Green consumerism, Marketing and manipulation, Self identity

David Orr on authentic experience

04.17.08 | Permalink | 1 Comment

David Orr on the extinction of authentic experience, at the hands of the marketing industry. His call is to reclaim authentic experience amongst the young - by which he means experience that isn’t mediated by stuff, and the manipulation of our desire for ever more stuff.

Campaign strategy, Green consumerism, Marketing and manipulation, Self identity, Small steps

New WWF report: ‘Weathercocks and Signposts’

04.15.08 | Permalink | 9 Comments

A new WWF report, Weathercocks and Signposts: The Environment Movement at a Crossroads, critically reassesses current approaches to motivating environmentally-friendly behaviour change. Current behaviour-change strategies are increasingly built upon analogy with product marketing campaigns. They often take as given the ’sovereignty’ of consumer choice, and the perceived need to preserve current lifestyles intact. This report [...]

Green consumerism

Sir Martin Sorrell on deliberate obsolescence

04.01.08 | Permalink | 8 Comments

Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of the global marketing group WPP, recently called for an end to deliberate obsolescence, citing Apple as a prime example of a company that exploits this as a strategy to flog more stuff:
“Sorrell cited Apple as an example of a brand creating products that consumers quickly jettison in favour of [...]

Connection to nature, Lessons from marketing, Love, Marketing and manipulation

WWF and Saatchi & Saatchi on love

02.27.08 | Permalink | Comments Off

Can the highly refined influencing techniques of the marketing industry have any role to play in helping us to move beyond green consumption; from consuming differently, to consuming less? This piece in today’s Guardian announces the formation of a group of depth-psychologists and marketing executives, to explore this question.

Aesthetics, Fatuous attempts of companies to appear green, Green consumerism

Branson’s coconuts

02.26.08 | Permalink | 3 Comments

The climate change debate is forever mired in statistics (or what George Bush would call ‘fuzzy math’). But it seems that in the last couple of days one number has really spoken: 150,000.
It took 150,000 coconuts to produce the biofuel to fill one fifth of one of the four fuel tanks on a Virgin Boeing [...]

Environment and wellbeing, Happiness or subjective wellbeing

Why are Danes so happy…

02.21.08 | Permalink | Comments Off

… despite being a bit dour; and what do they think they can teach the Americans about it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shepBx2ogJo

, Economics and the environment, Green consumerism

Recession-proofing the climate

01.22.08 | Permalink | 1 Comment

Can we look to a recession to reduce emissions? Or will it simply serve to expose the capricious nature of those approaches to tackling climate change which are focussed narrowly on the ‘business case’?
Yesterday I was talking to a friend who was speculating that a recession may contribute to the emergence of a greater sense [...]

Consumerism and the pursuit of happiness, Happiness or subjective wellbeing

Green shopping

01.07.08 | Permalink | 5 Comments

What is the role of shopping in meeting the challenge of climate change?
Today I came across a note on the West of England Climate Change project, written by Ian Preston from the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE), and disseminated as a link in Chris Rose’s Newsletter. The West of England Climate Change project put [...]

Celebrity, Love

Nicole Richie loves the planet

11.21.07 | Permalink | 5 Comments

Nicole Richie loves the planet.

Grief and Despair

11.19.07 | Permalink | 8 Comments

I spent Saturday morning at the Guild of Psychotherapists Annual Lecture by Mary-Jayne Rust entitled Climate on the Couch - unconscious processes in relation to our environmental crisis. I am convinced that environmentalists have much to learn from psychotherapists’ understanding of our unconscious. After all, it was through manipulation of our unconscious that the marketing [...]

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