Though Cowards Flinch

I’ve only recently learned about No Impact Man. I missed the blog. I missed the book. I missed the movie. I definitely missed the non-profit lifestyle advice organisation that doubles as political lobbyists who “help people ask their politicians–on both sides of the aisle–to step up to the plate and take care of the habitat we depend upon for our health, happiness and security.”

The concept is fairly simple; a family embark on a project to lower their environmental impact by eating local, walking or cycling, not buying stuff, not producing trash and so on for a year. Cue publicity storm and the movie rights. One wonders how big the environmental footprint of the books, the movie, their distribution and DVD release. Or how many smug pricks will sit in Starbucks guzzling coffee as they self-righteously read it.

Actually for shits and giggles, they don’t read the book; they drive their SUV two minutes down the road to Starbucks, guzzle coffee and watch the DVD of the movie, on a mini-laptop (because a sixty four inch plasma flatscreen is just going overboard) and then immediately catch a helicopter to their local nature reserve to shoot some badgers and burn down some trees. Because subtlety is for jerks.

Needless to say I disapprove. The movie strapline is “saving the world, one family at a time” and the very concept is bogus. Worse still is the hype which AlterNet are indulging in, promoting the movie through a PR man’s wetdream; getting other families to try something what Colin Beavan and his lot did, then talking to each other about how hard they found it, how worthy the idea and how more people should try it.

What is it that I object to so strenuously? Well, for starters I disagree that the best way to reduce the environmental impact of the human race is for everyone to individually alter their habits. For a start, it’ll never work. Capitalism is not set up like that; millions of people commute long distances every day, our food may be local but the materials used to make it aren’t, and our daily routines require electricity.

Capitalism has evolved to this point as the result of trillions upon trillions of individual decisions – but not merely the decisions of consumers. The decisions of the possessors of capital, in the context of all the processes of capitalism, are even more fundamental.

There are of course ways to change these things – but the very social organisation of our society renders it inefficient to begin at an individual, consumer level. We all live in houses that make a bad use of space; our bad use of space requires more materials per person housed and has a knock on effect that increases the number of goods owned per individual rather than communally, where everyone can access them. This is what results from building society around the individual, and no amount of moral pressure will change it.

Then there are more fundamental issues; the nature of a system based on private property makes us afraid to share, lest we lose what we’ve expended labour acquiring. This is an impulse which will restrict the amount that many individuals are prepared to sacrifice through the individualistic approach of the No Impact Man – a factor which can only be lessened by sanctioned, collective communality of goods.

I don’t think it is going too far to say that this will not happen under capitalism, the interest of which lies in everyone consuming as much as possible on a constant basis. In fact whole (wasteful, socially unproductive) industries are based upon the premise. Not to say, as Bill Hicks does, that anyone interested in advertising or marketing should kill themselves; I say all of this with deepest love for PR people.

None of this individualism challenges the basic features of capitalism and its wastefulness, which often hides behind an ephemeral “choice”. Consider the idea of No Impact Man taken to its extreme; a 48-year old blogger who has gone nine years without spending money, and who lives by foraging, hunting, raiding bins and sleeping in a cave. No doubt, this is the lowest of low impacts upon the environment.

Yet with the exception of those elements directly reliant upon nature (a return to which would necessitate the death of many billions of humans and the eradication of civilization), this man is simply a sponger off the current system. He produces nothing and uses only what is free or rejected as waste. I think it is readily apparent that there’s no future in following such an example.

Essentially you can wall yourself off from civilization, but the wall merely applies to you, it will not affect the processes of civilization. And this is the perfect analogy for the individual approach to environmentalism. We secure the safety of the environment by making ourselves masters of all of the key processes, beginning with the engine that drives it forward; production. From their, everything comes under our control – what is produced and how much, where it is produced, how it is distributed and so on.

Anything else is simply waffle which ignores the key processes at their source while focussing on their periphery.