top producer of palm oil, which is an increasingly important raw material for biodiesel. Much of this oil comes from plantations established on the incinerated ruins of clear-cut tropical rain forests on the Indonesian island of Borneo. The island comprises carbon-rich forests that are the sole remaining viable habitat for the critically endangered orangutan, and home to ancient indigenous societies including Dayaks. With some of the last large rain forests on the planet, Borneo’s natural systems are integral to maintaining global atmospheric carbon balance. Regardless, the clear-cutting continues apace thanks in large part to biofuel mandates and targets in the world’s biggest economies.
For chapter 5 I visited Detroit, historically the nerve center of the auto industry. There I sought out why the major automakers in the United States—the world’s leading vehicle market from the industry’s inception until late 2009—have confined less environmentally destructive cars to the sidelines. When Toyota launched the Prius in Japan in 1997 and in the United States and Europe three years later, it was a surprise hit. Yet the vast majority of cars the big automakers continue producing run on gas and diesel, as will likely be the case for decades to come. With the Obama administration strengthening fuel economy standards from 27.5 mpg in 2009 to 35.5 by 2016, it would appear we’re on the right track. While higher efficiency is good, consider that American firms profitably make and sell fuel-frugal cars overseas—some that get over 80 mpg—and the change seems feeble at best.
We know that burning fossil fuels is the number one source of carbon dioxide, so why don’t car companies give U.S. drivers a cleaner set of wheels? Many people believe the Detroit Three—Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler—bury ecologically responsible vehicle technology to ward off change. After all, General Motors, as portrayed in the documentary film Who Killed the Electric Car?, scotched its first viable electric-car program after only a few years. The problem of getting more green rides on the road is not simply technological. Despite what we’re so often told—“the right technology is just around the corner”—highly efficient cars already exist. We’re still driving gas-guzzlers because green vehicles aren’t profitable enough. Another crucial piece of the story is the complicity of consumers. Given that the first Ford Model T built in 1909 got 26 mpg, why have drivers accepted, even embraced, lackluster fuel economy?
The situation looks set to shift as a new green wave washes over the struggling auto industry, bringing with it more efficient cars. At the forefront was the Prius, while the latest rising star is GM’s new Chevy Volt. The car is a higher-tech gas-electric hybrid that the company says will get a staggering 230 mpg. Sounds great, but this mpg can only be achieved under specific conditions; depending on how it’s driven, according to Edmunds.com, the Volt can also get a perplexingly low 38.3 mpg. Charging our vehicles from the grid presents further, and paramount, questions about just how eco-friendly automobiles can really be. In 2007 electricity generation accounted for 42 percent of the U.S.’s total carbon dioxide output. Until the grid is juiced up with renewable energy from sources such as wind and solar, we will not have solved the problem.
When all else fails, consumers can turn to a new type of service that promises to expunge their CO2 after it has been released. Companies claiming they can balance out pollution from fossil-fuel-intensive activities such as airplane flights and road trips sell what are called carbon offsets. Consumers pay a fee based on how much CO2 they create, and the offset firm channels that money to projects such as planting trees and constructing renewable energy facilities. To find out how and if counteracting CO2 works, for chapter 6 I went to India, which hosts more than 25 percent of carbon-offset projects globally. I discovered that some projects don’t seem to be happening at all, some are poorly implemented, and others are causing additional ecological damage. Such outcomes easily go unnoticed, however, because the voluntary industry is wholly unregulated. Critics argue that the overall offset system is flawed because it’s impossible to truly rub out carbon. Even if it is, the greenhouse gas certainly won’t be neutralized immediately, but only over the duration of an offset project. For example, say a consumer buys offsets for a flight and the money goes toward a reforestation project. The CO2 balance from that person’s travel will only be settled over the lifetime of the trees, which, depending on the species, can be as long as thirty, fifty, one hundred years, or more. Meanwhile, these greenhouse gases don’t disappear, but linger in the atmosphere at precisely the moment we need to contain pollution. Carbon emitted today cannot be wiped out today, if at all, even though most buyers believe otherwise.
With widespread acceptance of the problem of global warming, a torrent of responses has issued forth from pent-up environmentalists, eco-entrepreneurs, and government. President Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus package, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, outlines unprecedented spending on a range of more ecologically sound solutions. As a result, the emerging green marketplace, including organic food, energy-efficient homes, biofuels, green cars, and CO2 offsetting, will only continue to grow. Crucially, these new products reflect people’s irrepressible desire to know the processes that lie behind the things they use in daily life. More consumers now look for the Certified Organic label, Fair Trade seal, or any of the other myriad emblems—referred to as “trust marks” in the branding industry—guaranteeing a more ecologically and morally pure provenance. But these stamps, meant to illuminate, can often obscure ongoing destructive practices. As ecological remedies such as the ones covered in this book become mainstream, people will increasingly want and need to know more. Green Gone Wrong doesn’t consider all of the potential cures, such as green jobs and weatherizing existing buildings, but the ground it does cover will hopefully provide a useful perspective that can be applied in these other spheres.
Green Gone Wrong is an appeal to the reader to take the evolving environmental crisis as an opportunity. If we can step back and honestly assess our options, we will make better decisions than we have in the past. We could take any number of approaches to investigate where to go from here, such as looking back: what choices and structural forces led us to this perilous place? While history is crucial, this book focuses primarily on the present. Investigating current remedies allows for an exploration of whether today’s most popular solutions are up to the task. Some might interpret the findings of this investigation as discouraging. “If these solutions don’t work, then nothing will!” But there is a difference between hope and false hope. Green Gone Wrong is an attempt to further the discussion so that we can broaden the possibilities and focus on remedies that bring results. Fundamentally, this book arises from the belief that we have the capacity to find solutions that are not simply products to buy, but ways of engaging with how we live and what we want our world to be.
Just as the summer sun rises, dozens of independent growers from the surrounding region unpack their trucks and vans and set up stalls to sell fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, fish, cheese, bread, honey, and flowers. They’re at the Union Square Greenmarket in New York City, the gem in the crown of the city’s more than one hundred farmers’ markets, one of the biggest such networks in the United States. Some farm stands take up more space than others; some resemble lean-tos, with weathered sunshades pitched against box trucks lettered with names such as EVOLUTIONARY ORGANICS. Other stands are sleeker, sheltered by new white canopies that cast an even, dispersed light onto the piles of fruits and vegetables on tables below: frilly squash blossoms, bright radishes, wild spinach, and heirloom tomatoes with their full flesh folding in on itself. This produce bears little resemblance to the standardized, homogenous grocery store fare. The variegated farm stalls line the western edge of this bustling urban plaza—the type of place where, in the years before agribusiness and processed foods, farmers and shoppers would have
