CH O I CES CU LTU R E
e-greenies
A social networking site for the eco-savvy takes off
you won’t find Ted Casselman on Facebook. Or MySpace. Even
though he has more than 200 social-networking sites to choose
from, Casselman, 44, a resident of Cornwall, Ontario, hangs his
personal profile on a corner of the Internet more concerned with
acid rain than with indie-rockers.
Casselman is a yoga-loving hiker and occasional winemaker who
worries about animal rights and rain forest destruction. So it makes
sense that he joined Care2 (care2.com), a 6.7-million-member site
linking eco-activists around the globe. “I come from a small town
where there’s no support system for people like me,” Casselman
says. “Care2 makes me feel like I belong.”
But what does “belonging” mean? Are bonds forged on Care2
and other eco-networking sites really effecting change? Or are
they only encouraging armchair slacktivism, the lazy man’s way to
“make a difference” without breaking a sweat? Sign this petition
to save the forests, dude. Don’t buy anything today and capitalism
will tumble, making all the world’s ills, like, vanish.
In Internet years, Care2 is a wizened grandpa. Randy Paynter, a boyish, 40-year-old dad of two who spits out words as fast
as an auctioneer, founded the site during the late-’90s dot-com
boom as an environmental portal for green commerce. When it
became clear that selling Seventh Generation–brand dish soap was
a doomed business plan, Care2 evolved into a “one-stop shop for
people who want to make a difference and influence society,” Paynter says. Care2 concentrates on connecting users to nonprofits and
providing them with what he considers environmentalists’ greatest
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weapons: knowledge and opportunities to take action.
“If it wasn’t for Care2, many people—including myself—
wouldn’t know about the issues that concern our animal-welfare
and environmental movements,” says Care2 member Cindy Minde,
49, an endangered-wolf supporter in Apache Junction, Arizona.
Care2’s mostly female members—homemaking moms, office workers, and young single gals alike—peruse reader-submitted and ranked stories about endangered falcons, grab tips on veggie vittles,
donate to nonprofits, discuss endangered Canadian forests and sign
petitions to prevent Arctic oil drilling.
Oh, do they ever sign petitions.
With a click, members John Hancock petitions ranging from the
serious (making Starbucks honor commitments to coffee farmers) to
the silly (begging the Country Music Awards to rectify its oversight
and give Rascal Flatts the Album of the Year award, which has zilch
to do with the environment). These petitions may seem toothless,
but Paynter points to direct results: Last September, the Bureau of
Land Management nixed plans to drill near Alaska’s Teshekpuk Lake,
perhaps swayed by Care2 members’ 20,000 petition signatures.
I, too, want to make a difference, so I enroll in Care2. I sign a
petition or two, then head to the forums. In one called Race for
the Rainforest, I learn about Indonesia’s rain forest fires. Every year,
rampant fires create one billion pounds of carbon emissions—more
than five times the amount that the Kyoto Protocol hopes to
eliminate annually. When I’ve learned my fill, I enter Care2’s Daily
Action area. Today’s computer-enabled difference-maker is down-
ILLUSTRATION BY NEIL SWAAB