24
ECOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE
the air like superman, cape and all, ready to save planet earth. The theme is
clear: by re-using Stonyfield Farm’s plastic yogurt containers, we all can protect
the planet from harm. In their quarterly “moosletter” they ask their young
readers: “Are you a planet protector? Are you committed to taking ACTION to
protect and restore the Earth? Do you act in ways that protect Earth from harm
and heal damage already done?”14
After providing information regarding the status of tropical rain forests
(whose living things, they report, include only plants and animals, no mention
of people), they explain “tropical rain forests are rapidly disappearing due to
logging and other development.” As for the solutions to these problems,
Stonyfield Farm encourages children to “make a difference” by choosing to
“use public transportation, carpool, walk, and don’t leave lights on when
you’re not using them.” Finally, the children are warned “every time you flick
on a light or go for a ride in the car, C02 is released into the atmosphere from
the coal, oil, or gas burned to make energy. Be a planet Protector!”15
On the surface, Stonyfield’s message seems reasonable enough: we
should each do our part to save the planet. However, it is what is left out of
the message that is deeply troubling. First, by failing to discuss file human
suffering of peoples living within the ‘natures’ they represent, they separate the
ecological from the social, blaming the entire society for ecological harm.
Second, Stonyfield individualizes the problem by making no mention of
institutional causes of ecological degradation such as capitalism, government,
the World Trade Organization, or the military industrial complex (responsible
for an overwhelming majority of pollution and resource extraction). Children
are led to believe that by failing to restrain their individual hungers for car
travel and electricity, they are as responsible for causing and solving ecological
problems as are those unidentified institutions responsible for logging and
other development.
In the more extreme wing of the ecology movement, individuals are
warned to restrain not only consumption practices, but sexual reproduction
practices as well. In such discussions, the mere presence of ‘humanity’ itself
(resulting from an ‘unrestrained’ fertility) is dted as the cause of ecological
injustice. According to the ‘Voluntary Human Extinction Movement” (VHEM),
individuals
should
express
a
love
of nature
by
endorsing
voluntary
childlessness. On their home-page on the Web, the VHEM presents a series of
brief question and answers about the movement presented in a light and
jocular style that explains their philosophy. According to “Les U. Knight,” the
movements’ “spokes organism,” the human “experiment” has run its course:
The
hopeful alternative to
the extinction
of millions,
probably
billions, of species of plants and animals is the voluntary extinction of
one species: Homo Sapiens.,,us. Each time another one of us decides