blackuniverse

I’ve been reading about how the supposedly environmental friendly biofuel could be the first step to freeing ourselves from fossil fuel, and how people here there and everywhere are wildly jumpling on the bandwagon, when suddenly this report quoted in this blog presented itself to me and wipe that green smile of my face.

In particular, the studies note, that the cultivation of crops for biofuels has in every case, directly and indirectly, caused the destruction of natural habitats, from rainforests to peat land, to savannahs. Those habitats are important global carbon sinks. When they are destroyed and plowed a huge amount of CO2 is released into the air that will be present for decades.

With more and more fields and lands cleared to fulfil our thirst for fuel, no wonder food prices are going up. I’m not surprised to see stuff like tempe almost disappear from our markets lately. We’re taking food from our mouth and feeding them directly to machines and cars.

So Ney, still want to save money to buy that SUV?

Despite the supposedly ongoing concerns about climate change, apparently consumers (at least those included in the survey noted below) are having second thoughts on buying ‘eco-friendly’ products.

As mentioned by Richard Edelman in his report from the World Economic Forum in Davos last week:

The Challenge for Eco-Friendly Products—Six of ten consumers in the US and UK say they are confused about whether they are indeed buying an environmentally friendly product and 75% of the same group say they don’t know how to make a difference on environment. Timberland CEO Jeff Swartz said consumers are not willing to pay more for the “eco-label,” noting that boots made of recycled tires and organic cotton did not sell. An IPSOS study indicated that consumers are willing to pay only $46 more on a $1000 purchase to buy a green product. Professor Ariely of MIT said that consumers need “an identifiable victim,” to humanize the ecology story, to put emotion into the purchase decision by appealing to the ego and by applying peer pressure.

For the past few days I’ve been reading Friedman’s “The World is Flat.” A bit late of course, considering the book is published in 2005, and the one I’m reading is a ‘a newly revised and expanded’ edition. I haven’t finished the book yet, but something that Friedman said in the book reminded me of the above survey result.

Friedman argued that we have multiple identities in facing globalization: consumer, employee, citizen, taxpayer, and shareholder. Each identity presents a different view towards the same issue.

He said:
The consumer in me wants lower phone bills, but the human being in me also wants to speak to an operator when I call 411. Yes the reader in me loves to surf the Net and read the bloggers, but the citizen in me also wishes that some of those bloggers had an editor, a middleman, to tell them to check some of their facts before they pressed the Send button and told the whole world that something was wrong or unfair.

So, the consumer in me might want the best product available, and that might not be an ‘eco-friendly’ one. But the citizen in me might prefer a ‘friendly’ one considering the damage our planet has suffered from the ‘unfriendly’ ones.

The shareholder in me might want an increased exploitation of corn and palm oil for ethanol, while the consumer in me will suffer the increased food price.

How to juggle this?