Day: February 3, 2005

Media Lens: Silence is Green: The Green Movement And The Corporate Mass Media

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3 February 2005 — MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

Media Lens: SILENCE IS GREEN The Green Movement And The Corporate Mass Media

Lethal Dreams

It is one of the great ironies of our time that, as evidence of environmental catastrophe has inexorably mounted, so the visibility of radical environmental movements has collapsed. In the late 1980s, public outrage at environmental devastation propelled the likes of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the Green Party onto the media stage. With airwaves filled with endless talk of ‘going green’, BBC presenter John Humphrys declared he would flush his toilet less often to save water; Marks & Spencer’s posted green placards in their stores that read: “Please return your trolley – protect your environment.”

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‘Little boxes, little boxes … they’re all made out of ticky-tack’ By William Bowles

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3 February 2005

Some years ago, I don’t remember where, I read that entire swathes of Indonesian rain forest were cut down simply to make cardboard boxes for Japanese consumer electronics; tvs, hi-fi’s, fridges and so forth. The stat staggered me, these were after all, just damn cardboard boxes destined to be trashed. Millions of these boxes are manufactured all over the planet every year, consuming who knows how many trees just to transport consumer products. Add in the foam plastic liners made from petroleum products then the oil consumed to transport them all around the planet and you have one, vast consumption machine that uses enough raw material and energy to run an entire country and then some.

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