Environmentalism

I asked a friend of mine if the protests in Iceland were getting a lot of press in Denmark, she said no, and then asked me, "What are the Icelanders protesting? Capitalism?" In a way, besides the specific complaint about elections not being called, that seems to be exactly what they are protesting, capitalism.

I am realizing this week just how fundamentally the Berkeley response to capitalist excess has affected me. In Berkeley, a radical environmental ethic has been fused with capitalism in a way that seems extremely empowering to me: anyone with the means to make choices about what products they buy can fundamentally affect the system. I noticed it when I was down in Southern California recently; few of the large grocery chains there carry 100% recycled paper products or free range chicken, but every single grocery store in the Bay Area has 100% recycled paper products, and several of them have free range chicken.

Consumers in Iceland certainly have not made individual choices over the last decade built on an ethic of responsible environmental stewardship or curbing over-consumption. So now their only recourse is to exercise the democratic right to vote, but in the process, they seem to also want to overthrow capitalism. I just thought I'd mention that from my Californian perspective, capitalism as a system allows for an alternative means to express oneself, meaning it is not in and of itself the problem. With careful thought, education, and attention to detail, I like to believe any system can be utilized in a good way.

Comments

Ko-Leen said…
for this capitalism to work you have to assume that everyone has thought, and a soul.
there are more then a few with neither.
December 20, 2008 at 8:07 PM
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