Because when you say you can fix the problem by consuming the right things, by doing correct individual actions–you don’t have to think about real solutions. You don’t have to think about capitalism or the shit corporations put in our food. And you can look down on people who don’t live up to those individualist morals. You get to feel good about yourself for teaching your niece to say no to dessert, and not to waste water. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that so much of the responsibility, in both cases, lands on the shoulders of women. So much of it has to do with food. Maybe it’s time for us as women to let go of guilt for not being vegan, for taking long showers, for leaving the water running, for all of it, just as we let go of guilt for what we eat. Because not only does “every little bit” not necessarily help, the attitude that it does contributes to shaming women, and elevates middle class conservation to a morality that was never allowed the poor. Consuming your way to environmental salvation: the feminism-acceptable diet talk.

— It’s not a diet, it’s lifestyle activism [via,via]

Environmental concern is commodified and transformed into ideological support for capitalism. Instead of raising awareness of the causes of the ecological crisis, green consumerism mystifies them. The solution is presented as an individual act rather than as the collective action of individuals struggling for social change. The corporations laugh all the way to the bank.

— Direct Action #47 - The Big Green Con: Seeing through the sham of “green” capitalism

We can combine incomes while reducing expenses such as food, child care, electricity, gas and water usage. Marriage may be bourgeois, but it’s also the greenest of all social structures. Michigan State ecologists estimate that the extra households created by divorce cost the nation 73 billion kilowatt hours of electricity and more than 600 billion gallons of water in a year. That’s a mighty big carbon footprint created in the name of solitude.

— Say Yes. What Are You Waiting For? [via]

I would venture that living in an extended family unit (as opposed to the nuclear family that this article implies) is probably more economical still. But, is that something that the Washington Post can really get behind?

UPDATE: A commenter accuses me of being negative again: “Can’t we just be happy with the efforts they did make, not the efforts they didn’t?” No, not when they are calling it “the greenest book of all time” which it clearly is not. We applaud them for their efforts, not their public relations.

— Harry Potter 7: “The Most Greenwashed Book of All Time”