Sunday, May 20, 2007

Anger and The Cause Part II

My first post considered how a portion of the environmental movement relies on establishing and promoting a "niche" market. I described it at the time as requiring environmentalism to be an "all or nothing project." In other words, once a product is approved it becomes the standard by which all other products are not only evaluated (something useful), but accepted or rejected. An example, store x buys a certain percent of their products locally; store y champions similar values but buys slightly less of their products locally. Store x becomes the only acceptable "green" store & store y is termed a sham. I concluded my post by stating that we should avoid classifying products as "shams" and instead focus on what they are doing right. So, saying store y offers almost as many options as store x and leaving it to the consumer to decide which to patronize.

I want to modify this opinion because I realized such a hard-and-fast rule would preclude not just whether we accept or reject a store, but would affect our ability to evaluate a product or store. I don't have a problem with saying that Target doesn't do much local buying (though how would it precisely do that since its products are by definition not local?) and asking whether there are ways that it could.

My concern comes when members of the environmental group are willing to make statements based on assumptions rather than facts. Or when they are quite frankly hypocritical by applying standards to other stores that they barely, or don't at all meet. Which is a bit cryptic mainly because I'm working on a longer (eventual) post that actually addresses claims versus facts in the environmental movement.

Why? Because I dislike the holier-than-thou pose many environmentals strike and dislike it even more when their facts are inaccurate because the issue is not the cause, but themselves as champions of the cause.