Tipping Point?

"Like bodybuilders, environmentalists [are] thought of as kind of weird fanatics. You know the kind of serious tree huggers. Environmentalists [are] no fun. They [are] like prohibitionists at a fraternity party.

The tipping point will occur when the environment is no longer seen as a nag, but as a positive force in people's lives." — Arnold Schwarzenegger

Schwarzenegger seems to want to have his cake and eat it too. He reminds me of the corporate organic retailers. Sorry to be skeptical (maybe this is the right solution), but it seems too easy. Instead of tracing environmental problems back to a world view born from the Enlightenment, Schwarzenegger instead asks us to boil major philosophical and economic issues down to an image problem? Instead of Descartes, Bacon, Locke and a global economic system that doesn't take ecological sustainability or basic human rights into account, we are told to blame the dirty hippies? Yikes. What happened to simply acknowledging that the tree huggers were right all along. The fact is the science is in, the war is over, and the hippies won.

I've found it fascinating, that in the last five years, as the science behind global warming has gotten so irrefutable that even muscle men like the Schwarzenegger have to pay attention, the environmental movement has done nothing but ridicule so-called, "dirty hippies." The buzz instead is that "Green is the new black." Which implies that being green is being hip. Implying that we are up-to-date. Implying that we have new stuff, not old stuff. Implying that there is a market to sell us all the newest greenest stuff. Implying that we just got bought and sold by a corporate suit in New York with a penchant for making GREEN from whoever buys into his branding. As you can see, I think it's a ploy. It's another mass-marketing strategy that plays upon our prejudices. The way I see it, mainstream America simply doesn't want to admit that a bunch of crazy traveling, ridiculously dressed, dreadlocked freaks were totally fucking right! Holy fucking shit! If that were the case, it just might mean Amer-ika'd have to actually start rethinking some things.

Here's the article: SFGate.com