Do As Celebrities Say, Not As They Do!

Hypocritical celebrity "causes" aren’t anything new, but Bob Morris, NYT style writer, elegantly calls BS on some recent eco no nos.

From what I can see, there’s as much selling as thinking going on.

The
other night I attended a magazine party in a photography studio that
had been turned into an elaborate garden with 10-foot-high privet
hedges fashioned from shrubbery trucked up from the South. After the
party, the walls of greens went into a chipper for recycling.

“It’s giving back to the environment in a good way,” the decorator told me.

Sure.
Unless you consider the fuel to truck all that greenery up from the
South in the first place. I guess it could be worse. John Travolta, for
instance, recently flew his own Boeing 707 to England to promote a new
movie and urged everyone to “do their bit” to combat global warming.
Closer to home, meanwhile, the Sheryl Crow “Stop Global Warming College
Tour” stipulated parking for three tractor-trailers, four buses and six
cars. Ms. Crow is a spokeswoman for Revlon, a tour sponsor. Maybe I’m
missing something. But is there anything green about that except money?

Good question.  With all the media bombardment of the eco-friendly message, corporate heads are trying to buy into the trend the only way they know how, making more crap to sell.  More waste is produced, and the cycle continues.

Big business and celebrity attention could kill this trend; large scale economic efforts do nothing but exacerbate the problem, just look at the health food market.

The lush, new, extremely comprehensive Whole Foods on Houston looks like a Wal Mart.  Hell, they’re even buying competition like their suburban sprawl loving cousins.  Todd Sullivan makes a good point:

Much
like Starbuck’s, Whole Foods is a company whose best years are behind
it. Competitors have encroached on its theme and the originality that
made it such a fast grower is gone.  Both companies are selling
products that are perceived by most people as equal to their
competition for higher prices.  In today’s price sensitive environment,
that is not a recipe for growth.

Hopefully, the celebrity attention will spread out, trickle down and everyone’s consciousness will be raised a little.  But if it’s more profitable to string people long under false pretenses, grassroots efforts will need serious rethinking in the near future come the failure of the top down approach.  Shouts to Momus; good thoughts and another take on previous topics.