As a society over the last half century we’ve wavered between ecological awareness and the bliss of ignorance. This back-and-forth isn’t just the outcome of stretches of greediness followed by spells of guilt—although these are factors. In the late 1960s and 1970s mounting concern over the well-being of the planet culminated in the rise of the environmental movement. But political pressure and persuasive PR that said everything was fine coming from the fossil-fuel industry and the manufacturing sector helped contain the movement’s force. Public awareness reemerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s, only to be outmaneuvered by vested interests once again. Today, a popular desire to find solutions to ecological devastation has slowly worked its way back to the fore despite the repressive efforts of the richest, most powerful industries in history, namely oil. But where we direct the energy of this latest awakening is the key question. Although truly remedying global warming and its attendant ecological ills can seem insurmountable, it’s not. But finding solutions that work requires us to learn what to fight for.
Green Gone Wrong is structured in three parts—food, shelter, and transportation—to address the basic aspects of what we need and use in daily life.
In delving into the issue of food for Part I, I made two separate trips to investigate the implications of locally grown organic food as well as produce cultivated in faraway locales for consumption in the West. My initial destination was New York State’s Hudson Valley, one of the biggest farmers’ market regions among Western countries. I went to find out what day-to-day existence is like for small organic farmers who raise their crops and animals without chemicals, hormones, or antibiotics on land that’s managed to maximize biodiversity. Locally raised food has captured the imagination of healthy eaters and a new generation that believes alternative cultivation can undo the damage inflicted by scorched-earth industrial agriculture. The reach of this insurgent project, however, is confined by the meager income earned by farmers who practice organic methods. For even the most successful growers, costs, including manual labor, add up fast. Although they sell the highest-priced produce around—which only a wealthier clientele can afford—many of these cultivators can barely make ends meet. While a vibrant discussion has blossomed about organic and local food as an important antidote to ecological decay, the economic struggles of small organic farmers must not go overlooked.
As consumer demand for organics exploded during the last decade, natural-foods processors and retailers began sourcing ever more produce from Latin America and Asia. To further explore the implications of ditching conventional food for organic, for chapter 2 I ventured to the South American country of Paraguay, among the world’s top organic sugar producers and exporters. Organic farming is seen as a solution to global warming and ecological destruction by facilitating a widespread shift to holistic cultivation practices. But as more players enter the field, major food processors such as General Mills and retailers such as Wal-Mart are making some controversial compromises. Most crucially they rely on growers who use methods that tack back toward conventional agriculture.
Seeking the lowest costs, Western food processors and retailers increasingly source from large producers in developing countries where land and labor are cheap, and environmental protections lax. This is the case in an astounding number of places, including China, many Southeast Asian nations, and parts of Latin America. In Paraguay I found an organic sugar plantation that was violating the organic standards of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, a group that’s considered the global authority on organic standards. Among the plantation’s sketchy activities was monocropping, or the cultivation of the same crop in the same fields season after season. Farming in this way can cause dramatic erosion, exhaust the soil’s nutrients, and deplete groundwater. More startlingly, I discovered what appeared to be the clearing of native forests to plant organic fields, also forbidden under international organic standards. In interviewing registered Fair Trade smallholder farmers, I found that many aren’t paid the higher incomes that consumers in the West believe. In distant places the real workings of operations that call themselves organic can be obscured, leaving room for manipulation of the rules and outright fraud.
In considering the question of shelter for Part II of the book, I went to three different eco-villages, one in a London suburb and two in the German city of Freiburg. The communities I visited are considered to be some of the most ecologically sustainable and successful in the world’s developed countries. For chapter 3 I found out what it’s like to live on almost no energy, and the circumstances that have both created and allowed green housing to flourish in these places.
Current iterations of eco-architecture have come a long way from the earthships and geodesic domes of the 1960s and 1970s. Today’s environmentally sound dwellings are straightforward and modern, more closely resembling standard housing. They often incorporate features such as energy-efficient appliances, chemical-free wall paint, and solar water-heaters. Sustainably harvested wood, lumber milled from trees extracted in a manner that doesn’t degrade forests or displace forest dwellers, is a popular construction material. Green roofs are also a staple of the eco-abode. Comprised of plants, grasses, and mosses, these rooftop gardens provide an earthen blanket that cuts energy use by helping the building retain heat in the winter, and cool air in the summer. Environmentally sound homes are becoming more affordable and culturally accessible for average people—not just the committed hippie or wealthy maverick. Perhaps surprisingly, buildings account for almost 40 percent of CO2 emissions in the United States; the fossil fuels, primarily coal, used to light, heat, and cool them are the top source of greenhouse gases. The communities I visited in the UK and Germany have achieved major reductions in CO2 levels while creating highly functional, comfortable dwellings. So how do they do it, and what’s keeping this architecture from spreading to more places?
Since transportation involves fuel, vehicles, and emissions, I made three different stops for Part III of the book. As the 2007–8 riots revealed, crop-based biofuels wreck food supplies, but they also strain the earth’s vital ecosystems. For chapter 4 I journeyed to Indonesia, the world’s top producer of palm oil, which is an increasingly important raw material for biodiesel. Much of this oil comes from plantations established on the incinerated ruins of clear-cut tropical rain forests on the Indonesian island of Borneo. The island comprises carbon-rich forests that are the sole remaining viable habitat for the critically endangered orangutan, and home to ancient indigenous societies including Dayaks. With some of the last large rain forests on the planet, Borneo’s natural systems are integral to maintaining global atmospheric carbon balance. Regardless, the clear-cutting continues apace thanks in large part to biofuel mandates and targets in the world’s biggest economies.
For chapter 5 I visited Detroit, historically the nerve center of the auto industry. There I sought out why the major automakers in the United States—the world’s leading vehicle market from the industry’s inception until late 2009—have confined less environmentally destructive cars to the sidelines. When Toyota launched the Prius in Japan in 1997 and in the United States and Europe three years later, it was a surprise hit. Yet the vast majority of cars the big automakers continue producing run on gas and diesel, as will likely be the