It’s Not Easy Being a Green Junk Mailer
Gus Speth, the Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies says that the environmental movement needs to work within our existing capitalist system rather than trying to overthrow it entirely. Socialism may seem more environmentally friendly than late stage capitalism, but it’s not really a practical solution for the free peoples of America.
Speth acknowledges that great strides have been made towards environmental protection within the current system, but it’s been like swimming upstream, he says. If we were smart, though, we could find ways to make the two compatible.
There’s no better example of capitalist waste than the junk mail industry–letters are printed, mailed, transported across to the country to your house only to be deposited directly into the recycling bin, where they get picked up and driven to a recycling plant and turned back into blank paper.
The New York Times reports on efforts by The Green Marketing Coalition, which includes companies such as Microsoft, to mitigate environmental damage by printing on recycled paper and cleaning up lists so that they stop marketing to pets and dead people. Then maybe I’ll stop receiving the AARP brochures that have been landing in my mailbox since I was 37.
