The path to relative economic, social and ecological sustainability is guaranteed to be littered with failures of every nature and scale. If we recognize them and learn from them, the transition will proceed faster and in more resource-efficient ways. If, on the other hand, we prefer the short-term comfort of burying our failures, or of blaming scapegoats, the transition will be significantly slowed, or could even be derailed completely.
So, you could call me optimistic and hopeful and probably just a little bit naïve, but I'm coming from the space that the best way to predict the future is to get out there and just do it yourself.
Behavioral change is more important than individual product choices. They both have a role to play.
I'm worried about greenwashing. I think we should come down on it very, very hard, whether it's with criminal intent or actively deceptive.
I think that consumerism is intrinsically a pretty flawed social system.
Any prudent business looks at the reality and how to maximize our investment.
I think people often underestimate the power of consumers. But I equally say that consumers are like shock troops: You can't keep them agitated and motivated and committed and active forever. There are pulses where they switch on to a particular issue, and just inevitably they switch off.
What people say often precedes what they think. Some people sometimes say, "I have to hear myself talk before I know what I think." I think language sometimes, because it opens new channels, it opens new doors, is enormously important.
The biggest weakness of the green-consumer movement, always, is that we tend to pick the easy-to-do things because that's where we can most readily engage people. It doesn't cost them very much to switch products or whatever it happens to be.
I became a vegetarian 55 years ago, and I think it's one of the more important behavioral changes I ever took. The more I see of the beef industry and so on, I believe that to be true.
Companies watch what consumers are doing like a hawk. Just as one letter to a politician can signal an insipient problem, for companies, a trend where people are beginning to switch away from one of their key products to a rival offering on the basis of either claims or real improvements on performance, that's significant.
I think consumerism breeds dissatisfaction, and I think that the advertisers play to that. So I cannot be comfortable with that. On the other hand, the cornucopia of products and innovation - I love Apple, for example. That's a temple of consumerism in many ways.
I'm part of the consumer culture. I was part of the baby boom generation. I have a car when I shouldn't, a couple of computers; I can't be anti-consumerist in that sense.
