Shopping Your Way to Safety – A Book Review

I sat down to read this book one lazy morning thinking it would be a good book about consumers making conscious shopping choices to better the world. Boy was I way off base. The book is Shopping Our Way to Safety – How We Changed from Protecting the Environment to Protecting Ourselvesby Andrew Szasz. Basically it delves into a very deep explanation of why consumers buying “green” and “safe” products (voting with their dollars) are only helping themselves…not the environment and not society in general. In fact Szasz explains that this consumer action could have dire consequences…and here we thought we were just doing right by our families and our planet.

He starts off by describing the culture of fear we live in. We are afraid of our tainted water supply, we are afraid of pesticides in our food, we are afraid of chemicals in our shampoo and in our deodorant, we are afraid of getting cancer from the sun or even our sunscreen, etc. He doesn’t dispute this…we do in fact live with many personal and environmental health threats. Indoor air is toxic thanks to conventional cleaners and VOCs and outdoor air is toxic thanks to exhaust emissions and particulates in the air.

So….consumers in an effort to protect their families and their bodies started buying filtered water, organic foods, green cleaners, non-toxic baby toys, and natural personal care products. I have always considered this to be a good thing..as we send a message to the greedy corporations that are poisoning us…that we don’t want their crappy products. It worked too. Green and natural are becoming more mainstream and popular with each passing year. So we did something right, yes?

According to Szasz the answer is not exactly yes. In fact he likens this phenomena to those that let fear prompt them to desert urban areas to live in gated communities, or to desert public schools when things get bad to homeschool or charter school instead. Taking these actions doesn’t address the problem and it doesn’t fix it… and since many of those in our larger community might not have the options and choices we do…they are stuck in the broken system and we are happy to leave them there as long as our needs are met.

Ouch! I was getting exceedingly uncomfortable with this book after I read the intro chapter but I just had to see where he took it and if his back up arguments made any sense…frankly I was afraid to find out. In nothing else, kudos to Andrew Szasz for challenging me and making me really think.

He starts off by explaining how this whole green consumerism and shopping phenomena is actually reverse quarantine. Instead of keeping the small element of bad away from the larger population of good via quarantine we are reverse quarantining ourselves….seeking to isolate ourselves from what we consider a large, toxic world.

He then goes on to compare this reverse quarantine concept with the Fallout Shelter Panic of 1961. I was not so familiar with this era of history but basically he describes how relations between the US and Russia were on a melt down and President Kennedy told the American people to prepare for nuclear war. Well, this motivated some companies to start selling bomb shelters and the media decided to dumb down the true consequences of such a war by letting people think a bomb shelter really would save them and that after 15 days they could emerge from their shelters unscathed. Yes, it would be horrible and many people would die but we would make it…we could “take it”. We know what a crock that was….but corporations and the media at large had a different story to tell….no doubt motivated my money. Sound familiar anyone….ahem…global warming????

Anyway, Szasz agrees that this example is flawed because the threat did die down after a few short years and while thousand upon thousands of bomb shelter were built in the name of false safety….we avoided not only the nuclear war we also avoided the consequences that the whole bomb shelter fiasco in itself could have created.

Had the threat NOT subsided and Americans had continued with their bomb shelter buying there would have been disastrous consequences. 

First, people would have had a false sense of security. Bomb shelters were nothing but a cruel illusion. Szasz goes on to explain how unlikely it would have been that people would have survived in tiny bomb shelters with little water and food, no waste disposal, no fresh air, and no room to move, etc. IF they could have survived and then emerged after the 15 “safe zone” the media was touting there lives would be fine right? Uh…no. No one was prepared for what things would REALLY be like….heck the media was telling people you could just wash radio active particles off in the shower and you would be fine. No mention of the fact that it might likely be some forty years before you grow anything edible in the soils contaminated by fallout. This book goes on to explain what the REAL aftermath of a nuclear war would be and how bomb shelters were just silliness. Gerald Piel, publisher of Scientific American said it was “dangerous illusion”. They were an imaginary refuge.

Second, shelter building would have increased the likelihood of war. If all Americans were off building their shelters and preparing for war then the American government would have felt more freedom to take hard line foreign policies and be less open to working things out. It is highly probable that our government would have seen its people as being open and accepting of war and then been unyielding to Russia, likening the chances for war. Also, if Russia became aware that most Americans were prepped and ready for war what would have stopped them from making that first strike to try and catch as many of unawares as possible?

Szasz makes the case that our frenzy for self preservation could have had disastrous consequences. Building a bomb shelter seemed like a way to protect themselves and their families but it was all an illusion that distracted them and they took their eye off the ball. What they should have been doing was joining together to protest nuclear war…not preparing for it. Even if they lived thanks to their trusty bomb shelter what would happen to all the people who didn’t own homes or who didn’t have the money to build shelters? They would have been sacrificed.

So are we doing the same thing now? If we are in fact facing an environmental crisis are we “shopping” ourselves into false security? Are we listening to media spin that we can “take it” and avoid the issue perhaps by changing a few light bulbs and buying a few green cleaners…taking our eye off the ball?

Next, Szasz explains what we can learn from another case of inverted quarantine…suburban sprawl and how the growth of the suburbs in the name of security has caused us to abandon thoughts of urban reform and how this whole trend has had some disastrous results on our cities and on our people.

The next few chapters go into all the dangerous things we are exposed too and how they are a direct consequence of the way we live our lives. He explores the dangers in water, food, and air specifically and then goes into how the inverted quarantine of bottled water, organic food, and natural products may or may actually protect us. I found myself agreeing with him. Bottleed water is way overrated, organic food does protect us quite a bit but not completely, and many “natural” products are just the same old crap with a “green” label.  A person would have to cover all the bases so to speak to get the protection their after too. Organic food is nullified if you are bathing in chemicals.

He also discusses how the bottle water trend is very harmful to the environment and how we should be lobbying for our government to clean up public water sources for every one. He has a harder time using this same logic for organic food because eating organic is political for many…they are trying to influence the way food is produced for every ones benefit. Szasz has an issue with those eating organic ONLY for health though and feels as though without them coming over to the other side the organic movement will not sustain its growth and actually change anything. When we are not doing things for the right reasons we become anesthetized politically. Szasz says that those going green for their health (their air, water, food) will never be motivated to help anyone but themselves basically.

What is boils down to is this..support for the environment and true change is wide but thin. We want change….but overall most people are not willing to do something substantial to to create change. Is buying up “green” products resignation that things can’t change? Szasz believes that mass refusal of green products would open the door for REAL solutions. He believes that the anti-inverted quarantine side won out in the bomb shelter scare as the majority stood up and said NO to nuclear war and no to a fake “fix”. He feels that people who can afford to protect themselves with “green” products are not as safe as they think AND they shop instead of use their voice to affect change…regulations don’t change and the market doesn’t change. He sites the ozone layer problem as an example. People were not willing to hide indoors or slather themselves with “ozone safe” sunscreen forever more…they spoke out and regulations went into place to change our impact on the ozone layer.

Overall I think the book made some excellent points and drew some valid parallels. I appreciate that he did see the political benefit of eating organic foods…he just feels that not nearly enough people are motivated to eat organic for what he considers the right reasons…political reasons. I agree with him there but I as someone who eats organic and lives green for health and for politics I won’t be refusing organic food and getting rid of my air purifiers any time soon. That to me seems like shooting myself in the foot to make a point. I might get my message across but heck if I didn’t just shoot myself. There is no reason we can’t have it both ways. It comes down to education. We also can’t forget to be activists too.

We need to ask… what have I done lately (besides shop) for a cleaner, greener, healthier world? If we struggle for an answer then perhaps Szasz is right in a way I am not yet willing to accept.

[tags]green consumer, environment, organic food, bottle water, shopping[/tags]