The Roper Group did a report some years ago for S.C. Johnson, later updated as the Green Gauge Report. Here's how they segment the American population:

*True-blue greens 9% (pure environmentalists)
*Greenback greens 6% (willing to spend a bit more for eco-friendliness, roughly like light greens)
*Sprouts 31% (minimal pro-environmental behaviours)
*Grousers 19% (some anti-environmental attitudes)
*Basic browns 33%

So, basically 15% of the American population is doing something positive environmentally--and even those fall far short of sustainable (as most of us do ...). There's work to do.

I think this points out the paradox of our times. Because we have so distorted our infrastructure to accomodate our auto fetish and consumerist throw-away lives, it is almost impossible to switch to a sustainable lifestyle without being rich. It simply costs too much money to buy land and have enough time to set up a farm. For the vast majority of Americans, a life of Ho-Hos and basic cable is the only choice. They may be able to cut down on their energy use and consumption, and will certainly have to in the future, but they will not be able to dramatically change the way they live without a vast social dislocation.

I hear of those people who manage to make it out of the city into small "farms," but they are rarely poor or even middle-class people. What will the nation do when it needs to shift our paradigm not for the few but for the many? A gradual transformation seems appropriate, but that requires central planning -- something that the ideologically driven lemmings are unwilling to undertake. Are we doomed, should the Saudi's suddenly find themselves bombed by Iran? Are we doomed, should Chavez ink a deal with China and the tankers majestically change course?

I know this site has a propensity to happy talk, the kind we use to reassure our children when the tornado is ripping up the out-buildings and we sit huddled in the shelter, but I think there must be a plan for an emergency oil shut down. The right single event, or combination of events, could plunge the nation into chaos. There must be a plan.

the whole article here is a strawman argurement.
i find it kind of sickining that you would call enviromentalists ludites who hate everything modern.
also running out of gasoline will effect allot more then just your personal car..

The "unfair implication" isn't bad at all, IMO. Since the 1980s, the right has attempted - with distressing success - to make the term "environmentalist" synonymous with "environmental extremist." So this is a good development from a Lakoffian framing perspective: The idea of "light green" is emphatically mainstream.

Also, my experience is that even lighter green behavior than the Times describes can lead to more serious conservation. After buying a Toyota Prius last year, my wife and I were expecting to bask in the warm glow of pious self-satisfaction; instead, that damn car sat in the driveway like Poe's tell-tale heart, a constant reminder that there was much more we could do to reduce our energy and resource consumption. We're now aiming to cut our household energy consumption in half by 2010 - and it shouldn't be that difficult.

(Of course, regular visits to TOD have also helped convince us that reducing our environmental footprint is not something to put off! ;-)

People can do more than one thing at once; it's possible to be pro-conservation, and pro-efficiency, and pro a lot of things.

"Consume less, and if you consume, go for efficiency, etc."

I'll bet that the elitist approach against "light" green is as old as environmentalism. People forget way too quickly that they themselves probably started as "light green" (unless their parents raised them a certian way from birth, which is a minority of people). But once the seed is planted in as many people as possible, even if it starts "light", then progress will become a lot more possible than if we just expect people to go from totally oblivious to "heavy" green.

more environmentalist existential anxiety:

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004343.html

not that we shouldn't be having these discussions, just that the have been goin' on awhile.

IMHO, if more people start going "light green", more power to them. But there does need to be a realization and a distinction in the framing of such behaviors -- that as personally laudable as they may be, they're still NOT sustainable. Thus increasing green consumerism (at least a la green kitchen remodeling and green fancy-clothes-buying) should be far from a main focus of energy in our attempts at change.

Light green is a conscious choice. Dark green will most likely be imposed by geology. Hopefully they will reinforce eachother. A mosaic of many shades of green, some chosen and some imposed is unfolding between social economic classes, cultures, countries, individuals.  

This is a topic I've thought about a lot, and I think one thing we all need to keep in mind is that environmental impact of our buying decisions is determined by use of a thing, not just what it is.

I currently drive a minivan, which I bought so I could do arts and crafts shows with my woodworking business.  That business is gone, but the van is still here, and gets driven about 2,700 miles/year, as I work from a home office.  About the only way it makes sense to sell the van and buy something like a Fit or xA (and therefore start a whole new round of depreciation) is if you assume I'll be driving a LOT more than I do now or that gasoline will zoom in price.  

So, for now I've decided to keep the van, drive with a very light foot, leave the 2nd and 3rd row seats int he garage to lighten the vehicle, and try not to feel too guilty.  I'm hoping to hang onto it as a "bridge" vehicle until EV's go mainstream, which should be in another 4 or 5 years--about the length of time it will take me to put one normal year of miles on the van.

I have no idea what color that makes my choices, but I think it's a reasonable tradeoff.

Interesting that while identifying oneself as a green consumer or the normal careless consumer is open for debate, the one thing that no one seems to be able step away from is the identity as a consumer.  Is it possible that we could think of consumption as something unfortunate that happens, but not be our reason for existance?  Can we not be friends, nieghbors, citizens, fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, etc. BEFORE we are consumers?  Is shopping so important?

Will "shop til you drop" be our response to PO?  

Somebody has to counter this "light green" stuff, so I suppose I'll do it. Essential reading is Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century by Dimitry Orlov. This a (long) sobering piece which makes a mockery of "light green".

American culture needs a major restructuring and using your car less or doing "smart" consuming is not going to cut the mustard. For example, Orlov talks about how deserted suburbs were just stripped down for their useable parts, the copper wiring, the appliances, etc. in the abandoned houses. And so on. I don't like to throw out this splash of cold water, but we are one big oil shock away from something like a Soviet-style collapse. And Russia's "comeback" has been fueled (pun intended) by it's still considerable oil & natural gas resources. The US has no such resources. What we do have are an unsustainable current account deficit, trade deficit, no working health care, a deteriorating education system, more people in jail than any other country, a coming housing bubble, a currency which is becoming devalued....

It's hard to live with helplessness. 'nuff said.

sorry, Dave

A sign of thing to come?? I would like nothing more than to find about 160 acres and see how well I could sustain a normal lifestyle..

No Bar Code

An evangelical Virginia farmer says a revolution against industrial agriculture is just down the road.

I think today's middle class will not voluntarily cut their energy use more than about 20%. It may be fashionable to cycle commute in fine weather, but not in driving rain. Many tree huggers seem to have convenient blind spots, for example the greenhouse impact of air travel.  In particular eco-optimists who talk of replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar haven't crunched the numbers. The reality check will come in the next few years.

You don't solve overconsumption by buying different things. The entire consumerist paradigm is not sustainable, so buying 'green' things accomplishes nothing.

This is my first thought. It is not completely true. You do have to take from the environment to live. Since this is true, we do have to find a sustainable path, and I do say find, as there have been very, very few human societies that have found a truly sustainable path.

A first step (and relatively easy) would be to return to ideas of Yankee thrift and 'cheapness' that I remember as a child in the 70s and even early 80s when times were bad. People dropped a bunch of money on tools from Sears, but they took care of them; same as with any other object. I remember clipping coupons with my mother and mailing in rebates, and being in general very careful about purchases. But the consumerist drumbeat has intensified by many orders of magnitude since that time; more important than that, is there is no longer a countervoice opposing it in any significant way. The concept of saving is foreign to Americans, at least, as our negative savings rate shows.

As an aside, as others have noted, you have to be wealthy in order to be deeply green. Who else can build their bermed house with solar panels? I can afford energy star appliances, ride the bus, and not turn the heat on.

To me, "light green" implies buying things - a new style of consumerism.  It has pros & cons, as described in the other comments.  

What interests me is deep cultural change.  What Donella Meadows has called "the mindset or paradigm out of which the system ... arises"

(Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System
www.sustainer.org/pubs/Leverage_Points.pdf )

For example: simple Living, permaculture, relocalization, local food systems, gardening & self-sufficiency.

What these movements have in common is that they sidestep the consumerist paradigm.  Instead, they depend on knowledge, skill and social networks to satisfy needs. They also give personal satisfactions that consumerism can't provide.  

Subjectively, if you're involved in these movements one doesn't have the feeling of hopelessness and despair that are common in discussions about peak oil.

// Re: the Jevons Paradox
I did some research and found that it is known nowadays as the Rebound Effect. It is a tendency, not an absolute law, and the magnitude varies from case to case, according to the little research that seems to have been done on it. For sure, the use of the "Jevons Paradox" to shoot down conservation measures is not founded in empirical research.  It would be very useful for someone to write a definitive article on the Jevons/Rebound Effect.  

The answer is to resituate the human environment--someday for everyone--so that we can live close to work. The answer, as peakguy said earlier this week, is to rezone residential areas so they're mixed use and amenities are within walking distance.

The problem I have with rezoning efforts designed to "create a more sustainable environment" is that it is based on an underlying assumption that our current pattern of housing and development is somehow a one-time historic abberation that we have all somehow been programmed by an endless "consumerist" media to desire.

First, it's not the case; suburban sprawl was not invented west of the Rockies by Americans, but goes back thousands of years. The only thing that has limited sprawl historically was a lack of cheap and effective point-to-point transportation, not a lack of desire for people to own a small piece of real estate and live away from crowded urban centers. (If people loved crowded urban centers, wouldn't the rich historically choose to live in them as well, instead of building palaces away from it all?)

Second, by claiming that somehow we can make things better by rebuilding society through rezoning (and thus taking away decisions from individual land owners and potential home owners), we've essentially handed license to politicians and social engineers to completely restructure the living conditions of their constituents--often in ways they themselves refuse to live in. (In how many cities where urban planners try to create high-density mixed-used environments does the mayor live in a mansion on the outskirts of town?)

It's a shame, because while zoning is often necessary in order for a city to engage in sensible long-term development and growth, heavy-handed zoning is the ultimate socialist dream: it allows society to be structured in ways that individuals would never choose for themselves if they had a voice and the chance to vote with their wallet.

Third, by claiming that we must resort to rezoning efforts to create high density mixed-used environments in order to reduce energy consumption--we essentially abdicate local government's responsibility to create and stick to sensible long-term development and planning. When we as a people say to government "we don't care; do what you have to", you can bet that the placement of the next bullet train station will be in the middle of some developer's project (whose in bed with the city council), and people's overall living conditions will be made worse so that developer and his city council friends can live high off the hog.

(And I say this as someone with some familiarity with the process, not as someone who is suspictious of land developers or who thinks corporations are evil.)

To take a simple example of how long term planning could have helped things, here in Los Angeles long-term planners had planned a variety of freeway routes and expansion projects back in the 1950's which, had they stuck to those plans, would have eliminated or reduced the sort of congestion we have in Los Angeles today. Eliminate congestion, and total gasoline consumption used by people who commute to work would drop substantially: I know my own car gets 50% better gas milege (30mpg) on that rare day when I can drive without any stops to work than on a day when we're in stop and go traffic (18-20mpg).

If the entire United States had better transportation corridors, how much gas would be saved that is burned with cars in stop-and-go freeway traffic? Ten percent? Twenty?

I am constantly impressed and amazed at the quality of the writing in this blog. It's a daily "must read" for me. But when it comes to land use decisions, it sounds like you're falling into the same stereotypical thinking that probably caused you to start blogging about energy production and usage in the first place.

One thing to consider is this:  our lives are designed for us to be unsustainable.

Most people make choices based on what makes them comfortable within conventional cultural assumptions.

I chose to ride bike-with-trailer, then cargo trikes and pedicabs as an effort to design my life intentionally to be more sustainable.

Now that we are in a house, we've begun the retrofit to do permacultural living as much as possible.

One thing we need is a recognition that this is a sort of spiritual conversion experience -- repentance, if you will.  We recognise a destructive pattern in our living, and choose to reject that destructive pattern and find a better, less destructive one.

Not easy or all at once, for the most part.

There are prophets and voices crying in the wilderness, there are liars and frauds, and there are many who work for the status quo because it pays well.

It is hard to change if one is dependant upon the very system or paradim that needs changing.

It is easy to judge others --as has been alluded to -- while justifying one's own inconsistencies.

It is also easy to get stuck in pseudo-change, which is always comfortable and not really challenging the status quo at all.

We need to have conversations about this on an ongoing basis, and to challenge ourselves, each other, and our culture to change quite radically and quite soon.

Being the change will be more effective as talking the change.  The most effective process for change will be a combination of being the change and talking about the need for change in various ways and venues, eh?

I have visited TOD religiously for the last 4 months, along with other sites that describe the conditions leading to peak oil and the need for a soft landing when it arrives.  As the alternatives are discussed I am struck by how similar all this sounds to the conversations in Santa Fe in the late seventies.  Community was the central focus and how to get off the grid was the common goal.  When the fashion industry discovered Santa Fe and Taos all that fell between the cracks and designer homes took the place of energy self reliance.  Do I dare mention that many of the conventions that hippies got started: organic grocery stores and passive solar homes for example, are now the fare of the very well to do and green in leanings.  In short the development of Northern New Mexico then was a microcosm of all the post peak expectations of what we need to be thinking about in the here and now.  Most of us that made that psychic investment have been forced to do something else and few will even admit to having once been so idealistic.  I for example, sponsored the design of a new city for 60,000 people in the early seventies where cars would be parked under the city.  The project was included in a book called "Unbuilt America, From Thomas Jefferson to the Space Age." It was the time of "Small Is Beautiful" and many of those who were unhappy with the war in Viet Nam dropped out hoping to find in this community a more manageable environment.

What I am saying is that underneath much of the failed idealism of the sixties lies some rather noble adventures in shared life styles that contemporary problem solvers would be well to attend to.  We all know now that the love affair with cheap oil created this bandwagon and; outside of Cuba, there aren't that many examples of successful ventures that didn't `play ball' with the petro dollar.  I'm sure there are few of you that have ever heard of The Center for Appropriate Technology.  It formed as a policy-making organization at the London School of Economics to deal with the third world.  Now that we are faced with the likelihood of a less resilient future it might be wise to look into what failed instead of blindly aping the characteristics of those who got us where we are now.  

There's a highway ad by Ford for the Escape Hybrid with the caption "I guess it's easy being green", which would seem to fit this mindset. It tries to give people the comfortable feeling that they really don't have to make any real sacrifice, just a few small changes and life can go on as usual. It's not true, of course.

re: enforced greening.

Becoming unemployed made me a darker green.

A disposable income drop of 90%+.

Not one significant 'new' purchase in two years.

Enforced saving = Enforced greening.

Just a couple of trivial examples of 'efficient' consumption:I have a Campagnolo (bicycle) pumphead I purchased new in 1965 for $0.50. Works every time, still on the original gasket. Also Karrimor Bardale saddlebag, purchased 1965, still in perfect condition. Karrimor Lowdale saddlebag, 1966, still perfect.
Non-bicycle: I have owned one umbrella my entire adult life. Italian, purchased 1973 for $17.95. ivory-colored cover with carved olivewood handle, has never inverted (even when gusts blow out every other 'brolly on busy streets) always gets compliments, all small plated parts still perfect.
I remember a pair of Cole-Haan shoes that were beautiful for ten years and serviceable as work shoes for another 5 before I finally let them go. Don't think Cole-Haan has those shoes anymore.
I could write a long time about antiques and heirlooms and gsrage sale finds but probably everyone on this site could. Oh yes, I own and work daily with tools my great-uncle and great-grandfather made. These things are all objects of consumption but they are more important to us than the crap that's sold at Walmart. We can live entirely without the crap from Walmart and the Walmart parking lot and the ThisWayToWalmart Freeway.

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