Is green consumerism green? Or just smug consumerism?

Toyota

Smart car? Or status symbol?

Featured Topic | Posted 38 weeks 22 hours ago

Is green consumerism green? Or just smug consumerism?

Owners of high-mileage vehicles aren't just happy to be keeping their carbon emissions low -- these days there are complaints that Toyota Prius owners have elevated smugness levels.

Is driving green helping the climate? Or is environmental consciousness an annoying consumer trend?

Ben likes: Winner for best gaseous emissions

Ted Balaker, Reason

Last year the state opened carpool lanes to single occupant hybrids, and recently a task force of transportation officials found that the influx of hybrids clogged the carpool lanes, leaving them nearly as congested as the regular lanes. As hybrids continue to grow in popularity, officials expect the problem to get even worse.

Here hybrids may have ironically hobbled environmental improvement. Cars stuck in traffic burn more fuel and emit more emissions than those driving in free flow conditions. And if the presence of hybrids is the tipping point that drags a lane into gridlock, their eco-friendliness is beside the point. As long as most of the cars on the road are gas burners, the result will be more pollution and more gas wasted.

Joel likes: The greening of Madison Avenue

Gristmill

The greening of the U.S. of A. still has a ways to go. We're plundering Canada's tar sands and mining the Midwest's topsoil to keep our cars on the road. We lay waste to ton after ton of Chinese coal to fuel our cheap-stuff habit. And so on.

But if our habits remain environmentally ruinous, the strategies we use to sell stuff have gone decidedly green.

In general, the advertising industry exists to move product, to urge us to consume as much as possible; and we're at a point in time when it would be really, really smart to consume less. So my question is: does the green-is-the-new-black trend augur an era of less, and smarter, consumption -- or is it the death rattle of a movement in the process of being subsumed into a culture of ravenous consumption?