“The people are revolting” – as the old joke goes. But revolting against what? And just who are this era’s revolutionaries?

The metaphorical, if not actual, role of the revolutionary is to have a vision. It is to overthrow a tired status quo, to liberate the enslaved – whether they are physically enslaved or whether they are bound to ideologies that no longer function. The revolutionary tends to be a free thinker, a liberal concerned with a fairer deal for all. Rightly or wrongly (and for blogging expediency this is a greatly simplified view) the revolutionary wants to move us forward.

The new revolutionaries, however, have emerged from some freakish opposite dimension. They are ultraconservatives, fighting for poorer health, poverty, ideological enslavement, wider gaps between the haves and have nots, the pre-eminence of ‘rights’ over needs, unlimited economic growth even if it leads to societal and planetary collapse and most incomprehensible of all Sarah Palin for President.  If the inconsistencies and contradictions weren’t so funny they would be truly frightening.

Their revolution is based in fear rather than vision. It is a collective, but completely unconscious and poorly conceived uprising of the all-too-common man who, after years of media scare stories about the coming Armageddon, feels that he is losing everything and paradoxically has nothing to lose. It’s the collective equivalent of the guy who goes berserk with a gun in a gas station because the mini-mart didn’t have his favourite kind of donut.

This ‘Tea Bagger’ revolution has nothing to do with what is really wrong, nor is it intended to fix anything. It is just a senseless acting out of what Robert Bly called the Sibling Society – a society populated by emotionally inarticulate adults of the late post-war generation who have come to be ruled by consumerism, professional, personal self interest and narcissism.  The end result? Emotionally stunted or “half-grown adults”, intent on their own agendas, and incapable of fulfilling their parental, nurturing and leadership obligations to the next generation. In short, a society populated by a bunch of pseudo-adolescents who want everything all the time and who can’t think past their own childish tantrums to the damage they are doing.

Which brings me to my second point – where are the real revolutionaries? The ones who understand the complexity of modern life and the urgent need for change and are agitating to move us forward within that framework.

A few years ago my more liberal activist pals and I would toss around words like ‘revolution’ with glee. Every baby step towards sustainability, every minor green victory was the social tipping point that would prompt the people to rise up and demand a more sustainable, more fair, more inclusive world. Every assault on human dignity, on the wholeness of the planet, on the destruction of culture and community, was seen as the final spark that would ignite the flame.

We’d done the research, we’d got the data, we had charts and graphs and we’d seen the future. We were ready for the revolution.  Sociologists even gave us a name – the Cultural Creatives – the ones with the education and intelligence, the depth and breadth of understanding, to envision a better world and to drive meaningful change. Paul Hawken called us the ‘movement of movements’. But I see precious little movement here and definitely nothing revolutionary. So where the hell are you guys?

Watching events unfold I can’t help thinking that we are all victims of a bigger agenda. That there is a political expediency in letting such extreme childish behaviour run its course.

The environmental and social problems we face are complex and the solutions we need must acknowledge that complexity – and that makes policymaking difficult. Policymakers like clear cut options, and the truth is we are way beyond that reality now. But keep the focus on the extremes, and the voice of the educated  middle eventually gets lost – and then ignored. And without all those tiresome people – the ones who take a long-term view and see both sides of the story –policymaking is so much easier.

In any hierarchy the organisation can only be as complex as the guy at the top. In this respect Americans can thank their lucky stars and stripes that they have a leader who appears to have a degree of complexity. In the UK the race for Prime Minister is between ‘dumb and dumber’ where both candidates have lost sight of the issues and each seems determined to outdo the other in terms of childishness tantrums and meaningless rhetoric. The prospects for our own ‘sibling society’ are not encouraging.

Back in the US of A the thing I find most bewildering is that these ultraconservative ‘revolutionaries’ are being framed merely as Average Joes exercising their right to protest.

Not long ago environmental campaigners, engaged in largely peaceful and lawful activism were reframed as a major terrorist threat on US soil. Documents released a few years ago show that a private security company run by former Secret Service officers spied on Greenpeace and other environmental organisations from the late 1990s through at least 2000. Two years ago in the UK activist group Plane Stupid was infiltrated by an aviation industry spy and last year it was revealed that EDF – the French energy giant – was illegally spying on environmentalists and infiltrating their ranks. 

It may well have been the abuse of basic civil liberties and long arm of the law coming down on them – for instance by removing their right to take part in protests – that has driven many green protesters underground. Many in the environmental  movement now seem happy to be pacified with ‘green consumerism’ and the lie that they are doing their bit with every solar powered cappuccino whisk they buy.

The new conservative revolutionaries – the ones who think their President is a closet ‘mooslem’ and Guantanamo Bay is a holiday camp – are throwing not just insults but punches and bricks, and they are making death threats  in order to influence government policy. In short, they are seeking to “(i) intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion”.  Doesn’t that put these fine patriots in direct breach of the Patriot Act?

Aren’t they just domestic terrorists? And if so isn’t it time they suffered the appropriate penalties?

In the mean time, what will it take for these Cultural Creatives, this movement of movements, to stop trying to shop its way out of trouble and start its own visionary revolution for a better world; something more inspiring and inclusive than name-calling and flag-waving.

Seriously, what will it take?

Read more by Pat Thomas here and here. Vist Pat’s website, Howl at the Moon, here.

Pat’s previous AlterNet post can be found here.

News agencies, newspapers and especially the blogs of Big Agriculture and the livestock industry are rubbing their hand with glee. A new analysis claims that meat may not have as great a climate impact as has recently been reported.

The paper, Clearing the Air:  Livestock’s Contribution to Climate Change, suggests that figures in the UN 2006 report Livestock’s Long Shadow – which says that livestock is responsible for 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions – are unfairly compared to emissions from transport.

The basis of lead-author Frank Mitloehner’s beef is that while the livestock figures are based on a comprehensive life-cycle analysis which even includes emissions from land clearance, the figures from transport are less comprehensive. If they were, he argues, transport’s contribution would be greatly increased. This may well be true. And maybe one day we will live in a world where our understanding of transport’s contribution to climate change will be based on embedded emissions instead of smoke and mirrors. It’s certainly long overdue.

Likewise, most food campaigners accept that Livestock’s Long Shadow is a flawed report. Its recommendation of more intensive livestock farming, for example, is incomprehensible.

What is less easy to accept is the argument that, since beef production on US soil does not directly involve the clearing of vital rainforests, US producers should be encouraged to continue on a business as usual trajectory and even increase the production of meat and dairy through more intensive farming practices.

For an ‘air quality expert’ Mitloehner – who has borne the brunt of the PR burden for this paper – shows remarkably little awareness of the fact that greenhouse gases do not respect international borders. They don’t get turned away firmly but politely by US immigration. Climate change is an international problem. To paraphrase that old chaos chestnut: if a cow farts in Argentina, it could well cause a tornado in Texas.

The livestock industry aims to double its output globally by 2050 and farm animals, like every other living thing, need to eat. According to David Pimentel:  “More than half the U.S. grain and nearly 40 percent of world grain is being fed to livestock rather than being consumed directly by humans”.

Where will the food for increased numbers of future livestock come from? How many rainforests does it take to preserve every American’s right to a Big Mac? This is why the land use question is important.

A little bit of extra context may also be helpful here. Clearing the Air was originally published in October 2009 and attracted little interest until December 2009 when two events panicked US and European beef producers – the European Parliament event Less Meat = Less Heat, which featured speakers such as Sir Paul McCartney, founder of the UK’s Meat Free Monday campaign, Dr Rajendra Pachauri  Chair of the IPCC and Olivier de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, making compelling arguments for meat reduction (NOTE: meat reduction, not  total abstinence from meat in our diets, as is so often misreported) and the climate summit at Copenhagen.

The original press release for the 2009 paper noted that the study was “…supported by a $26,000 research grant from the Beef Checkoff Program, which funds research and other activities, including promotion and consumer education, through fees on beef producers in the U.S. It also noted that “Since 2002, Mitloehner has received $5 million in research funding, with 5 percent of the total from agricultural commodities groups, such as beef producers.” Facts that, for some reason, were left off the 2010 press release.

UC Davis may need to invest in a calculator. If you read the funding disclosure document it shows that Big Ag funding accounted for closer to 11 percent of Mitloehner’s funding over the period 2003-09.

The funding of any scientific report or study is germane and should be made plain not only to for the benefit of the scientific community but for an interested public. To find the 2009 press release required journalists to ask questions and do some digging – in the UK only the Guardian newspaper has, so far, tackled the story with any serious intent – which is why most news agencies, newspapers and livestock industry blogs haven’t managed to make the connection. Instead they simply reprinted the press release without asking even basic questions about the authors or the analysis, and used it as a springboard from which to make ridiculous leaps of logic about meat having little or no impact on climate.

You’d expect that kind of sloppy self-serving behaviour from the beef barons and the livestock lobbyists – but shame on the news media for doing such a mediocre job.

Read more by Pat Thomas here . Visit Pat’s webite, Howl at the Moon, here.

Pat’s previous AlterNet post can be found here.

Ethical consumers, says a small story in the London Guardian, are more likely to indulge in selfish behaviour than those buying conventional products and may even be more likely to steal and lie.

The story is based, bizarrely, on a several-months-old study by researchers at University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, which used a series of computer games to test the theory that green consumers were more altruistic and ethical than non-green consumers.

In one test participants were given $6 to spend in online shops and to share with other participants. Those who browsed, but did not buy, in a store with green products shared more money than those who had browsed the store with conventional products. But those who actually made purchases from a green store tended to share less money with others than those who bought from the conventional store. Thus the selfishness.

In another experiment participants were asked to look at a split screen on a computer. An image of dots would flash up quickly on the screen and the goal was to identify which side had more dots. Guess right and you could take money out of an envelope containing $5 in loose change. Green shoppers were more likely to reward themselves for being right – even if they weren’t – and came away with on average an extra 83 cents in their pockets. Thus the lying and stealing.

So, is it better to buy green poducts than planet-destroying ones? Yes. Probably. Sort of. But the notion of a ‘green consumer’ is, itself, something of an oxymoron since most ‘greens’ recommend shopping less and even opting out of the conventional economic system whenever possible.

Such recommendations include time banks, LETs schemes, local and alternative currencies (including gold coins) and simple person-to-person barter, as well as adopting a ‘mend and make do’ attitude. ‘Green’ shoppers generally don’t represent such values and beliefs. In fact, green shoppers are more likely to represent a niche group within the larger body of our consumer society, rather than a subgroup of the larger body of environmentalists. And consumer society is inherently selfish.

But why, possibly, would green a consumer be more selfish than those buying conventional products? Since ethical consumerism makes up such a small percentage of actual overall consumerism as to be a meaningless blip on economic and environmental radar, likely the green shopper is reacting to a deeper knowledge that this business-as-usual response to crisis is the economic equivalent of spitting on a forest fire. When you feel ineffective you will do anything to feel powerful again, including stealing and cheating. In the wider human community people commit such crimes precisely to feel powerful and in control of some aspect of their lives.

The authors of the study framed the selfish actions of the green consumers as a kind of exaggerated sense of entitlement, a license to do bad. In psychology what drives this kind of slingshot effect, where ‘bad’ behaviour follows closely on the heels of ‘good’ behaviour, would be linked to shadow material. The shadow is all the stuff that we repress, not just our ‘bad’ thoughts and feelings, but all our greatest unlived potential, as well as things we know but try not to think about or feel anything for because it is too painful or too complicated. Every time we slip into this kind of unexamined consciousness – the very consciousness that allows a consumer society to flourish – the shadow will rise up and slap us the head.

Similarly, a green consumer in quiet moments of reflection (providing they have such things) may wonder why, if they are making the ‘right’ choices, the world is still so ‘wrong’. The frustration at this ‘wrongness’ – which is often unexpressed – may lead to an overwhelming sense of resentment, anger and grief; to the need for soothing of some sort, the need for recognition of every effort however minor, and the unbearable feeling that nothing they do matters anymore. And if nothing matters anymore, why not steal and cheat and lie?

No matter how much we seek to celebrate it, the truth about green shopping is that it makes us think less, not more, about the issues. In the end it’s hard to see what can really be gained from this bizarre series of tests. It’s almost impossible to measure morality in a lab. It may even be that the green shoppers (university students after all) lied and cheated more because they spent so much on ethical goods that they couldn’t even afford a cup of Fairtrade coffee.

In a fairer world, all goods would be ethical goods, the words ‘retail’ and ‘therapy’ would never be crunched together and we’d all be spending a lot less time worrying about keeping up with the Eco-Smythe-Joneses. We would, as Duane Elgin so eloquently suggests in his book Voluntary Simplicity, simplify our outer world in order to facilitate a much richer inner world and studies like this would become even more redundant than they are today.

Read the full version of this post  here. Visit Pat’s website, Howl at the Moon, here.

Pat’s previous AlterNet post can be found here.