Low Impact, High Guilt?
Seth Godin wonders if the local and organic movement isn’t going down the wrong path.
In a blog post entitled “Getting sad at Whole Foods (more vs. less)” Godin questions if looking at our choices by how little impact the food and products we buy have on the environment is the right tack.
For me, local and organic is a treat. I feel great doing it and I’m happy to invest the time to go to the Union Square market. I wonder, though, about how long the legs on that story are. If we’re going to make people feel guilty when they spend money, pretty soon they’re going to start ignoring the story that makes them feel guilty.
Do you remember when you were a kid and you were supposed to clean your plate when eating because somehow that was going to help some starving kid in China? That story didn’t last so long.
I’m more and more convinced that the best hope for the eco movement is to tell a story of efficiency and growth and ingenuity. More is easy to sell. Less almost never is.
Whole Foods is singled out, which is a post for a later time. They embody the average city/urban dweller’s view of eco/organic/local grocery shopping.
In some manners, they’ve become a way of life.
But is this about the filter we apply to the choices we make on a daily basis. And in many ways, I can’t help but think that Godin is right. Where we have learned to seek out the “less”, our future depends on the movement touting the “more”.
