On April 22nd, 1970, 20 million Americans joined together in demonstrations designed to place the environment at the front of the political globe.
April 22, 1990 saw 200 million participants and 141 countries. It launched common lexicon into our packaging for consumable - one out of every four new products released at the time were labeled "recyclable," "biodegradable," "compostable" or "ozone friendly." "Friendly" is an interesting word, perhaps for another post.
April 22, 2004 a NY Times article by Geoffrey Johnson of the Green Life, started like this:
Welcome to Earth Day 2004, brought to you by petroleum powers, big-box developers, old-growth loggers and chemically dependent coffee companies trying to paint their public image green.
Johnson cited:
The Earth Day cleanup and restoration program held by the California State Parks Foundation which was financed by ChevronTexaco, and Erin Brockovich's Pacific Gas and Electric.
Starbucks has its own events, centered around its latest slogan,
"More than our logo is green" despite their unwillingness to label
products as using genetically modified ingredients.
This point begs the language argument of control. S/he who controls the language controls the space the language is designed to control. We don't assume all of corporate America is greenwashing because they use a lexicon common to the bright greens, but we are more willing to challenge the assumption that they are not greenwashing. Is that because of size, and/or fear of control?
No doubt that the language of being green is the first weapon to be used against any "green movement." But what about physical space - the space of grass roots events? We wonder if, like corporate America, size is suspect to corruption. Google is going through it now fighting to protect their "do no evil" mantra publicly. Ed Abbey said that "growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."
Does a movement have to stay at the grass level to be authentic? What are the expectations of Earth Day's shareholders? Solid returns, no doubt. But is the system suspect because of size, or because of the new wave of sponsors? Or because we can't talk about it without being sponsored ourselves ?