Earth Hour Is Hot Air, Kermit Debunks Green Crusade

CEBU, Philippines - She looked at her neatly lined personal and hair care products beaming with happiness. Then she faced the mirror, “Mirror, mirror on the dresser, who is the Miss Earth this year?” She had been using organic shampoo made from mango, organic soap made from aloe, organic lotion from cocoa butter and her food supplement was concoction capsules from vegetables grown organically. Though she paid a premium for her organic products from an exclusive health boutique, but just like you and me, she’s been conned.

When being green is no longer the color of envy or signal for "GO", it could mean hypocrisy and needs to STOP. When frogs don't enjoy being green, it may not be because of climate change. Rather, it may be about changing the climate of covetousness and consumerism. When frogs turn green, it may not be because of global warming, rather it is about green warning.

Even frogs validate that the unusual changes in rainfall, the unusual spells of drought or the unusual successive powerful earthquakes can't be aborted with environmentally friendly products. Going organic and using organic products can do little to reduce carbon emissions or mitigate the so-called carbon footprint. As it turned out, all these have been nothing but sinister greenwashing.

Over the past four decades, environmentalists have been knocking heavily on doors, screaming on computer screens and rallying on the streets warning us that we have been conned with green all this time. This advertising manipulation for going green took seed when the first Earth Hour was launched in the 1970s purportedly in response to alerts that the Earth's fossil fuel and oil resources were on the brink of depletion. Spin doctors, editors, journalists and public relations men did a pretty good job at manipulating crisis and manipulating panic that the world was being tapped out of fuel, and thus the call to conserve. The first Earth Day was held on April 22, 1970 to encourage consumers to switch off electric appliances for one hour. Through the years though, it has not sustained reduction in greenhouse emissions.

While the irretrievable and irreplaceable depletion of fossil fuel and petroleum is possible, this cannot be averted or delayed with environment products or use of organic products. What it created was a marketing mania for going green or going environment-friendly. The extent of green deception found public utilities spending 300 million dollars, advertising themselves as clean green companies – some eight times more than the money spent on pollution reduction research.

 Greenwashing Is Red Hysteria.

It was 16 years later or in 1986 when environmentalists spoke openly that all this green is nothing but manipulated red hysteria. Greenwashing is a term that signifies insincere, dubious, inflated or misleading environmental claims. It is a form of spin or manipulated deception using green to manage perception in promoting that a company’s policy or product is purportedly environment friendly. American environmentalist Jay Westerveld coined the term “greenwashing” in 1986 in a play of words from “whitewashing” which is to use white paint to cover dirt in a superficial way. “Greenwashing” is an advertising technique that gives the impression of being environment friendly when actually it bears no significant change on the environment nor does it have anything to do with the environment.

Westerveld reportedly coined the term in response to a hotel’s efforts to encourage guests to help the environment by reusing towels so as to reduce water, energy and detergent. The environmentalist suspected all along that the real motive was for profit. What it amounts to is that it was meant to reduce water, energy and detergent use not for the environment but for the hotel so it can scrimp operational costs on laundry.

Greenwashing is also called “linguistic detoxification” which means definitions of toxicity for certain substances are changed so that these things no longer become toxic. For instance, there is an advertising technique of putting an image of a forest on a bottle containing harmful chemicals, or managing image of oil companies as being environment friendly when these are traditional polluters. There are claims of toxic sewage sludge as good for human health. Food products have packaging that evokes environmentally friendly imagery even though there is nothing in it that would have environment impact.

All this time, all these energy saving crusade has been nothing but hot air. Yet no matter how hot the air is, green is green bucks. While a 1990 study found that 58 percent of environmental ads had at least deceptive claim, still another survey reported that there was a 73 percent increase of items sold by retailers claiming to be green. While another study found that 77 percent of people said the environmental reputation of the company affected whether they would buy their products, still 95 percent of the products claiming to be green committed sin meaning greenwashing. Sale of organic products grew from $10 billion in 2003 to more than $20 billion in 2007. From organic coffee, organic soap, organic shampoo, organic food supplements, we have been greenwashed all this time.

If we have been greenwashed or conned all this time, it is because we are easily deceived with colors of the rainbow. It is the climate of covetousness, the culture for consumerism and the crisis of materialism that have made people gullible to the manipulation of an unseen hand. Just because something is organic, it does not mean that it’s not poison. It is not easy being green. Nor does it take so much energy to shift to a climate of stewardship, a culture of regulation. The frogs did it.