Mindful Consuming is important, George

There has been a resurgence recently of the ecology movement that created bottle banks. Back in the 80s, funnily enough in part associated with Thatcher, being green was sold to most people. Of course it was never 100% but it was quite popular. Sanctimonious liberalism touted this as a way forward, and many people did follow it. And what has the impact been? Virtually none.

Evidently it is not home consumption that is the global problem because people tried. In many ways the situation is far worse. Climate meetings and deals have come and gone, and industry has made the situation far worse. Rather than consider our future business leaders (Koch Brothers) have financed climate denial allowing Trump some credibility amongst his followers in withdrawing from the Paris accord.

So when George Monbiot says this, I agree in part with him:-

His final summary is a bit weak - possibly because of his Guardian compromise. People need to consider activism based around an approach something like the Zandtao narrative (not prescriptive - up for discussion):-

I doubt whether the current democratic structures will elicit change as they are primarily designed to prevent change, I suspect George has stated similar elsewhere.

But the basic premise of his approach is not constructive, consumer power is tremendous. Perhaps the most powerful consumer movement is the BDS movement, and it is slowly having an impact judging by the way Israel responds to the movement; given the Guardian's current flame-fanning on the bogus Labour antisemitism promoting mindful consuming might not go down well editorially. There was a recent campaign against Jeff Bezos and Amazon against the horrific exploitation of the Amazon workers who after working a full week still needed food stamps. Even this 1% changed his workers minimum wage - a small victory. There is no doubt in any quarter that the boycott of South African goods contributed to the fall of the apartheid system there - the argument is how much, I hope BDS can contribute to the fall of the Israeli apartheid system.

Consumer power is strong, and mindful consuming is an important strategy for change because the 1% depend on profits from our consuming. In my view George should be constructively encouraging mindful ecologically-aware consuming whilst recognising that in the 1%-satrapy such consuming is going to have minimal impact. What is important about consuming campaigns is to recognise that they do have tremendous power if it is mass movement mindful consuming.

Push for ecologically-aware consumer practices, participate in BDS, boycott companies who pay poverty wages. There is power in strategically-directed mindful consuming. So long, George, as we are realistic and don't expect utopia tomorrow. For me mindful consuming is perhaps now the mass movement's most powerful tactic, and needs to be used more.

Not belittled as George did here.