The Straight Goods Report

Consumer Power and Global Warming:
Sometimes people have more power to make change as consumers than as citizens. Some hints for things to buy, do or boycott to cool the Earth.

By: Ish Theilheimer

  Many parts of Canada are now suffering through one of the driest, hottest summers ever. It's part of a scary pattern of global warming, with more smog alerts every year, more deaths from pollution, the Great Lakes drying, agriculture in peril and more. No one believes official reassurances that everything's going to be OK. With seniors and poor people herded into cooling centres in our major cities as a rite of summer now, everything is demonstrably not OK and getting worse, but no one seems to be doing anything about it.
  Few of us feel we have real and practical choices in our lives to make things change. Overuse of cars, sprawl, energy waste and pollution seem like facts of life due to the way our lives, homes, jobs and communities are set up. Politicians don't seem to have to political will to force the kind of far-reaching changes necessary to save life on Earth, principally because oil producers and the auto industry hold the world over the barrel, literally.
  The lack of action on public transit, conservation and renewable energy shows the extent to which we're all held hostage. There seem to be few ways to fight back.
  Many ordinary people have come to conclude that they may have more power as consumers than as citizens. Corporations own the politicians, and the pols have a million ways of avoiding action, but corporations act immediately when the bottom line is threatened. At the same time, the purchasing and lifestyle decisions made by millions of people around the world can have an enormous influence on corporate behaviour, government policy and the environment.
  Cruising the Net there's evidence of growing efforts on the part of consumers to make a difference, sometimes through protest, sometimes through positive action.
  A broad alliance of environmental groups recently won protection for the Great Bear Rain Forest, for instance. They brought clear-cutting lumber companies to their knees by getting consumers to boycott products that came from clear cut forests and urging shareholders of the same companies - including mutual funds - to enter into dialogue with the companies, or to divest unless they change their tactics.
  Indeed, shareholder activism is one of the most promising new ways for people to bring giant companies to heel - especially since new federal legislation passed in June to end discrimination against socially responsible shareholder proposals.
  The phrase produces dozens of hits from a routine web search. Canada's Social Investment Organization (socialinvestment.ca) has been in the forefront on this issue, educating investors and shareholders alike. Another push in this direction has come from union pension funds, which control nearly half the stock market. According to observers such as Tessa Hebb, editor of the recently-published Working Capital: the power of labor's pensions (publisher: Cornell University Press) unions are just beginning to realize the enormous clout this can represent and their members are starting to push for them to use this clout to create pressure for job creation and environmental protection.
  Another recent book offering remarkable options for consumers wanting to do their bit is Stormy Weather by BC environmental writer Guy Dauncey (New Society Publishers). It offers 101 solutions to Global Climate Change, offering succinct background info, hundreds of informative websites, and checklists of things of citizens, consumers, companies, communities and nations to do to combat global warming. These solutions range from buying efficient and hybrid cars, investing in renewable energy funds, buying organic good and eco-certified timber, buying efficient lightbulbs & appliances, energy conservation and renewables to municipal and corporate strategies for positive change.
  Organizations like Alberta's Pembina Institute offer resources for Canadians who want to conserve energy and pressure governments into action. Their EcoAction website offers a terrific and educational range of resources to get you involved.
  Other organizations, such as Ontario's Clear Air Alliance, offer tools to help consumers vote for clean air at the electrical meter. Its Electricity Choices website helps Ontario residents choose the cleanest supplier of electrical energy. It's a whole new approach for this coalition of environmental groups, concentrating on the purchasing decisions of consumers - quite distinct from the coalition's traditional activity of advocating for government regulations to reduce pollution.
  Then there are boycotts. The most effective of them have brought dictators and corporate powerhouses down. The Lubicon Cree of northern Alberta showed this in their successful international boycott campaign against forest giant Daishowa. Other forest companies and retailers have taken a more pro-active approach to head off consumer protest, demanding their lumber come from forests that are harvested sustainably. Home Depot is one of the big companies that have made this a selling feature.
  The biggest environmental boyott today is aimed at the Esso oil company. The Stop Esso Campaign aims to make an example of this corporate giant by urging a worldwide consumer boycott. Europeans have been quick to embrace the campaign. Bianca Jagger, pop star Annie Lennox and Body Shop's Anita Rodrick, founder of the chain, helped launch the boycott because, as Ms. Jagger said, "This is a way to tell Esso that it's not right for them to be claiming that there is no connection between CO2 emissions and climate change."
  For some reason, the campaign hasn't caught on in the same way here in energy-hogging, car-loving North America. But just wait for university students to get back to class this fall.
  "This is real globalization activism, writes the New York Times' Thomas Friedman (www.purefood.org/corp/essoboycott.cfm). The smart activists are now saying, 'O.K., You want to play markets - let's play...' They don't waste time throwing stones or lobbying governments. That takes forever and can easily be counter- lobbied by corporations. No, no, no. They start with consumers at the pump, get them to pressure the gas stations, get the station owners to pressure the companies and the companies to pressure governments. After all, consumers do have choices where they buy their gas, and there are differences now. Shell and BP- Amoco (which is also the world's biggest solar company) both withdrew from the oil industry lobby that has been dismissing climate change. What Mr. Bush did in trashing Kyoto was to leave serious environmental activists with nowhere else to turn but the market. The smart ones get it. You will be hearing from them soon - at a gas station near you."
  Toronto's Tooker Gomberg led a group of 40 recently in a bicycle picket of an Esso outlet in his city. He's hoping activists everywhere will get onto this way of modelling environmental consumer action.
  No single action will cool the Earth and save it for our grandchildren. You might work up a bigger sweat. But if we all take action at the cash register, the gas pump, the electrical meter and the computer keyboard, we, as consumers and citizens, can not only talk about the weather, we can do something about it.

Ish Theilheimer lives on a farm near Killaloe in Eastern Ontario and is Publisher of Straight Goods.

The Straight Goods Report is a new weekly column being distributed to newspapers, web 'zines and portals, and radio stations all over Canada. You need not ask permission to reproduce it in your print or web publication, but please include our URL and let us know where you are posting it.

- Ish Theilheimer
- Killaloe, Ontario
- August 08, 2001
- ish@straightgoods.com

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