxically, this social stand is also linked to the level of ignorance and inaction since more privileged we have, the less affected by climate change we are. That problem sometimes bring self-guilt, which is an issue that Jack kindly helps us overcome with his special eco-coaching 😋 so if you feel that way, contact him ! Personally, I think the loooong philosophical-political-spiritual-esthetic-epistemological-ecological discussions we had at night about the state of the world did nurture my sense of purpose.

It is almost the end, so thanks for sticking with me until there. Let’s conclude : I won’t lie, it was smoother to believe that my father’s technology could absorb all the CO2 to release it into space, that poverty exists but that is ok because I am rich, and that gender equity is just a matter of wage. I think I have become a bit doubtful, and to tell you the truth, that is not a relaxing emotion to carry on with. When I am tired of it, I reminds myself of our best philosophers (16) : owning my own responsibility and freedom can be tough, but it is also something desirable.

Becoming ecofeminism led me to Reclaim (17) the knowledge of the female body that was erased by the Inquisition and the doctors’ witch hunt in the XVIIIe century. Witches were the people’ scientists and healers. They were the precarious, divorced, old, or childless women who lived on the margins of villages and who passed down the knowledge of plants, dreams’ interpretation, and intuition. Becoming eco-feminist allowed me to find beauty in my ability to relate to other beings, sharing suffering but also joy. Becoming aware of violence and death opens up my understanding of the preciousness of each ephemeral moment of living sweetness. Being more vulnerable, I am more intensely alive, and everywhere, there could be magic in the air. Becoming ecofeminist is learning to pay attention to the breathing of trees, to the ways water flows from the clouds through us to the sea (18), is to listen to the whispered memories of our garden’s pebbles. Becoming ecofeminism gives me a new sense of belonging in my relation to Gaïa, to the invisible, to the many unknown people who are trying to inhabit the earth differently, transform our relationships to prioritize mutual aid over competition, responsibility over denial, care over contempt, contemplating celebration of the circular time over the unsatisfied agitation provoked by the linear calendar. I met peers in queer, intersectional, ecofeminist places in France : “the transition campus”, “the cat farm”, “the blue windmill”, the “weaving of dreams” … are existing proofs that give me enthusiasm and faith : I know there are so many ways to live outside of oppressive structures and I want to continue to search to grow my list so big that it would include infinite possibilities of radically ecological lives ! If you are a searcher too, I will be happy to hear about your findings !

Bibliography

(1) Lefebvre, Olivier, Letter to Doubting Engineers, l’échappée, 2023.
(2) Preciado, b. Paul, Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics, Points Feministe, Paris, 2021.
(3) Wittig, Monique, The Straight Mind, Boston, Beacon Press, 1992.
(4) Lovelock, James, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, Oxford University Press, 2000.
(5) Singer, Peter, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals (1975), Melbourne, Ecco Press, 2001.
Ricard, Matthieu, Advocacy for Animals, Allary edition, Paris, 2014.
(6) Ferdinand, Malcom, Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean World, Polity, Paris, 2022.
(7) Hoskin, R.A. Femmephobia: The Role of Anti-Femininity and Gender Policing in LGBTQ+ People’s Experiences of Discrimination. Sex Roles 81, 686–703, 2019.
(8) Herstory: oncept created/diffused first by the feminist journalist Morgan Robin
(9) Burgart Goutal, Jeanne, Being Ecofeminist – Theories and Practices, L’échappée, collection versus, 2020.
(10) Haraway, Donna, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness, Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003.
(11) Preciado, b. Paul, Dysphoria Mundi, Grasset, Paris, 2023.
(12) La Poudre with Lauren Bastide Episode 126: Myriam Bahaffou
Conversations écoféministes, Karina Kochan, Léa Chancelier, Jasmine Marty, Capucine
Néotravail #20: Des Paillettes sur le Compost de Myriam Bahaffou – Les coups de ❤️ d’Hélène & Laetiti
Avis de Tempête S2 E5 – Pratiquer les éco-féminismes depuis les marges
Book : Bahaffou, Myriam, Des paillettes sur le compost : Ecoféminismes au quotidien [Glitter on the Compost: Everyday Ecofeminisms], Le passager clandestin, 2022.
(13) Hooks, Bell, Feminist theory : from margin to center, Cambridge, MA : South End Press, 1952.
(14) Website of the association https://www.labodesresistances.fr/
(15) Bayeck, R. Y, Positionality: The Interplay of Space, Context and Identity. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2022.
(16) Sartre and the Existentialism, Camus and The Rebel… yes, yes, I know their are cis-white-het men, but don’t you think I need to add a bit of traditional Frenchness to this article to make it readable ?
(17) Hache, Emilie, RECLAIM, Anthologie de textes écoféministes, Editions Cambourakis, 2016
(18) Neimanis, AstridA, Hydrofeminism : becoming a water body, https://philo.esaaix.fr/content/hydrofeminisme/hydrofeminisme.pdf

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21 December 202324 January 2024

Guide to an eco-friendly Christmas

to support independent and ad-free ecological thinking

author

Jacques Lawinski

PhD candidate in philosophy and ecology at Université Paris VIII, visiting researcher in Lesvos, Greece. A writer, an activist, and an avid walker, I explore the planet and what it means to relate to nature, finding new, ecological ways of being.

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21/12/2023
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Ideas

Guide to an eco-friendly Christmas

In amongst the turkey, ham, barbecued meat, plastic toys, wrapping paper and gifts that you didn’t ask for, lies the desire for a Christmas where the main aim is not to consume as much as possible. This special day is for spending time with friends and family, whatever your religious beliefs. It’s also a time of year which we don’t have to dread – if we decide to choose sobriety over hyper-consumption.

Image: AI-created on perchance.org

What can we do to make our Christmas eco-friendly, and more about people than presents? Here are some of our best tips for the holiday season.

1. Have a vegetarian Christmas

Switching your meals from meat-based to plant based is one of the most effective actions you can take to lower your carbon footprint and the resource impact your food has on the planet. By choosing to skip the turkey and sausages, and instead opting for a vegetarian burger patty, a vege lasagne, or roasted or grilled vegetables, you will be reducing the ecological impact of your Christmas meal. This choice will also have a positive impact on your health!

2. Minimise the gifts, make your own, and wrap them in a paper bag

Instead of giving gifts from each member of the family to every other one, decide to have a Secret Santa system where each person gets a gift for one of their family members. Not only does this simplify your Christmas gift-giving, it also cuts down on wrapping, plastic packaging, and ending up with too many gifts that you don’t really need. Opt to put your present in a plain brown paper bag, instead of using wrapping paper with a plastic layer on it, which often cannot be recycled. Fold the top of the bag instead of using cellotape, and write a message on the bag with a felt-tip pen. As for the choice of gift, making them yourself, or choosing something without plastic packaging, such as experiences, gift vouchers, and second-hand objects, are effective ways to reduce the waste produced at your Christmas party.

3. Avoid online shopping, instead use local stores

Instead of buying gifts from the other side of the planet, and giving your money to global billionaires like Jeff Bezos, choose local stores who will benefit from your purchases, just as you will benefit from their local products. Choose bookstores not billionaires, shop local, and other such campaigns point to effective ways to reduce transport emissions and support community businesses. The ecological transition is not only about carbon emissions, it’s also about creating a just and fair world for all. This includes challenging the wealth of global billionaires, which we cannot do whilst also shopping using their online platforms.

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4. Think twice about the Christmas tree and decorations

Although it’s nice to have a Christmas tree, the trees often come from monoculture plantations where trees are planted and grow just for the Christmas period. Perhaps worse is to have a plastic tree, unless you plan on keeping the same plastic tree for the next thirty or so years. Avoid buying more plastic decorations, tinsel, and the like, for your tree. Make some decorations with your kids or friends using paper and origami if you’re short on decorations. Only turn the lights on at night when you can actually see them to save on electricity use and power costs!

5. Decide on your Christmas convos before the day

It’s likely there’s one or two climatosceptics amongst your Christmas group, so think about other topics you can discuss with them during the day, or ways that you can talk about your sober decisions this Christmas that aren’t patronising or moralising towards them. Engaging others in a healthy discussion about their actions is good, but try to avoid blaming them. You could talk about the origins of Christmas being celebrated on the 25^th of December, for example – around the celebrations of the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, and decorations of houses with leaves and branches hoping for good regrowth of the plants and food crops in the new year to come. This period of the year, in the Northern Hemisphere, is traditionally very connected with the natural cycles of the Earth.

6. Make your resolutions for 2024 ecological

Christmas is also the time of year when we think about the New Year to come, and for many, make resolutions about the things we could change in 2024. Making at least some of these resolutions related to your impact on the environment, your relationship with nature, and your efforts in restoring the natural environment, are important steps. If you are already very engaged, resolving to take time for yourself doing things you enjoy, or making other small steps towards further reconnection with nature, are good ideas. Bringing up the conversation of climate goals for 2024 could be a good idea at your Christmas party – up to you to choose, depending on the people!

A vegetarian Christmas...

Southern Hemisphere:

- Aubergines and tomatoes cooked in the oven, with optional fresh feta sprinkled on top afterwards
- Buckwheat salad with rocket, tomatoes, capers, olives, and grilled vegetables
- Lightly grilled courgette halves, on the barbecue
- Rock melon with mozzarella, honey, and balsamic vinegar, basil leaves on top
- Lentil burgers with your favourite spices, cooked rice, breadcrumbs and olive oil
- Vegetarian pizza cooked on the barbecue with your favourite toppings
- Salad with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, fresh herbs, rocket, olive oil and lemon juice or balsamic vinegar

Desserts with local fresh summer berries are always nice, such as pies, tarts, trifle, pavlova, etc.

Northern Hemisphere:

- Oven-baked fennel, cut in half, sprinkled with salt and drizzled with olive oil
- Wok-cooked broccoli with soy sauce and ginger
- Japanese-style green beans, blanched with a sesame dressing
- Mushrooms with olive oil and garlic, served with polenta
- Roast potatoes (boil them slightly first, then roast them in olive oil and salt until golden brown)

Desserts with oranges, apples, pears, and dried fruits are perfect for this cold season – Christmas cakes, apple pies…

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30 October 202330 October 2023

Is recycling really that great?

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Jacques Lawinski

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30/10/2023
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Ideas, Politics

Is recycling really that great?

Recycling is often heralded by business and government as an effective way to combat climate change and pollution problems. Does that claim stack up? You’ll discover that in fact, reusable glass bottles are the best packaging option over short distances, and not recycling. It will also become clear that recycling is a way for companies to shift responsibility for their waste to consumers, rather than addressing the problem themselves.

Plastic brick company Lego announced recently that they are abandoning their project to make Lego pieces from recycled plastic bottles. Lego is trying to reduce its impact on the environment through changing the materials it uses to produce the bricks. They currently use acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), which needs about 2kg of petrol to make 1kg of plastic. The test involved recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) from plastic bottles, but the conclusion was, according to the company, that recycled bricks would result in higher carbon dioxide emissions and a larger environmental impact than the current process.

In New Zealand, only 29% of plastic bottles are recycled, yet the world average for plastic bottles is 50%. Consumer Magazine conducted some research in 2021 into the extent to which plastic packaging was recyclable. In New Zealand, 52% of plastic packaging was found to be, in practice not recyclable, despite some claims made by manufacturers. This result was the second worst (behind Brazil at 92%) among the countries tested. In Australia, only 14% of plastic packaging is not recyclable.

Despite this, New Zealanders still believe that recycling is one of the most effective actions to combat climate change. In some research into environmental attitudes by IPSOS in 2022, 62% of respondents are already recycling, and a further 33% are likely to start recycling in the next year, totalling 95% of the population who are now likely to be recycling. However, 50% of New Zealanders believe that recycling is one of the top three actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In actual fact, recycling comes in at 60^th place, behind numerous other actions that are more effective.

As Lego have found out, recycling plastic isn’t exactly a carbon-friendly process. It involves the emissions of carbon dioxide in processes that transform the plastic from bottles into plastic that is strong to make Lego bricks. Recycling is a process which involves the addition of energy in order to transform one thing, into something else. As we will see, reusable packaging is more environmentally-friendly than recycling.

Plastic Recycling

In 2019, plastics generated 1.8 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – 3.4% of global emissions. 90% of these emissions came from the production of plastic, because plastic is made through using fossil fuels like petrol. The OECD believe that by 2060, the impact of plastics is set to more than double, from 1.8 to 4.3 billion tonnes of GHG emissions.

In 2019, researchers from the University of California looked into the relative emissions of different ways of treating plastics. They concluded that it wasn’t recycling that had the largest impact; rather, using 100% renewable energy in the production process was the most effective way to reduce plastic emissions, by 51%.

The researchers analysed four different strategies:

Replacing fossil-fuel plastics with bio-plastics, in this case made from sugarcane.
Using renewable energy in the production process (using wind power and biogas).
Recycling plastics
Reducing growth in demand from 4% per year to 2% per year.

They report, “Our study demonstrates the need for integrating energy, materials, recycling and demand-management strategies to curb growing life-cycle GHG emissions from plastics.” In an interview with the University of California to release the article, the authors explained what they meant. “We thought that any one of these strategies should have curbed the greenhouse gas emissions of plastics significantly,” author Sangwon Suh said. But they didn’t. “We tried one and it didn’t really make much impact. We combined two, still the emissions were there. And then we combined all of them. Only then could we see a reduction in future greenhouse gas emissions from the current level.”

What this study shows is that recycling by itself has very little impact on the emissions generated by plastic. It is only when combined with other changes, including reducing the growth rate of our consumption of plastic, that we see an overall impact.

Plastic is a good material, economically speaking, because it is strong, lightweight, cheap to produce, and easy to make. That is why many companies use plastic, for construction, packaging, everyday items, and more. However, plastic is incredibly damaging to the environment, and in many cases today requires fossil fuels like petrol to produce. We should also be asking whether plastic is the material to be using in an ecological future. Is transitioning to a ‘circular economy’ of plastic recycling even a good idea?

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Is plastic recycling part of an environmentally-friendly future?

Chelsea M. Rochman, Mark Anthony Browne, and other scientists make the case for classifying plastics as hazardous waste materials, and not solid waste, as they are currently. This is for multiple reasons. Firstly, plastics break down slowly in the environment, where they gradually make their way into food webs of small animals such as fish, invertebrates, and microorganisms, which ingest small bits of plastics called microplastics. When microplastics enter an organism’s tissue, they cause harm, such as tissue degradation and cellular dysfunction. It is estimated that human beings ingest up to 5 grams of microplastics per week.

Further, the ingredients in plastics, such as monomers, polystyrene, polyurethane and polycarbonate can be carcinogenic – they can cause cancer. Polyethylene, however, which is used to make plastic bags, is often thought to be safer. However, even these plastics can become dangerous when they pick up traces of pesticides, and end up disrupting key physiological processes in the body. Plastics also contain endocrine disruptors – molecules that stop some of the functions of the endocrine system, leading to cancer, thyroid disruption, and other non-communicable diseases.

The authors note that the same approach was used to clean up the atmosphere of Chloroflurocarbons (CFCs) some years ago: they were classed as hazardous materials, and began to stop being used, and when they are used, they are treated with extreme caution. Rochman and Browne therefore call for the most harmful plastics to be replaced by safer materials, and then for a closed-loop recycling of these safer materials.

Currently, 430 million tonnes of plastic are produced yearly, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, which is more than the weight of all human beings on the planet (390 million tonnes). Globally, 95% of all plastic used in packaging is disposed of after one use, and one third of this is not collected – it therefore enters the environment unmanaged, and causes pollution.

The best solution to waste management problems such as this is to not produce the waste in the first place – especially as a huge proportion of plastic packaging is used once and then disposed of. There are alternatives to this packaging that exist, for example, selling items in bulk, or in reusable containers, which have much lower emissions, and do not produce waste. The pollution problem with recycling schemes is the leaks in the system: every time plastic is not thrown away into a bin, it enters the environment and is then incredibly difficult to clean up, as it begins to affect other animals and plants.

What about glass and aluminium cans?

In 2020, Zero Waste Europe conducted a study to measure the difference in emissions between different types of packaging. They found out that in most cases, reusable glass bottles are the best option.

Recycled glass bottles require 75% of the energy used in the production of new glass bottles. However, glass bottles can also be washed and re-used. Reused glass bottles produce 85% lower emissions than single-use glass bottles, 75% lower emissions than plastic (PET) and 57% lower than aluminium cans. However, emissions for glass per unit of packaging are consistently 3-4 times greater than for plastics and aluminium.

When comparing reusable glass bottles to single-use PET plastic bottles, the glass bottles are preferable. Despite having much higher initial emissions, gradually the emissions balance out when the glass bottles are reused. However, this is only the case with smaller bottles. 2-litre plastic bottles and re-used glass bottles have approximately the same emissions.

Looking at aluminium cans, reused glass bottles seem to win again. After only three uses, glass bottles have lower emissions than single-use cans.

Transport distance also plays a role in the emissions involved in a particular type of packaging. With distances of more than 100km, reusable glass bottles have higher emissions than cartons or bags in a box, because of the transport of the bottles to be cleaned, refilled, and sent back to the distribution point.

In sum, the authors conclude that 76% of studies they looked at showed that reusable packaging is the most environmentally friendly option. Recycling is more energy intensive than reusing packaging, and recycling involves a new input of energy each time, whereas the effects of reusing packaging are balanced out over multiple uses. The more something is reused, the lower the total emissions for this type of packaging.

Is recycling a worthwhile behaviour, then?

Recycling is a behaviour done, in most cases, by the consumers themselves. When you buy a bottle of Coca-Cola, or a can of peaches, it is up to you to make the choice whether to recycle or not. This of course depends upon the recycling facilities in the area where you are using these items: if you are in a park with no recycling bins, the bottle of Coca-Cola probably won’t end up being recycled; when you’re at home, the tin of peaches probably will be recycled.

This is a good and easy solution for companies. They do not have to take any responsibility for their products, and the impacts of the packaging that they use. If something is not recycled, or is found in the environment somewhere, it is because a careless consumer put it there – not because the producer made a product in a plastic bottle. The possibility that their products can be recycled is both a selling point and a way to shirk responsibility. In the mid to late 1970’s, Coca-Cola switched from reusable glass bottles to plastic bottles, which were more light-weight and cheaper to produce. Coca-Cola and Pepsi were among the founding members of Keep America Beautiful, an organisation aimed at reducing the amount of waste thrown into the environment. The result? Cheaper costs of production for Coca-Cola, and advertising campaigns placing the responsibility on those who drink these beverages, rather than the company that produces them.

As we have seen, reusable glass bottles are one of the most carbon-friendly packaging options. Recycling is a process that involves adding a lot of energy to transform the old item into a new one. Reusing packaging means that we must simply clean it, and then use it again.

How do I decide which packaging is best?

For most of us, the most effective action when it comes to packaging is to follow these simple rules, in order:

- Does this item I am purchasing need packaging? If not, don’t use it or don’t buy a version of it with packaging. For example, buy loose apples rather than plastic-wrapped ones. Avoid packaging wherever possible.
- If the item needs packaging, can I use a glass bottle or jar to buy the item? Most pantry goods, as well as cleaning liquids, can be bought in bulk in this way. You can get flour, oats, soy sauce, olive oil, laundry detergent, and more, and use reusable glass jars.
- If the item cannot be bought like this, is there an option which doesn’t involve plastic? For example, buying soap wrapped in paper rather than plastic, jam in a glass jar rather than plastic pot, etc.
- Finally comes the choice of recyclable packaging. Which among the options involves recyclable packaging? This is sure to be better than single-use throw-away plastic.

As we have seen, there are many alternatives to recycling, and purchasing items in recyclable packaging is a good action, but by no means the most effective way to reduce emissions.

To have the most impact, the companies producing goods must change the packaging and distribution of the goods they are selling. Consumers are not the ones responsible for this packaging, nor are they able to start buying in reusable jars if the producers do not sell their products in this way. By pointing out the inefficiency of recycling to your favourite brands on social media, and choosing to shop at places where reusable containers are welcome, we can force companies to change their packaging.

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20 July 202314 December 2023

Geo-engineering

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IN-DEPTH SPECIAL

Geo-engineering

Shooting chemicals into the atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays back into space, and adding them to clouds to make them brighter, are no longer part of our science-fiction imaginary. Geo-engineering, in its many forms, is gaining ground as a necessary and inevitable way to protect the earth and its inhabitants from the worst effects of climate change.

Geo-engineering is, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “A broad set of methods and technologies that aim to deliberately alter the climate system in order to alleviate the impacts of climate change..” Therefore, all the studies and research into ways that we can change the climate ourselves, to be protected from climate change, are projects of geo-engineering. This ranges from adding chemicals into clouds above the ocean to save the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, adding silver iodide into clouds on the Tibetan plain by the Chinese Government to modify rainfall patterns, carbon capture and storage systems in Iceland, and those researched in the UK and US (among many other countries), and at its most basic level, New Zealand’s planting of monoculture forests to capture carbon dioxide from the air.

Two forms of geo-engineering

There are two main ways of going about modifying the climate. Let’s call them the pump, and the thermostat.

The pump

The pump method refers to the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, in various ways. We try to pump the emissions that we have already created back into the ground, to store them there instead. This could be through ‘natural’ means like planting trees, or through technologies like Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). We do this to reduce the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere, which is one of the leading causes of climate change and the wider ecological crisis.

The thermostat

The thermostat method tries to control the average temperature of the biosphere. Human activity is causing increasing temperatures in the atmosphere, which world governments have pledged to keep below an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius. In order to reduce those temperatures, we can either make the earth’s surface shinier, so that the sun’s rays are reflected back into space, and are not absorbed by the ground here, or we can modify the atmosphere itself, so that it lets through less light from the sun, and therefore less heat energy.

The pros

There are many reasons why we might consider geo-engineering methods. If the world cannot reduce its carbon emissions before the worst effects are felt, which seems to be the case, it will need to find ways to protect life from the effects of these emissions. Geo-engineering is one way to buy us time to decarbonise, and achieve the net-zero targets that have been set. Another reason is that it is relatively cheap and easy to deploy some of these solutions, which, according to certain sectors in the economy, would be easier than decarbonising their industries. Geo-engineering also has support from a moral or ethical standpoint, with some people claiming we must do everything we can to stop the disastrous consequences of climate change. Major proponents of geo-engineering include Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Bill Gates (Microsoft), and Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter). Almost all researchers and funders of geo-engineering in the United States are white, middle-aged, and male.

The cons

Those who disagree with geo-engineering projects currently seem to outnumber those who are in favour of it, however there does appear to be some silent support among scientific, technical and economic communities. Arguments against geo-engineering point first and foremost to the risks involved in these projects. The ‘thermostat’ methods of geo-engineering could disrupt rainfall, including the Indian monsoon season, putting the lives of billions of people at risk. Furthermore, once you start injecting clouds or modifying the atmosphere, you cannot stop. Some models predict up to 800 years of continuous climate intervention to avoid a termination shock where world temperatures increase by around 4 degrees in 10 years, rather than 100 years. These projects require enormous amounts of energy, water, and in some cases mineral resources to run, which would have to be sustained through government changes, war, pandemic, and more. There is also no current way to regulate or govern the countries (and wealthy private individuals) who may start geo-engineering projects: anyone can, at present, add sulphur to the atmosphere, and this decision will impact not just one country, but the whole planet. Likewise, once one country begins, we may enter a war of the sky, where countries vie to control the modification of the atmosphere. Geo-engineering is also another reason for climate delay and inaction, allowing us to continue to emit and pollute. Solar geo-engineering would turn the sky white, having potential impacts on mental health worldwide. Finally, we don’t actually know what effect geo-engineering will have on a large scale: all we have are experiments and models. The side effects of any project, including carbon storage, could be much, much worse. Major detractors of geo-engineering include Andreas Malm (The Future is the Termination Shock), Naomi Klein (This Changes Everything), and Elizabeth Kolbert (Under a White Sky).

Who is geo-engineering?

Mark Zuckerberg supports a company attempting to genetically modify plants, such as rice, corn and wheat, so that they absorb more carbon dioxide (The Innovative Genomics Institute in San Francisco). Bill Gates supports the start-up Carbon Engineering, aiming to increase the amount of petrol extracted from wells through carbon capture and storage technology. Elon Musk’s foundation, XPrize, has allocated $100 million USD to the development of carbon capture technologies. The United States government in 2021 allocated $3.5 billion USD to create four hubs for carbon capture and storage. The Chinese government is involved in a project called the Celestial River, aiming to artificially increase the rainfall over the Tibetan plain. Governments in Australia, the UK, Thailand, France, India, United Arab Emirates, and Germany are also involved in geo-engineering projects and/or research at some level.

And New Zealand...

New Zealand is not currently involved in any technical geo-engineering projects, however natural geo-engineering is very much part of the country’s strategy. Using seaweed to sequester carbon is being researched and carried out. Likewise, planting trees (unfortunately usually monoculture forests) is a key part of the Government’s zero-carbon strategy for 2050, with the One Billion Trees Programme. The debate on geo-engineering in New Zealand seems to be almost dead, with the Government associating any mention of the word with conspiracy theory and false suggestions that storms such as Cyclone Gabrielle were man-made.

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That's just the overview. Click on the topics below to learn more about geo-engineering.

Solar Radiation and Protection

Sweden’s Space Agency, along with backers and technicians from Harvard University in the United States, were preparing to launch the pilot project SCoPEx in the summer of 2021. This project would be one of the first experimental trials of solar radiation geo-engineering in the world. Until this point, researchers had only been able to use computer models to predict what might happen, and to design potential balloons to disperse aerosols into the stratosphere.

But, after protests from indigenous groups and climate activists, Sweden’s Space Agency called off the test, citing concerns over safety, and potential risks and hazards for the Earth’s atmosphere. Blocking the sun to fight climate change would have to remain a project within the computer models for some time to come.

How does it work?

Solar radiation geo-engineering aims to inject aerosols into the upper part of the Earth’s atmosphere, the stratosphere, in order to block sunlight from reaching the Earth. Normally, a small amount of these compounds are found in the atmosphere, such as ozone, which protects the Earth’s inhabitants from excessive sunlight. By increasing the amount of these gases such as sulphur in the atmosphere, engineers hope to be able to stop the Earth from warming. This is because the radiation from the sun will be reflected back into space by the aerosols that we inject. The process is like a human-engineered, continuous volcanic eruption: when volcanoes erupt, they spew out large quantities of sulphur gases into the atmosphere. In 1991, Mt Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted, and 20 million tons of sulphur reduced global temperatures by 0.5 degrees Celsius for one year.

This is necessary because of the largely unsuccessful Kyoto Protocol, in which 147 parties, (governments), pledged to decrease emissions by individually agreed targets. We are already at 1.2 degrees of warming, and the Earth is projected to reach 1.5 degrees of warming by 2050, if not before.

The arguments

In 2006, Paul Crutzen, a scientist in Germany and the United States, published an article on stratospheric injections which broke the taboo on the topic amongst researchers. He argued that we needed to develop this technology, because it is a hugely effective way of reducing global temperatures almost immediately at relatively little cost. We needed solar radiation geo-engineering in our back pockets, if things go disastrously wrong, or if we are unable to decarbonise our economies in time. Geo-engineering is therefore the deus ex machina waiting in the wings, ready to save the planet when the time is right. It buys us time to decarbonise, and reinforces the fact that human beings are still the masters of their own destiny: innovation and technology will be able to save the day.

This position follows a technical and engineering logic: we have the technology available, we have the means, and it doesn’t cost too much, so why not develop it? Proponents believe that all technological means to fight climate change are good, if they are rationally used and controlled by world governments. Taking out 1-2% of sunlight would be enough to undo 2 centuries of fossil fuel combustion. The whole problem of climate change could go away, if we are able to design and operate this technical solution in a rational manner. And, according to David Keith in 2000, this whole process would be cheaper than climate mitigation and the reduction of emissions. $30 million USD would compensate one years’ global emissions. Proponents of solar geo-engineering now say that both emissions reductions and geo-engineering are necessary.

Andreas Malm, a Swedish researcher in climate and ecological politics, and a climate activist, wrote an article series in 2022 decrying the risks of solar radiation geo-engineering. The biggest risk with solar geo-engineering is what he terms “termination shock.” Once anyone in society – a business, a government, a wealthy private individual – starts putting aerosols into the atmosphere with the aim of reducing solar radiation on earth, the process must be continued or, theoretically, scaled down very slowly, otherwise the Earth’s temperatures will rebound incredibly quickly. To illustrate this, think about what happens when you try to fix a leak in a pipe under your kitchen sink. To stop water from going down into the pipe, you put the plug into the sink. Water builds up in the sink, but doesn’t flow down into the pipe, so you can fix it. It looks like there’s no leak any more, because you have stopped the flow of water. But, if for whatever reason, the plug is removed, dislodged, or faulty, lots of water will flow out into the pipes, making the leak worse. The same thing happens with the aerosols in the atmosphere. We can pretend that there is no longer any global warming, all the while increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. When we stop injecting aerosols, all of a sudden, the sun’s radiation would heat up the Earth by about 4 degrees in 10 years, rather than 100 years.

What reasons might cause us to stop or pause solar geo-engineering, once it was started? Another pandemic like COVID-19 might be cause to force people to stay home for months, meaning the operators and engineers of this technology couldn’t go to work, fix problems, and operate the planes or balloons that inject the aerosols. The workers could go on strike over low pay and high-risk conditions, or they could object to the risks or potential damage their job was doing to the world. China and the United States could begin a war to control the skies, each wishing to be the one determining how much of the aerosols were pumped out, and therefore how many tonnes of CO₂they could continue to emit. A rogue state could decide they wanted more, and start their own programme, meaning that the official programme of geo-engineering would need to immediately be scaled back, otherwise we could completely block out all sun light, and all living beings would die. There are numerous possible scenarios which would mean that this geo-engineering project would stop, and the effects of the termination shock would make themselves felt.

As a result of the termination shock, Malm says it would be like opening the door to a furnace on Earth. No species would be able to adapt itself to radical temperature increases in such as short space of time. Smith compares solar geo-engineering to morphine – it’s incredibly addictive, and once begun, it’s hard to stop.

Further, the modelling shows that solar geo-engineering would disrupt current climate systems, meaning the possible end to the Indian monsoon season, affecting the possibility of life for more than 2 billion people. The Earth’s overall climate would become more even – the tropics would overcool, and the poles would over-heat, according to the models. Some researchers, such as Holly Jean Buck, argue that this is a tool for equality and peace – if we all have the same climate conditions, how can we complain? I’m not entirely sure we would find anyone in the tropics who thought that their inequality with the West could be fixed by making the weather patterns of their region more like the United States and Europe…

Those who argue for solar geo-engineering make a big assumption, which Malm points out. They assume that the technology will be rolled out and managed in a rational, controlled, and pre-determined manner, and that it will remain this way for the up to 800 years of solar radiation blocking necessary to cool the Earth. But, if the world was rationally run, we would not need geo-engineering in the first place. The threats of global ecosystem collapse from the 1970’s would have been heeded, our economies decarbonised, and crisis avoided, well before getting to the point of needed to engineer the climate. Someone, somewhere, must steer the planet from harm just at the right time, with the right amount of action.

Would the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) be able to do that? Or perhaps the United Nations? Or the United States Government? Let’s ask another question: do states currently listen to and follow the directives of the IPCC? No, because again, if they did, emissions would be radically declining and we would not have crossed six of the nine planetary boundaries. We cannot expect such things to happen if we start geo-engineering, either.

Other risks include the fact that the sky will turn a milky-white colour, for the duration of the programme; disrupted climate systems across the globe; potential crop losses as a result of reduced sunlight for plants to grow; collapse of the rain systems across the globe; solar power plants producing less electricity; ozone depletion; air pollution and therefore human health consequences; more acid rain; the coagulation of sulphates in the atmosphere, and more. What’s more, climbing temperatures is one of the major reasons currently to decarbonise, and by masking this problem, we could lull ourselves into thinking that further carbon emissions are acceptable.

These effects sound just as bad, if not worse, than the effects of the climate change and global warming that solar radiation geoengineering is attempting to solve. It would seem the only rational question is, “why not just reduce our emissions?” It is a safe and effective way of responding to climate change. If done well, it will reduce inequalities, improve mental health, reduce waste, reduce habitat and species loss, and more.

Carbon Capture and Storage

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)

The United Kingdom company Drax is promising to be part of a sustainable energy revolution in the UK. Instead of burning coal, Drax has reconverted its factories to burn biomass instead. Biomass is a fancy word for wood chips. Through a legal loophole, by burning wood instead of coal the company avoids its emissions being counted as part of the national emissions total. The UK, through Drax’s power, can reduce its emissions without actually reducing them.

Drax claims that their wood chips are sustainably sourced from offcuts and sawdust in wood factories. This, however, as the New York Times has investigated, is not the case. Drax cuts down forests in the United States and Canada, some of which are primary growth forests (those that have never before been cut down for human use), and ships the trees to the United Kingdom to be burned at their plants. Drax are also researching Biomass Energy Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), so that the carbon dioxide released from burning the wood chips is captured and stored in the earth, rather than released into the atmosphere. They hope to build two power stations by 2030, each capable of removing 8 million tonnes of CO₂ per year. That’s equal to 1.6% of the UK’s national yearly emissions. As yet, however, despite calling their enterprise sustainable, they continue to cut down trees and burn them, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

This is just one example of how carbon capture and storage is being used in conjunction with other supposedly sustainable methods of energy generation to “reduce” carbon emissions in the world’s largest economies. The largest project of carbon storage is the Orca factory in Iceland, run by the Swiss company Climeworks. The factory currently occupies 1,700m² of land, filled with fans to capture the carbon dioxide in the air. The gas is liquefied then stored one kilometre underground in basalt rock. The cost of this project sits at $15 million USD, and the factory currently sucks out 4,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. That’s equivalent to three seconds of global emissions. Climeworks want to capture 1% of world emissions by 2025. Based on current progress, the dreams of millions of tonnes of CO₂ being sequestered every year seem very, very far off.

How does it work?

There are two main methods of removing carbon: collecting carbon dioxide directly from chimneys (Carbon Capture and Storage, CCS), or sucking the gas out of the air (Direct Air Capture, DAC).

Capturing carbon directly from chimneys involves attaching a capturing device to the infrastructure already present, such as the wood burning factories of Drax in the UK. Then, the carbon dioxide is compressed, and needs to be stored somewhere deep in the earth where it is not going to be released.

Capturing carbon from the air involved hundreds of huge turbines, sucking in air and capturing the carbon dioxide as the air passes through. These turbines are constructed in an industrial cooling tower, which pumps water around to stop them from overheating. The carbon dioxide in the air is converted into potassium carbonate, through a reaction with potassium hydroxide sitting on thin plastic sheets within the turbines. These pellets of chemical salt undergo further chemical reactions to produce pure carbon dioxide.

Today, this technology is primarily used by petroleum companies. They extract carbon dioxide from the air, in order to pump it back into the oil wells and force the oil to the surface. They use the emissions of burning fossil fuels in order to extract more fossil fuels…

In a trial in Iceland with the first carbon being injected into the ground, the researchers on the CarbFix project realised that micro-organisms in the rocks were feeding on the carbon dioxide being injected, meaning that injection possibilities were considerably reduced. Now, instead of injecting the CO₂ at 100 degrees Celsius, it’s injected at 250 degrees Celsius, killing off all microbes, and potential microorganisms in the rocks. It’s estimated that 60% of species living 1km into the earth’s surface are still unknown to humans, but this has not been factored into the plans or risks involved, as noted by those who are using the technology.

Another, more ‘natural’ method of carbon sequestration, is through using trees and other plants. New Zealand, like some other countries, has committed to planting 1 billion trees by 2028. When plants grow, they use the carbon dioxide in the air to make the organic molecules they need. These molecules of glucose are stored in the plant. The water that the plant absorbs is also taken up and converted into oxygen, which the plant releases. This process is called photosynthesis, which is part of the Earth’s carbon cycle. Therefore, trees such as the radiata pine tree are often used to capture and store carbon, because they require carbon dioxide to grow, therefore taking it out of the atmosphere. Often, the trees planted are not native trees to the area, and are planted with the idea that they will be cut down eventually. This means that we are not creating biodiverse native forests with habitats for other species; rather, we are engineering a human ‘forest’ for the sole purpose of sucking out carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

All other plants do this too – corn, wheat, and soy for example. Mark Zuckerberg supports research by the Innovative Genomics Institute, exploring how to genetically modify these crops, so that they absorb more carbon dioxide from the air: they want to make the process of photosynthesis go faster, and occur in greater quantities in the same plant. This gene-editing technology is called CRISPR, developed by Nobel prize winner Jennifer Doudna.

Using trees to suck up carbon

Using seaweed and the ocean

The ocean is another large storehouse of carbon on the planet. So much so that the IPCC has written a paper in their 6^th cycle of reporting on Ocean Carbon Storage. According to them, over the past 200 years the oceans have taken up 500Gt of CO₂, whilst humanity has emitted 1,300Gt of emissions in the same period. Not all carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere, therefore: quite a large proportion of it ends up in the ocean. Carbon dioxide can be injected into the ocean, or we can use plants such as kelp (seaweed) to the same effect. New Zealand firm Blue Carbon is researching this method, and hopes to more effective at sequestering carbon than its land-based alternative. A trial in South Korea showed that for one hectare of algae, 10 tonnes of CO₂ were captured, per year. That’s an almost insignificant amount, less than the average emissions of one New Zealander in a year.

By adding fertilisers such as iron and nitrates into the ocean, we can encourage seaweed to grow faster, taking up more carbon dioxide. There are, once again, several risks with this method, including the destruction of all marine life through the de-oxygenation of areas of the ocean. Ocean acidification, warmer oceans, and disrupted current flows are also possible consequences. It is, however, possible for this process to occur somewhat naturally – that would involve returning sea life to pre-industrial levels (sustainable fisheries, elimination of ocean pollution, reduction of ocean acidification, and more).

The arguments

The arguments for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), Direct Air Capture (DAC), and carbon sequestration through land or sea are very similar to the arguments in the case of solar radiation. We need more time to be able to decarbonise our economies; we have the technology available, so we should pour money into researching ways to make it commercially viable; and the fact that we should be fighting climate change “by any means necessary.” Geo-engineering projects allow Western societies to keep the status-quo lifestyle intact, and not make major changes to their dominant way of life and values. By allowing us to overshoot the target of 1.5 degrees, it permits emissions to continue for longer than they would otherwise be able. This current generation in power will not have to deal with the reality of climate change.

Capturing carbon from the air and from chimneys is seen as a much less risky way of geo-engineering than solar radiation and protection. It doesn’t involve disturbing ecosystems and climate patterns in quite the same way as injecting aerosols into the stratosphere. There is no risk of termination shock – any and all carbon captured and stored is a net benefit to the planet and humanity, and any that remains will be the cause of global warming – which we are currently facing. No added consequences will be felt.

The problem with all these technologies is that they require large amounts of energy, materials such as rare earth metals, and water, to be able to run. Each CCS plant requires around 6km² of land space, and 30km of air-sucking machinery. To remove 1 trillion tonnes of CO₂ (we have emitted 1.3 trillion tonnes since industrial times) would require land twice the size of India, or the whole of the land mass of Australia. That means large amounts of land would need to be reconverted to carbon capture plants, throughout the world. Land that could be reforested, used for farming, or housing, would have large turbines installed to capture and collect the carbon. In terms of water use, to capture and store just the yearly emissions of the United States, 130 billion tonnes of water would be necessary, each year. Estimates for the costs of such endeavours could be up to $570 trillion USD this century.

The technology for carbon capture and storage is currently being used in large part by oil companies to increase the yields of their oil wells, by injecting carbon dioxide that they have captured from the air. CCS is a way to increase profitability from oil deposits where the oil is difficult to extract. It’s hard to see carbon capture and storage as something other than a profit-seeking initiative by the companies who engage in it. As will be discussed in more detail in the Carbon Markets section, the first company who can capture and store 1 tonne of carbon dioxide for less money than the price of one tonne of carbon on the carbon market, has themselves a way of making immense profits. Perhaps that is why it is often not governments investing in this technology, but private individuals such as Elon Musk and Bill Gates.

In the case of biofuels, and Biomass Energy Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), growing large plantations of monoculture forests requires a very large amount of land. Were this to be taken up large-scale, land would be required both for agriculture and food, and energy. A fire, storm or flood that wipes out food crops and monoculture biomass forests would deprive a community of both electricity and food. Plants and animals that previously lived in areas devoted to monoculture forests would lose their habitat, and would be threatened with extinction. Even “marginal land” is not completely devoid of life. Further, if biofuel becomes more profitable to grow than food, there is nothing to protect people from farmers who convert their agricultural farms into forests to earn more, resulting in potential food shortages.

For the methods that use living organisms to sequester carbon, such as radiata pine trees on land and kelp in the oceans, these methods are not without their risks. All trees require time to sequester carbon from the air into the soil: this is not a process that happens immediately. Further, native biodiverse long-growth forests are much better in the long run at sequestering carbon than monoculture pine forests. They also support other living beings in diverse ecosystems, in a permanent way. If the land where these trees are grown is subsequently tilled or ploughed, much of the sequestered carbon will be released back into the atmosphere. The other oceanic option, growing kelp, risks massive de-oxygenation of areas of the sea, where it becomes impossible for any other marine life to live.

Money, Carbon Markets, and Investors

Why are world governments not funding geo-engineering projects at the same scale as private wealthy individuals? Who are the proponents of geo-engineering, and why are they advocating for it? Where is the money flowing, and who stands to benefit from geo-engineering projects? An important part of ecological analysis is to consider flows of capital, both material capital and money. Let’s dig into these questions.

More power, more money

Bill Gates has put $8 million USD into solar radiation management and direct carbon capture technologies. Elon Musk has allocated $100 million USD to carbon capture technologies. The Chan-Zuckerberg Foundation has given $11 million USD to genetically modify plants to increase their photosynthesis capabilities. Meanwhile, the United States Government in 2019 authorised only $4 million to be spent in geo-engineering research. In 2021, a 300-page report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in the United States, “Reflecting Sunlight,” for the first time recommended a coordinated national research programme to explore geo-engineering possibilities. Governments and think tanks around the world seem to be showing little interest in geo-engineering. New Zealand’s Government seems scared of the very use of the word, associating anyone who talks about it with conspiracy theory. A look through the Official Information Act requests demonstrates this.

To think that people such as Gates and Musk are simply benevolent and compassionate human beings looking after the welfare of the rest of the planet would be quite naïve. Surely they cannot have realised the colossal destructive impact that their empires have had on this planet, and are now repenting by paying us back with the invention of technologies to save the world. If they really did recognise the threat, they certainly would not be taking private jets around the planet, and would probably have wound up their businesses with interests in fossil fuels (most of them).

More likely, therefore, is that they are proposing geo-engineering because it is a way for them to keep the capital – in the form of wealth and power – that they have accumulated through a capitalist economic structure. They have a direct interest in keeping this fossil-fuel dominated way of life alive: it brings them more money and means they are powerful people.

These elites will retain their power because geo-engineering enables them to mask the true effects of increased carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Without solar radiation reflecting light back, world temperatures will increase by more than 1.5 degrees in at most 20 years. With it, however, world temperatures can be kept at an acceptable level. “Climate change” can be averted, never mind the other consequences. Their dream of a techno-rational empire, where science and technology are able to solve all of the problems of humanity, is one step closer to proving itself as the only way forward. Such an empire, of course, will not be controlled by world governments or organisations, like the United Nations; rather, it will be owned and run by private enterprise: the enterprises of Musk and Gates.

How will these wealthy individuals make money through geo-engineering the planet? The answer lies in the global carbon markets. In New Zealand, we have set up an emissions trading scheme (ETS) which puts a price on each tonne of carbon emitted. Companies can purchase the right to emit carbon into the atmosphere, and land owners or carbon extraction companies can sell credits to these companies, because they are storing carbon in the ground.

The first company or person who can store carbon for less money than it costs to emit one tonne of carbon enters into a very beneficial position: they can make others pay, through the carbon market, for them to store carbon in the ground, and make a profit.

For example, if it costs a company $100 to store 1 tonne of carbon in the ground, and the price of carbon on the carbon market is $200, for every tonne of carbon they store using their technology, they make 100%, or $100. A company with one plant that stores 8 million tonnes a year would, in this model, make $800 million a year.

The whole idea behind the carbon market is that the price of carbon will increase, so that net emissions will decrease. There is no future projection, in the long run, in which the price of carbon decreases, because that would mean more carbon emitted into the atmosphere, which is what the scheme is trying to regulate. It’s like investing in something with guaranteed returns.

Example: Make Sunsets

Make Sunsets, a start-up in the United States, is selling “cooling credits” at $17 USD each. These aren’t just for companies, but also individuals who want to invest in geo-engineering. Apparently, one cooling credit equals 1 gram of sulphur dioxide released, which will offset the warming effect of 1 ton of carbon dioxide for one year. This incredibly easy maths seems too easy to be true, and may in fact just be clever marketing more than accurate science. What’s more, individuals like you and me could offset our 15 tonne-per-year average emissions by paying $255 a year. Set and forget, monthly subscriptions are possible: the site looks just like any other online site where you could buy a coffee machine or a pair of shoes. We could just pay the money and wash all our sins away, and forget about any responsibility we have towards ecological destruction.

Their website’s FAQ has the following question: “I would like you to stop doing this.”

Their (quite arrogant) response is: “And we would like an equitable future with breathable air and no wet bulb events for generations to come. Convince us there’s a more feasible way to buy us the time to get there and we’ll stop. We’ll happily debate anyone on this, just confirm an audience of at least 200 people and we’ll find the time to try and convince you. 😉” As of May 2023, they have completed 20 flights for 96 customers. If they had $50 billion USD a year, they could offset the effects of all man-made emissions. They want more time for other people to do the work of decarbonisation, and because their actions are not regulated, they can deploy sulphur into the air, and make money from doing so. When the cooling credits were launched, they were $10 each in 2022. As time goes on, their cooling credits increase in price (now at $17), whilst the cost for deployment decreases as more people buy credits. Costs decrease, price increases, and the company makes a lot of money.

What they do not do, however, is take any responsibility for the consequences of their projects. They do not plan to donate any money to people affected by the deployment of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere. Such a thing is too hard to prove, and no research could be conducted (and likely wouldn’t be financed in the first place): was it global warming’s fault or Make Sunset’s fault? All responsibility lies outside the company, and externalities are recognised but financially and legally ignored.

Make Sunsets is just one part of a host of companies and individuals financing carbon removal and solar radiation projects. A similar bet is being placed by Drax in the UK: burning wood chips is carbon neutral. If they can store the carbon actually released from burning the chips, then they have a net carbon-negative business. As well as selling energy, they make money through selling carbon offsets on the carbon market. The more trees they burn, the more they can sell on the carbon market.

The perpetrators of the problem are the ones that stand to benefit the most from geo-engineering projects. These companies are using investment money and promising returns on investment just like any other investment in Apple or Microsoft or SpaceX. The global carbon capture and storage market could reach $4 trillion USD by 2050, according to estimations by Exxon Mobil, a petroleum company.

In the end, investing in carbon capture technology is an investment in one’s own wealth, not in the future of the planet. Such an beneficial outcome for the planet is not even guaranteed, and comes with incredible risks: none of which will be paid for or recognised by the investors, who will have made their financial returns, and moved on to financing space villages, after destroying the climate system on planet Earth.

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13 July 202313 July 2023

The corporate strategies to avoid change: an activist’s guide

to support independent and ad-free ecological thinking

author

Jacques Lawinski

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13/07/2023
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Ideas, Politics

The corporate strategies to avoid change: an activist’s guide

How do businesses and government deal with protests and demands for change? What is their strategy, and how do they go about maintaining their power and their position, throughout and despite the protests? And what about dialogue: how does that work, do meetings between activists and perpetrators often lead to change?

There are examples where activism has led to meaningful, systemic and long-lasting change. These examples, however, are few and far between. Western societies have known about the climate crisis at a societal level for at least 50 years, and in some cases longer. Environmental damage and conservation movements have existed for many hundreds of years. Yet, the same companies continue to destroy the environment, and governments around the world have proven themselves to be inadequate and insufficient for confronting the systemic problems leading to global ecosystem collapse. Dialogues at 27 yearly Conference of the Parties (COPs) so far, have led to zero reductions in net global carbon dioxide emissions.

So, how do companies deal with activists to keep doing the same thing? How do they neutralise the threats posed to their interests: making profit, assuring production of goods and services, and maintaining their power within the current economic and social system? This article explores the strategies and classifications used by companies, and increasingly by Governments worldwide to reduce threats posed by activists with valid claims for social and environmental justice.

The types of activists and how to deal with them

Ronald Duchin was a founding member of MBD, a company hired by the agriculture industry, the tobacco industry, the chemical industry, and many other non-declared clients, due to the secretive nature of the company. “Get Government Off Our Back” and “Regulatory Revolt Month” are some of the major campaigns brought about by the group in the US, always in favour of free and unbridled enterprise, and with the aim of shutting down all social and environmental activist movements.

In 1991, he gave a speech to the National Cattleman’s Association in the United States, entitled, “Take An Activist Apart and What Do You Have?”. In this speech, he described four groups of activists, and the characteristics of each group. This was the basis for the strategic work that MBD did with large companies to neutralise the threats posed by activist groups “who want to change the way your industry does business – either for good or bad reasons.” These four groups are the radicals, the opportunists, the idealists and the realists.

1. The Radicals

Those who “want to change the system,” and “can be extremist or violent.” These people are involved in specific causes because of underlying socio-economic or political motives, hate business and enterprise, and seek larger systemic transformation than the particular struggle they are fighting. With them, there is nothing to be done, according to Duchin. They must be isolated from the rest of the group so they lose their credibility.

2. The Opportunists

Those who are looking for “visibility, power, followers, and perhaps even employment.” They move from cause to cause, and are quick to change position or move to the forefront of a potential change in the following. If the society changes its opinion, they will change their stance to return to the front of the pack. They seek personal gain, and look for issues with the greatest potential for themselves. With these people, you must give them the impression of a partial gain or win. They are not interested in reality, but in their following, so if “the opportunist is provided the chance to be a participant in that final determination of policy, he/she has his/her victory, and he/she is satisfied.”

3. The Idealists

These are the moral and principled people, attracted to causes because they care about the outcomes for people and the planet. They are “usually altruistic, emotionally involved, naïve, and generally unaware of the unforeseen consequences.” They “want a perfect world and find it easy to brand any product or practice which can be shown to mar that perfection as evil.” They are credible and believed in the media and by politicians, because of their altruism and values. However, this makes them hard to deal with. “Idealists must be cultivated and one should respect their decision. […] They must be educated.” For Duchin, this means showing them that their opposition to a cause will cause harm to others and is not ethically sustainable in the long term. Once an idealist has realised the consequences of their position, they will be converted to a realist.

4. The Realists

The group of people to which companies should interact with the highest priority. They are “pragmatic, not interested in radical change, can live with trade-offs, and understand the consequences.” To respond to their demands, business must “meet with them, listen to their concerns, and be open that the industry’s agreed-upon solution may not be the best.” The solution agreed upon by the realists is often the one that is adopted by all members, if business is part of the decision-making process. If industry is not part of this process, then the radicals and idealists can gain more strength.

The main strategy is to listen to the realists, educate the idealists to convert them to realists, and ignore the radicals and opportunists at the beginning. These groups can be converted to believe in the position of enterprise and industry, with small adjustments to suit the demands of the realists. The radicals only have power when they are supported by the other groups: when they are alone, they lose their public credibility, so they must be isolated. The opportunists can be invited to join in the final policy resolution, as long as they have a moment to be in the spotlight. The issue will be resolved with the least fuss and the least change for the industry involved.

We see this strategy deployed all the time in relation to concerns regarding the environment and social justice. Protests occur, and the organisation in question will call for the protests to stop (isolate the radicals), put out their own statement with strong ethical language (educate the idealists), and then invite the realists of the group to a meeting to discuss their concerns (convert the realists). At the end, the opportunists get a photo with the high officials involved (swallow the opportunists), and the issue goes away, with very little change.

This was the strategy with the Save Passenger Rail protesters in New Zealand recently, too, in regard to the Government’s lack of climate action. Their actions were quickly denounced in the media as being a public nuisance, dangerous, and examples were found of people in their cars who missed appointments or were otherwise inconvenienced by the movements. The radicals were isolated from public opinion, so they lost their credibility for their cause. Showing that hard-working kiwis “just trying to get to work to feed their kids” were disrupted by the action played on the empathetic nature of the idealists. Meetings were had with the realists; the opportunists had a photo…

But, think of the disruption climate change will cause. Cyclone Gabrielle was disruptive. People on the streets for a few hours is nothing compared with the disruption climate change is causing, and will continue to cause, without serious measures taken by Governments and businesses worldwide. The counter-strategy was so effective that the protesters never really got to express their views to the public and explain the situation. Neutralised and the conflict brought indoors, to private meetings, the whole issue went away very quickly. The second time the protesters tried their action, the Government refused to meet with them again: “you’ve been unfaithful,” they said. “You’re disrupting our lives and our cities.” Instant de-legitimising and loss of credibility for the protesters. The realists were portrayed as no longer being realistic, but being radicals: isolating them all from the larger society once again neutralised the threat.

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Dialogue as a means to inaction

At the beginning of the 1980’s in the United States, the calls from campaigners and social and environmental activists to regulate business action and for companies to adopt responsible business practice became louder and louder. To counteract these calls, industries in the US needed a new way of dealing with this, to protect their interests, guard against offensive government regulation, and neutralise the criticisms coming from various corners of the society.

As a result, companies joined in on the “ethical communication” bandwagon that was beginning to take hold at the time. Instead of fighting against ethical communication and openly promoting their profit-based interests, large companies realised they could be the champions of ethical communication. They could see their critics not as adversaries, but as partners, who needed to be brought to the table to bring about resolution to the problems they pointed out. Instead of fighting opposition, they could just swallow them up.

What this actually meant was that dialogues needed to be had, so that the companies could convince the critics that the position of business and industry was just, fair, socially motivated, and had everyone’s best interests at heart. They knew that they had to identify the realists amongst the critics, and talk with them to bring about solutions. Jean-Claude Buffle writes, in Dossier N… Comme Nestlé, “for them (the business), dialogue was not a way to open oneself up to the other, it was a strategy, another method to wage their war.” The goal of these discussions was not to exchange or negotiate, but to “convince people of their (business) point of view and motivate them to act for the company’s interests.”

In his book detailing the genealogy of authoritarian liberalism, Grégoire Chamayou notes six different virtues of dialogue as a strategy to maintain and guard power (p. 129-130). These are:

Intelligence-gathering: having a dialogue with opposants means that companies can figure out potential problems before they reach the public arena and cause harm to the company’s image in the public eye. Companies can understand how the campaigners think, what’s on their minds, and what their future projects might be.
Pre-emptive blocking: in the 1980’s, Nestlé released, without being asked to, a series of pamphlets detailing the rules of conduct for activists. These included always contacting the company directly before any other action. This approach meant that government, media, and the general public would not get a chance to hear the complaints, and everything could be resolved in private. Activists are therefore restrained of their primary force: public opinion and support.
Diversion: Instead of discussing what opposants don’t like about a company and their current practice, companies can set up meetings with critics to discuss what the future might look like: that way, the company retains their power and can point activists towards positive actions they can take to create the future they want. The problem at hand, in the present, is diverted from their attention, and in its place is a blue-sky future planning which may or may not even happen.
Absorption: According to Bart Mongoven, another founding member of the MBD consulting company we discussed earlier, in a document released by Wikileaks, enterprises should look for the most realist of organisations opposing their action, and then invite them to the table, and offer them, in exchange for the resolution of the problem, power, glory and money. To do this, the company needs to treat the adversary with respect, as one should do with realists, and even offer them falsely sensitive information: gain their trust. Once the organisation accepts, they will convince the public that the problem is solved. One simple deal means that the adversary is brought over to the company’s side, and integrated into their fold. For example, organisations could offer “ecological certifications” to companies in exchange for power and money for their causes.
Disqualification: Dialogues with companies or governments and their opponents are always selective. By reinforcing their commitment to consensus, enterprises can label and therefore disqualify groups who they deem threats as being confrontational, unwilling to compromise, indignant, and anti-democratic. The opposants are therefore discredited, and presented as irrational, unreasonable, and ultimately, too radical.
Legitimation: by having a dialogue with a large NGO or other organisation respected by the general public, companies hope to improve the image of their brand. NGOs have little capital resource, but large reputations; companies can often have a bad reputation, but lots of capital (money, infrastructure, property, land, etc.). By forming a partnership, the reputation and money can flow in ways controlled by the corporation, benefitting the company at a relatively low cost in the form of a donation to the NGO.

When I first read these, I could think of so many examples where this has happened. It was obvious upon reflection, but without this list I could not have identified what was going on. These are the strategies used by business and government to avoid confronting real problems pointed out by activists, and to continue, in many cases, perpetuating social issues and destroying the environment.

Activist strategies for countering the counter-attacks

Based on the theories above, here are some ideas for ways that activists and campaign organisers can counter or disarm the strategies of their adversaries:

Strength comes with people. If you have a large following, or have the opinion of the general public behind you, you’re much more likely to be able to push for lasting and meaningful change. Try to never be seen as ‘radicals’ – you don’t want to be isolated from the group and therefore ineffective at bringing people onto your side.
Work out where you and your group sit, regarding the four activist personalities. Make sure you have a way to work together, rather than separately, to cover the weaknesses of the other people. For example, radicals and realists need to work together, each pushing the other in the right direction. Idealists and opportunists can also work together, making sure the movement has the right balance of image and leadership, and values and principles.
Avoid dialogue unless it comes with real opportunities to change. If you’re invited to a meeting where someone will “listen to your arguments”, tell your story to the media instead. Explain that listening is a codeword for ignoring. Tell people about the strategies of companies to avoid confronting the problem. Paint the company as uncooperative and unwilling, before they do the same to you after your meeting.
Be wary of legitimation. Many companies want to associate themselves with organisations who stand for values, whilst continuing damaging business practices. They might think that giving some money to a not-for-profit group or community organisation will absolve them of the responsibility for their actions, but this is not the case. Point it out.
Always keep things in public. Don’t do things in private: private meeting and cordial email conversations mean you lose your power and effectiveness.
And, as always, be informed and knowledgeable about your issue. You won’t win anyone over if you don’t know enough about the topic and cannot put forward convincing arguments for change.

Do you have a story of activism, or another method for effective activism? Let us know in the comments below, or send us a message at submissions@plurality.eco if you’d like to tell your story.

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Let others know about this article

It took more than 30 hours of research and writing to produce this article, which will always be open and free for everyone to read, without any advertising.

All our articles are freely accessible because we believe that everyone needs to be able to access to a source of coherent and easy to understand information on the ecological crisis. This challenge that confronts us all will only be properly addressed when we understand what the problems are and where they come from.

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27 March 202326 October 2023

The Ultimate Guide to Greenwashing

to support independent and ad-free ecological thinking

author

Jacques Lawinski

post

27/03/2023
No Comments
Essential, Ideas

The Ultimate Guide to Greenwashing

Greenwashing is incredibly problematic for the environment, consumers, and the ecological movement as a whole. Not only is it irresponsible and unethical, it values profit and brand image over real impact.

We are in an economic market where brands, businesses, organisations, causes, and the government, all feel as though they must become virtuous – they must stand for something, promote or explain something, and act towards some social, economic, climate-related or other goal. Businesses need to be seen to be doing good, which often means that they also need to be seen to be good – to be virtuous. Whether big companies should be the promoters of virtue in our societies is another discussion altogether, but here we will focus on the virtue of being eco-friendly, which so many companies now claim to be.

Let’s start off by recognising a simple but sobering truth: the most eco-friendly product is the one you don’t buy. Every time you ‘consume’ something – whether it is eco-friendly natural organic dishwashing liquid, plastic wrap for your lunchtime sandwiches, or a new energy efficient toaster because the one you’ve got ‘seems old’, you are using resources which were grown or produced using fossil fuels, transported around the country or the world, set on shelves with lighting, heating or cooling systems, and eventually sold to you. If you had decided not to make that purchase, no resources would have been consumed. This is the basis of ecological sobriety in consumerism – only purchasing things that we really need, and when we do make purchases, knowing exactly what it is that we are purchasing.

All advertising is an attempt to get you to leave this realisation of non-consumption, and incite you to purchase something – whether you actually need it or not. Advertising creates desires, and then shows you how the particular product or service involved will meet this new desire. Therefore, to some extent, all advertising is taking you away from an eco-friendly standpoint, because it creates desires which you then fulfill by consuming things, which is not eco-friendly.

Some advertising, however, is not merely informative about the particular product. Labels are a good example of informative advertising: we can see the amount of CO₂ emitted in the production of a good, we can see how energy efficient it is, we can see the ingredients in a food item: this helps us decide which product to purchase. Other advertising seeks to convince us that the brand is good, the company is virtuous, is looking after the planet, is concerned with its workers’ rights and health, etc. This advertising can be informative, but very often it is suggestive, making claims and associations which are only partly true.

Let’s take the example of Vanish stain remover products. Recently, the company has been advertising on television that huge amounts of textiles are going to landfill each year (link to the international version of the ad, the above is the NZ version). The company sees this part of the advertisement as a commitment to informing the public about the ecological impact of their actions. It’s advertising brownie points because they’re “showing” they “care” about waste. It also creates emotions: we don’t want to be wasteful, we want to save the planet, etc. We’re now more open to receiving their message.

The second part of the advert suggests that by using Vanish products, you can remove the stains from your clothes and stop them from going to landfill. Let’s think about this: when you last stained your white t-shirt, did you immediately think to just throw it out and buy another one? I asked around, and no-one I talked to said that this would be their first response. They would either just wear it stained, they would buy a stain remover when they’re at the supermarket next, they would upcycle the t-shirt and use it for something else, or they would give it away. Vanish seem to think that a large proportion of the textiles (not just clothes, remember) going to landfill go there because they have a stain on them that could have been removed with their stain removal liquid. This is nonsense.

Not only are Vanish trying to appear as if they care for the environment, they are also trying to make you feel bad for throwing away so many clothes which could have been cleaned with their products (which, most likely, you don’t even do in the first place). When you see the advertisement, you’ll either just ignore it, or you might think next time you’re in the supermarket looking for a stain remover that Vanish was the brand that was concerned with the environment, so you choose this one to ‘feel better’ about your consumption decisions. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Most Vanish products contain surfactants, which are highly toxic to aquatic life. Furthermore, the synthetic chemicals in Vanish products such as phosphates cause toxic algae to grow in waterways, starving all other life of oxygen and eventually killing the whole ecosystem. Their products are, therefore, far from ‘eco-friendly,’ and they might pretend to care about waste, but they certainly don’t care about the environment if they sell products which enter the water system and kill whole ecosystems.

This is greenwashing. The company have in this case made a true claim – washing your clothes keeps them from going to landfill – but it is so far removed from the everyday behaviours of most people that it just becomes ridiculous. Further, in order to divert attention away from the harmful effects of the chemicals in their products, they are talking about textile waste to appear as if they are virtuous and care about the environment. They forget that each time someone purchases a BOTTLE of their product, this bottle becomes waste, which in most cases in New Zealand, is unfortunately not recycled. So, they really aren’t contributing to the waste problem in any positive way. In the end, most people who see the advertisement will either ignore it, label it as greenwashing, or unfortunately think that Vanish really do care about the environment.

Why is greenwashing a problem?

Greenwashing is therefore any advertising or advertising message which leads a person to erroneously believe in the real ecological qualities of a product or service, or in the reality of the production process, lifecycle, sustainable development of the company, or any other ‘environmental action’ or commitment performed by the company.

Greenwashing is harmful to the ecological movement, to the consumer, and to the environment:

Greenwashing means that consumers lose trust in companies, and this has a harmful impact on the companies who are actually engaged in climate-friendly practices, regenerative agriculture, and other engagements.
Greenwashing has the opposite effect on the real state of the environment: if we believe that we are acting and we’re not, then the state of ecosystems and the pollution in the environment is just going to get worse.
Greenwashing prevents real solutions from being developed and rolled out on a large scale: because we believe that we are already solving the large ecological issues through consumer behaviours which change very little, we stop innovating and stop trying to implement solutions that might have a larger real impact.
Greenwashing makes us believe that we’re being eco-friendly, it makes us feel good, when in fact we are not having any real, measurable positive impact on the environment in our consumption choices. It also makes us feel like we’re already doing our part, when in fact we should and could be doing so much more.
Greenwashing often diverts attention away from more problematic parts of a company, towards small and insignificant gestures, e.g. a petrol station selling organic coffee. What’s really important is forgotten.

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What laws are in place to stop greenwashing?

In New Zealand, like in the United States, there is a Fair Trading Act which is managed by the Commerce Commission, but no clear anti-greenwashing law. The NZ Environmental Claims Guidelines for companies say that “All traders, large and small, must make sure their environmental claims are substantiated, truthful, and not misleading to avoid breaching the Fair Trading Act 1986.” This is the same for any other claim made by a company. The guidelines focus on information-based claims, rather than suggestive or value-based marketing which tries to position a whole brand as ecological. Information based claims are scientific and fairly easy to prove or disprove, but are often not the basis for adverts that commit greenwashing. These guidelines are non-binding and interpretative – they are not law.

Moreover, companies must have reasonable grounds to make their claims. “‘Reasonable grounds’ means having evidence, research, test results or similar credible information to demonstrate a solid factual foundation for the claim being made,” according to the Guidelines. In the case of ecological and climate-based research, this is incredibly difficult, however. Just as we saw with smoking and cigarette-consumption studies by cigarette companies who aimed to spread doubt among the population regarding the negative impacts of smoking; it is equally possible to find a scientist to “prove” that your product or service is “good for the environment” – because what you measure and how you measure it matters. The book Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M Conway investigated this ‘doubt production’. We won’t discuss this in depth here, but a good example of this is the case of emissions and food products, and what we choose to measure these products against. A study can legitimately claim that eating pork is better than eating beef in terms of emissions. However, they haven’t compared all food types, and all the alternatives: eating vegetables, legumes, tofu, etc. is even better than pork and has a significantly lower impact than any meat source, but this doesn’t help someone trying to sell pork. Picking and choosing the measurement and comparison standards is a real practice for finding ‘scientific’ evidence for the ‘eco-friendliness’ of products.

New Zealand also have a Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA), and an Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). I emailed the BSA to ask about greenwashing and their response was: “Since the BSA complaints process only covers programmes that have already been broadcast, we can’t look at programmes that haven’t been on yet, or stop content from airing.” They can only do something if someone has said something that breaks the code, AND if someone reports it. The responsibility is therefore on the watcher or viewer to report content that breaches standards, and not on the producer of the content. Furthermore, there appears to be very little grounds for recourse on greenwashing or irresponsible discussions of the climate in the media with the BSA: it’s simply not something they are concerned about.

I also emailed the ASA, who to date have not responded. In 2019 they removed the Environmental Advertising Code, in favour of a broad Advertising Standards Code, which includes only two clauses regarding the environment, both of which relate to factual claims, and not to advertising in its more broad sense of making connections between ideas, values and engagements, and the products that a company sells. The main way in which greenwashing occurs lies outside the code, and therefore many complaints would likely not be upheld.

The UK’s ASA recently cracked down on greenwashing, pulling several commercials from air including a Persil washing powder advertisement which is still broadcast in New Zealand. A similar phenomenon seems to be occurring in the United States, with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) purportedly working on much tougher greenwashing legislation and a crackdown on greenwashing in ESG reporting. The United States also have an Environmental Claims Guidance, but again this is not enshrined in law, it is just a guide for companies.

In France, new legislation has been passed in the 2021 Climate and Resilience Law to specifically target greenwashing and give new regulatory powers and punishment mechanisms to enforce the law. This law added ‘environmental impact’ to the list of ways in which allegations, indications and presentations of products can be deemed false and misleading. They also added that the ‘environmental engagements’ of the company making the claim could also be considered misleading or false, and therefore warrant punishment. This change focuses specifically on impact and engagements of the companies in question, rather than simply on the factual claims about the composition of their products. It now means that greenwashing can be more effectively policed, and there are clear ways in which companies can be brought to task over misleading and false advertising.

France also changed the punishment for greenwashing campaigns, which is different to simply breaking their equivalent of the Fair Trading Act. Not only is there a fine, which is 80% of the spending on the advertising campaign, but the company must also inform its customers and media base of the incorrect advertising, and, for 30 days following the infraction, put a notice on their website indicating that they have breached the law regarding environmental claims for their product. This enables all consumers to be made aware that what they may have heard is indeed ‘a load of rubbish.’ For any company concerned with brand image, being forced to admit you have been making false claims should be enough of a deterrent to stop major greenwashing infractions before they occur.

In France, and many European countries, it is also forbidden to write “biodegradable” (everything is biodegradable, this is a natural process which takes between a few hours and several million years to be completed…) or “respectful of the environment” or any other equivalent on the packaging of products. Why? Because these things are “obviously confusing and/or too global for the consumer.” Lawmakers know that these general and meaningless statements may attract people looking for more eco-friendly products, but they lack any specific meaning when it comes to what these words and labels refer to.

In New Zealand, therefore, there would seem to be no binding legislation against greenwashing, no active attempts on the part of the Advertising Standards Authority as in the UK to crack down on greenwashing, and no specific punishments or deterrents to greenwashing. We must be quite happy in this ignorance, believing that we are doing a lot to help the environment, rather than facing the reality that our per-capita carbon emissions are consistently in the top 10 in the OECD (that’s really, really, bad).

How to identify greenwashing

There are some key characteristics of greenwashing that are commonly found in adverts that make claims about the environment. Some of these are from Mathieu Jahnich, a writer for BonPote, a French environmentalist site, who has worked in greenwashing regulation for many years.

Negative environmental behaviours are trivialised, or positive ones are knocked down. E.g. negative images of public transport in a car commercial.
Disproportionate claims, hyperboles, and grand language are used. E.g. “this vehicle is ecological” or “responsible production” or “we care for the planet” or “better for the environment.” Basically anything that refers to a very large commitment which almost certainly isn’t true.
Lack of proof, lack of precision, or an unclear message. E.g., “eco-friendly packaging,” when we have no idea what eco-friendly packaging might be, and no criteria to assess whether this is true or not.
Association between the environment and something which is not essential or not the main product of that company, e.g., petrol stations selling organic coffee to make you forget that you are purchasing fossil fuels, and no, organic coffee won’t make up for that.
Visual or auditory associations with nature. If the advertising includes landscapes, trees, nature, and anything related to the environment to make connections with their product, e.g. Toyota advertising their cars driving through natural landscapes, claiming they are developing better futures.

How to combat greenwashing

Greenwashing is not only bad for the environment, it’s also bad for the whole ecological movement. It means that people believe they’re undertaking meaningful actions when they’re not, which undermines efforts to change things on a systematic level. We cannot effectively respond to the ecological crisis simply through buying more eco-friendly products; we need transformative changes at a societal level, as the IPBES’ Biodiversity and IPCC’s Climate Change reports highlight.

Here are some ways in which we can act in order to reduce or stop greenwashing:

Campaign for your local environmental organisation to put more pressure on the Government to stop or ban greenwashing. There are a lot of organisations out there with a connection to Government agencies and to people who are more able to change the way our systems run. By creating anti-greenwashing campaigns, and making anti-greenwashing law one of the pillars of your environmental movement, you will be helping the integrity of the ecological movement as a whole, helping consumers to make more informed choices, and keeping companies honest and responsible for their actions. Stopping greenwashing is a really effective and easy to implement policy, and can be built upon with environmental impact reporting, carbon emissions reporting, and biodiversity/ecological impact reporting too. All these things help people make informed choices and make sure that what we do has a real impact.
Denounce greenwashing on social media. The worst nightmare of any company is bad publicity. When you point out the greenwashing publicly on social media, these companies are forced to respond and to retract or defend their actions. It also helps make other people aware that they are being misled, which hopefully will mean they adopt a more critical attitude towards greenwashing in the future.
Learn about greenwashing and then stop making greenwashing claims, if you work in advertising, marketing, public relations, communications, or any other forward-facing department in your company. Refuse to work for companies who just want to make it look like they’re doing good without actually having anything to back this up. Require more of your clients if they are seeking to talk about nature, organic ingredients, biodiversity, waste, environmental impact, carbon footprint, etc. If you’re a student in marketing, communications, copywriting, or a similar domain, learn more about greenwashing and about environmental claims, so that you don’t go on to create adverts that greenwash audiences.
Think about what you’re seeing if you see nature in an advertisement, or hear about the environmental impact or the eco-friendliness of a product or service. Ask yourself, how is it possible that they can make this claim? Is there any evidence to back this up? What are they actually selling and does the advert relate to this or is it trying to improve the ‘brand image’?

Right now, the burden of proof and the responsibility lies with the members of the public who have to report these adverts for any investigation to be made. I propose that we reverse the burden of proof and put it back on the companies who are producing these advertisements: in order for your advertisement to be broadcast, if you wish to talk about the environment, nature, ecology, biodiversity, waste, organic/natural components/ingredients, etc., in your advertising, then you must submit, with your advertisement, an analysis of your claims and the proof that lies behind them, as well as a consideration of the ecological impact of the whole company and production process, if the ad is not product-specific. This will then be assessed by a jury before the broadcasting company can broadcast any advertising. This way, companies will be made responsible for their claims before the advertising can reach a public audience. If this were the case, I’m sure we would see a lot less greenwashing, and more responsible company publicities and reporting.

Mathieu Jahnich, who has worked to regulate and assess greenwashing for more than 10 years, writes that the work of lawyers checking content before diffusion is very effective at reducing greenwashing in France. Yet, the control of adverts is very often still optional in France, and this means that often adverts are not checked and therefore are released without any verification of the message involved. New Zealand has no such control measures in place, yet due to its small size, it surely wouldn’t be too difficult to set up a regulatory body for this role.

As is the case in France, we should also ban the use of ‘biodegradable’ and other such meaningless terms which seek to sell products without any meaningful foundation. Other such measures could be adding compulsory disclaimers on products which are short-life or single use, alerting consumers to their high environmental impact; disclaimers on products where a local alternative is available that the same product can be found with lower emissions elsewhere; notices on all physical promotional material like flyers reminding people to recycle them rather than littering (this already happens in some cases); compulsory ecological impact tables on the packaging of all products, like the nutritional information labels on food products, and more.

Greenwashing is a real issue and a hindrance to the ecological movement and to our efforts to change our societies to respond to the ecological crisis that is developing. Unfortunately, most people are unaware of the extent to which greenwashing occurs, and often those who are developing greenwashing advertising are not aware of the nature of the claims they are making, and the impact that they really have. It’s a problem that is quite easily solved through better regulation and more awareness and knowledge of the ecological crisis, which is why sites like Plurality.eco are incredibly important.

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5 March 202326 October 2023

A new way to think of entrepreneurship

to support independent and ad-free ecological thinking

author

Jacques Lawinski

post

05/03/2023
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Ideas, Politics

A new way to think of entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship doesn’t have to be about making lots of money. It can be ecological, too, and exist in ways that support the ecological transition, rather than continue to degrade the resources of the Earth.

What is entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurship and the role of entrepreneurs in our society has increased significantly in the past decade, with much Government policy and resources being given to drive innovation, encourage people to become entrepreneurs, and therefore to drive the growth and competitiveness of the economy. The European Union has identified entrepreneurship as a key focus point of its growth strategy, yet cites the perception and recognition of entrepreneurs as being one of the barriers to boosting entrepreneurship on the continent. In New Zealand, a similar view of entrepreneurship is held, with then-minister Steven Joyce saying in 2016 that entrepreneurs “lead and grow the businesses that generate employment and deliver considerable export revenues for New Zealand.”

For the larger society, we need entrepreneurs for economic growth, and to make sure that our people are employed. Entrepreneurs create the businesses that enable us to make this happen. For entrepreneurs, their motivations likely lie elsewhere, with growth and revenue sometimes only the by-product of their motivation and skillset to solve a problem or change something.

New Zealand’s leading entrepreneurship education organisation, Young Enterprise, don’t seem to say what entrepreneurship is on their website, but they do claim that their programmes “inspire people to discover their potential in business and in life.” Entrepreneurs would seem to be those people who have discovered or realised their potential in either or both business and life. The Stanford Online site has a page entitled, What is Entrepreneurship? where they note that entrepreneurs are those who, by themselves or with others, “strike out on an original path to create a new business.” Entrepreneurs are people who create businesses, then. Oberlo who come up upon searching the question say the same thing, but add that modern entrepreneurship is also about solving big world problems “like bringing about social change.” Wikipedia say that entrepreneurship is “the creation or extraction of economic value,” “and is generally viewed as change.” They then also add that entrepreneurs create businesses, and like the other sites, note that entrepreneurs bear the most risk and also potentially gain the greatest reward.

Does entrepreneurship really have the impact that these leaders advocate for? In 2008, two Dutch researchers undertook a meta-study (reviewing other studies) of empirical evidence to see what the impact on entrepreneurs is on the society and the economy, compared to non-entrepreneurs. They concluded that entrepreneurs create more employment relative to their size (often small businesses, self-employed, etc.), but in doing so they reduce the stability of the labour market, meaning that job creation is more volatile and less predictable. Entrepreneurs were found to pay lower wages, offer fewer benefits, and create jobs in lower levels of the economy compared with their non-entrepreneur counterparts like large well-established organisations. However, employees seem more satisfied with their jobs as or with entrepreneurs, compared to at other companies.

Entrepreneurs also produce fewer new products and new technologies, and apply for fewer new patents than non-entrepreneurial companies. This means that entrepreneurs are not in fact more innovative, however their innovations are generally of higher quality than others. In terms of productivity, entrepreneurs are not at all very productive. And finally, regarding utility, most entrepreneurs would earn more in a wage job, because average entrepreneurial income data is skewed by some very, very large earners at the top of the scale. Despite all these things, the authors note that entrepreneurs have other, non-tangible benefits to being an entrepreneur, otherwise they would be “irrational, optimistic, or risk-seeking.” These are the classic benefits of being one’s own boss, choosing when to work, doing something which they believe makes a difference, among other reasons.

These understandings of entrepreneurship seem to be very focused on business, and on the economic outcomes of entrepreneurship for the society. Entrepreneurship is intimately tied with business, and one must, if one is an entrepreneur, have a business. Having a business means making money, and extracting value.

Young Enterprise UK teaches enterprise, as well as entrepreneurship, with a more general take on what this looks like: “Enterprise education provides young people with the skills, competencies and mindset to make the most of everyday opportunities and challenges. Being enterprising is something which can be applied to all aspects of life and work – identifying and initiating opportunities as well as adapting your response to situations.” They focus more on the skills involved in being enterprising, and seem to encourage students to apply these to any situation.

The entrepreneurship competencies or skills are well defined in many different areas. The European Union created EntreComp, a framework showing the entrepreneurship toolbox, and they share this transversal definition of entrepreneurship: “value creation in any sphere of life.” There are three competence areas, ideas and opportunities, resources, and into action, and they note that entrepreneurship is one of eight key competences for lifelong learning. They support the definition proposed by the Danish Foundation for Entrepreneurship & Young Enterprise: “Entrepreneurship is when you act upon opportunities and ideas and transform them into value for others. The value that is created can be financial, cultural, or social.”

An ecological critique of entrepreneurship

Economic growth cannot continue to rule our societies, if we are to confront the ecological crisis. We cannot continue to seek profit, we cannot continue to extract as much value from natural resources as we can, and we cannot make decisions purely based on financial and economic return. This has been highlighted by many intergovernmental research bodies, including the IPCC, the IPBES, and more. Entrepreneurship, therefore, in its narrow definition as “starting a business” would seem to be at odds with ecological action.

If we want more entrepreneurs, as Steven Joyce said at the beginning, to create more revenue and keep people employed, then we would be thinking very narrowly, if entrepreneurship is about creating value for others. Just how valuable is economic growth and revenue when we are facing the extinction of thousands of incredibly important species for the maintenance of life on Earth? Currently we are face-to-face with an ecological crisis, and economic growth is at odds with this.

All is not lost for the entrepreneur, however. He or she can and should continue to exist, but the challenge is to find a way to decouple the link between entrepreneurship on the one hand, and business, money, profit, and supposed individual freedom on the other. Having complete control over your life might be great, but at the expense of the planet and the livelihoods of other people, is not so great. If entrepreneurs can demonstrate and use their skills in different ways, with a different mindset, then they could become the key players of the ecological transition that is needed in our societies.

But just what might an ecological entrepreneur look like?

Ecological economics

A group of European and American scientists got together when they realised that their research had interesting conclusions for each other. These were not just a group of biologists, or economists, but actually a mix of the two: the economists saw that the biologists had something to say about the nature of the economy, and of entrepreneurship.

This work is being carried out by people such as Giuseppe Longo, Roger Koppl, Stuart Kauffman, Teppo Felin, and more. Their award-winning paper, Economics for a Creative World, outlines the possibilities for a new way of viewing entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs keep the same skills, but their function and goal in the economy changes.

They propose both a theory of value in the economy, and a theory of entrepreneurship, or a theory of the evolution of the economy through the actions and services of entrepreneurs. In this new way of thinking, the greatest value is created for humanity when we find ways to move ourselves to a new state of society – be it with an invention like writing, the iPhone, or recycling. The entrepreneur is the person who enables this change, by combining resources in new ways. Just as the ant who goes a little further than the other ones might discover a new food source to keep his ant colony alive longer than the neighbouring colony, the entrepreneur makes and shares their solutions or discoveries to make progress as humanity. This is an evolutionary mechanism, and the authors of this idea have looked at how organisms evolve, and realised that as human beings, we in fact evolve in our economy in the same way.

The starting point of this research is the observation that the economic system is not a causal system. This means that there are no dynamic laws of economics. A consumer can always choose to act in irrational and unpredictable ways, and whole groups of consumers can do this, defying the commonly held beliefs in neoclassical economic principles. The ‘rational man’ of neoclassical economics doesn’t exist, and has been proven dead for decades.

Neoclassical economics views the market, and the economy, in the same way that Newtonian physics views the world. Everything is controlled and governed by laws that determine predictable outcomes for each and every action, and this all happens in a closed system. This is a mechanistic viewpoint, which relies on principles of cause and effect for action to happen and be explained. Viewing the economy in this way means that economists create laws and models to predict what will happen, and explain what is happening. These models very rarely explain the complexity of a situation, and, as we see again and again, are often wrong.

For these researchers – both biologists and economists – the economy is not a causal system, algorithms cannot be used, and we cannot predict or pre-state what will happen in a particular case. Instead, economic dynamics are creative, much like evolution. In evolutionary biology, random traits appear, which just so happen to be better at dealing with certain stresses put on a particular organism, and this is what helps these organisms survive over other ones. The economy is a bit similar: creativity, innovation, and random inventions are what shape and define the progress that the economy makes. Before Apple, we did not predict based on “current trends” or “current laws” that there would be a product, the iPhone, that would change the way we interact with each other. But it has.

If we think of the economy in terms of one central square, there are many, many possible ways of putting resources together which lead people to a new square, slightly outside of the current one. There are infinitely many possible combinations of things, ideas, resources, which constitute inventions, which could change the way people do things. This is the evolutionary logic of the economy: we make new things, and therefore evolve. For example, think about the uses of a screwdriver: there are millions of possible uses, many where the screwdriver is useful but ineffective. We could use it to make holes in paper, we could use it to write in the sand, and we could also use it as a radio antenna. In 1800, we had screwdrivers but not radio transmission, so we could have never predicted this use of the screwdriver at that time. However, through more developments and combinations, we arrived at a point where this became a possible use for the screwdriver.

Therefore, we cannot accurately predict or model what happens in the economic space, with enough certainty. We can observe tendencies and behaviours, but these are not accurate predictions nor are they laws, because as we have seen what shapes the evolution of, or changes in the economic space is creativity and novelty – the combination of current things to make new things which lead the economic space in another direction. Past innovations, like screwdrivers, did not cause new inventions, like radio antennae, to be invented. They enabled them, but they did not cause them.

The economic space is therefore changing all the time. People are inventing things, buying things, combining things, and selling things at an incredible rate. Trying to model or predict within this is near impossible.

Statistics and modelling of the economy means that we close off our economic system to this novelty and creativity, because we do not allow for or account for the possibility of an unpredicted and unpredictable change or invention. The more open a system, the greater the wealth of this system, because of greater diversity, and greater possible avenues of evolution, just as a system of insects in the biosphere.

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Ecological entrepreneurs

Taking this new vision of the economy into account, the ecological entrepreneur is someone who is able to spot an opportunity to move from one economic state to another: someone who combines resources, or knows of an idea from somewhere else, and who successfully moves from the general frame or way of doing things, into one which conforms with his product, service, or solution. This does not necessarily involve the buying and selling of solutions, nor does it have to respond to a practical problem, which is often taught in entrepreneurship education. Rather, the entrepreneur spots an opportunity for a new way of doing something, and is able to share this way with enough other people to move the group towards the adoption of this new way.

Entrepreneurs can act in and with community groups, organisations, businesses, and society at large. There is nothing which says that entrepreneurs must bring about change on a societal level, or disrupt a whole market and ‘ecosystem’ of businesses. Opportunities are present everywhere, and the skills required to identify these and take action upon them are applicable in various situations.

According to these scientists, the most successful innovations are “non-algorithmic responses to new possibilities.” The entrepreneur is able to identify a possibility, and create a way to get us from where we are now, to a state in which that possibility is the normal. An algorithm could give us a thousand ways to use copper, for example, but the entrepreneur is creative about his use of resources, and develops unpredictable solutions. This is a new way of thinking about innovation.

The entrepreneur is therefore decoupled from business, money, and profit. They are someone who spots an opportunity, invents in a creative way to move towards that possibility, and enables transformation in order to make that a reality. We no longer value entrepreneurs because of their gains in economic value, productivity, and employment, but because they enable societies to innovate, solve problems, and move beyond their current position.

Societies that can innovate and change are more resilient because they are better able to adapt. The entrepreneur becomes a useful force in the ecological transition because they have the key skills needed to develop ideas, spot opportunities, and make necessary transformations to stop the ecological destruction we are now causing. The only competency to add to the EntreComp framework is therefore ecological knowledge: for this new way of ecological entrepreneurs, they must know about the impact of their change on social, environmental, and subjective or psychological levels.

Let’s look at a brief example. A lot of energy is wasted in boiling more water than is needed for a cup of tea, when we fill the kettle and only use some of what we boiled. We could create a cup-measure, we could create a kettle with marks on the side for the number of cups, or, we could create something which sticks in people’s minds, which means they use their tea cup to measure the water first, before boiling the jug. The best solution to this problem involves no extra resources – it is simply a procedural, and behavioural change. The successful ecological entrepreneur therefore figures out a way to encourage this behavioural change, and transforms the society to adopt this behaviour. He or she knows that selling a product to put next to your existing kettle to measure water would generate money, but would also be an incredible waste of water, when a simple behavioural solution would suffice. He or she is able to take a risk on a zero-resource solution, and is effective at getting others to adopt his solution.

The question that arises here is how we value and compensate such entrepreneurs. They won’t necessarily be making huge amounts of money – the entrepreneurs’ dream is, and remains, for many, a dream. As the meta-study at the beginning points out, most entrepreneurs would earn more in wage employment than they are earning as an entrepreneur. But if they are following this new model of entrepreneurship, selling products people don’t need is only one possible way of being an entrepreneur. Those who have a sense of responsibility, or a moral attitude towards our flora and fauna, can dream of being entrepreneurs, just in a different sense. Responsibility for the environment means avoiding the idea that we need to extract more, sell more, and create more value, and trading this for the idea of innovation and creativity to help us move to new spaces and new ways of doing things. We need to find ways to reward the ‘enablers’ who are developing ideas, and connect them with the more practical entrepreneurs who know how to change or transform. These new and ecological entrepreneurs are not necessarily straight out of business school, either. They are to be found in research centres, in practical and community organisations, or the most ‘random’ places – because these people intimately know the systems they are working with or against, and are best poised to creatively help us out of trouble.

The benefits of an ecological entrepreneurship

Western societies are facing incredibly difficult challenges at social, economic, health, environmental, technological, and governmental levels. Promoting the idea that entrepreneurs will help us out of this mess through innovations which they sell on the market is a very narrow way of thinking. More money, more growth, more GDP, more waste, and more consumption will not solve these issues. They are much deeper and structural than could be solved through money alone.

Promoting a vision of ecological entrepreneurship enables people to imagine ways in which they could improve their surroundings and communities, and make that into a life project which we now call ‘work.’ Ecological entrepreneurs won’t work solo on projects – they will often need teams of people with various knowledge bases to help them implement their transformations. This possibility, this vision, of entrepreneurship, is a mobilising and active way of thinking about entrepreneurship, rather than a predetermined and algorithmic method that we normally see. True non-algorithmic solutions can only come about when we let our citizens know that they can viably seek to transform systems, and do this as a means for life. The question of funding does and will continue to exist, but any Government looking for innovation I think has a duty to support truly innovative solutions from ecological entrepreneurs. Venture capitalists will not necessarily get any financial benefit from innovative behavioural changes, but perhaps their focus will shift to more philanthropic causes if ecological entrepreneurship became a ‘Big Thing’. That is, if these funding sources and financial institutions are really concerned about the crises that we are facing, and failing to deal with.

To sum up in four points

The current everyday definition of entrepreneurship is one where a person comes up with an idea, develops this idea, takes it to market, and then sells and markets this item for a profit as a business.
Instead, we could look at entrepreneurs as having three successive roles: spotting an alternative possibility outside of our current way of life, making that behaviour, way of thinking, or solution a reality, and then maintaining it such the old possibility becomes everyday life.
Thinking like this means that entrepreneurs do not need to create and sell products or services in the market. Entrepreneurship becomes a notion uncoupled from capitalistic relations, and we can now undertake entrepreneurial projects in many different, ecological, and democratic ways. Entrepreneurs are the evolutionary enablers of the human economy.
This is ecological thinking because we can promote a vision of entrepreneurship which is not destructive towards the environment, nor towards our social relations. We are aware of the impact that the idea has, and word business does not appear in the definition. Profit is completely up to the person.

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Ebène l'Adelphe

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1st lesson : when adults tell me everything is fine, I should probably worry

2nd Lesson: just "ecology" is white dude ecology

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3rd Lesson: Intersectional queer ecology, alias ecofeminism

Bibliography

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Our Stories of Ecological Transition series puts a spotlight on inspirational people who have changed not only who they are, but how they treat the world. They've done this with courage and strength, and their stories help us all to see the ways we could change, too.

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1. Have a vegetarian Christmas

2. Minimise the gifts, make your own, and wrap them in a paper bag

3. Avoid online shopping, instead use local stores

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4. Think twice about the Christmas tree and decorations

5. Decide on your Christmas convos before the day

6. Make your resolutions for 2024 ecological

A vegetarian Christmas...

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Plastic Recycling

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Is plastic recycling part of an environmentally-friendly future?

What about glass and aluminium cans?

Is recycling a worthwhile behaviour, then?

How do I decide which packaging is best?

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IN-DEPTH SPECIAL

Two forms of geo-engineering

The pump

The thermostat

The pros

The cons

Who is geo-engineering?

And New Zealand...

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That's just the overview. Click on the topics below to learn more about geo-engineering.

Solar Radiation and Protection

How does it work?

The arguments

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)

How does it work?

Using trees to suck up carbon

Using seaweed and the ocean

The arguments

Money, Carbon Markets, and Investors

More power, more money

Example: Make Sunsets

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Let others know about this article

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Let others know about this article

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Let others know about this article

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