By WeBuyItGreen: promoting green living, fair trade and tap water
For many on both the right and the left, the effects of the truth about climate change are more than inconvenient. They have been personally confusing.
This is not difficult to understand with respect to conservative ideology. Members of the right believe in independent enterprise. Their hero is Ronald Reagan, the great communicator on behalf of smaller government, lower taxes, and less regulation. They identify "green" with CAFE standards, EPA regulation, and those crazy Europeans, who, due to gas taxes, were paying five dollars a gallon during the good old days when a gallon cost two dollars in the U.S. No, the inconvenience of Mr. Gore’s truth is not difficult to understand for this group. But conservatives support business, and "green" is now becoming big business. The prospects for cashing in on this potential may have more impact than any scientific evidence in shattering conservative resistance to the climate change message. Conservatives are trying on a new "greener" set of clothing.
What is less well-understood is that this change is also unsettling for those on the left. They support regulation of business and are deeply suspicious of corporate America. The truth about climate change has unsettled this group for the same reason it has done so among conservatives. It has created "green" business on an unprecedented scale. Internet bloggers on the left are wary of companies marketing eco-friendly products. They rightly point out that businesses have been guilty of "greenwashing," creating the appearance of being green without actually making products that help the environment. But people who were green before being green was "in" often go further. Some call into question the authenticity of most, or even all, green advertising, expressing a nostalgia for the days when green was pure. They are particularly suspicious when large, mainstream companies market a green product or buy a smaller eco-business. When business owners join the discussion to protest and explain that they really are marketing a product that is better for the environment, at times at considerable expense or financial risk, the resulting discomfort is palpable. It is as though people were feeling they had a safe place to share an anti-establishment camaraderie with others, and then it was disrupted by dissent. For this group, opposition to business, especially when it is big, feels like home. This is how they defined themselves in the past, and it is not easy to change.
The inconvenient truth is changing not only our economy, but our culture, the social map of beliefs around which people cluster. Karl Marx said some unfortunate and mistaken things that have caused people to ignore his important insights. One such insight is that the economy is a powerful determinant, or mover, of cultural and political change. The emerging green economy is a case in point. It is rearranging the ideological furniture. When it is all sorted out, the meaning of both "right" and "left" will be different.