Another way in which consumers can influence policies of big companies, besides buying or refusing to buy their products, is by drawing public attention to the company’s policies and products. One set of examples is the campaigns against animal cruelty that led major fashion houses, such as Bill Blass, Calvin Klein, and Oleg Cassini, to publicly renounce their use of fur. Another example involves the public activists who helped convince the world’s largest wood products company, Home Depot, to commit to ending its purchases of wood from endangered forest regions and to give preference to certified forest products. Home Depot’s policy shift greatly surprised me: I had supposed consumer activists to be hopelessly outgunned in trying to influence such a powerful company.
Most examples of consumer activism have involved trying to embarrass a company for doing bad things, and that one-sidedness is unfortunate, because it has given environmentalists a reputation for being monotonously shrill, depressing, boring, and negative. Consumer activists could also be influential by taking the initiative to praise companies whose policies they do like. In Chapter 15 I mentioned big businesses that are indeed doing things sought by environmentalist consumers, but those companies have received much less praise for their good deeds than blame for their bad deeds. Most of us are familiar with Aesop’s fable concerning the competition between the wind and the sun to persuade a man to take off his coat: after the wind blew hard and failed, the sun then shone brightly and succeeded. Consumers could make much more use of the lesson of that fable, because big businesses adopting environmentalist policies know that they are unlikely to be believed if they praise their own policies to a cynical public; the businesses need outside help in becoming recognized for their efforts. Among the many big companies that have benefited recently from favorable public comment are ChevronTexaco and Boise Cascade, praised for their environmental management of their Kutubu oil field and for their decision to phase out products of unsustainably managed forests, respectively. In addition to activists castigating “the dirty dozen,” they could also praise “the terrific ten.”
Consumers who wish to influence big businesses by either buying or refusing to buy their products, or by embarrassing or praising them, need to go to the trouble of learning which links in a business chain are most sensitive to public influence, and also which links are in the strongest position to influence other links. Businesses that sell directly to the consumer, or whose brands are on sale to the consumer, are much more sensitive than businesses that sell only to other businesses and whose products reach the public without a label of origin. Retail businesses that, by themselves or as part of a large buyers’ group, buy much or all of the output of some particular producing business are in a much stronger position to influence that producer than is a member of the public. I mentioned several examples in Chapter 15, and many other examples can be added.
For instance, if you do or don’t approve of how some big international oil company manages its oil fields, it does make sense to buy at, boycott, praise, or picket that company’s gas stations. If you admire Australian titanium mining practices and dislike Lihir Island gold mining practices, don’t waste your time fantasizing that you could have any influence on those mining companies yourself; turn your attention instead to DuPont, and to Tiffany and Wal-Mart, which are major retailers of titanium-based paints and of gold jewelry, respectively. Don’t praise or blame logging companies without readily traceable retail products; leave it instead to Home Depot, Lowe’s, B and Q, and the other retail giants to influence the loggers. Similarly, seafood retailers like Unilever (through its various brands) and Whole Foods are the ones who care whether you buy seafood from them; they, not you, can influence the fishing industry itself. Wal-Mart is the world’s largest grocery retailer; they and other such retailers can virtually dictate agricultural practices to farmers; you can’t dictate to farmers, but you do have clout with Wal-Mart. If you want to know where in the business chain you as a consumer have influence, there are now organizations such as the Mineral Policy Center/Earthworks, the Forest Stewardship Council, and the Marine Stewardship Council that can tell you the answer for many business sectors. (For their website addresses, see the Further Readings to Chapter 15.)
Of course, you as a single voter or consumer won’t swing an election’s outcome or impress Wal-Mart. But any individual can multiply his or her power by talking to other people who also vote and buy. You can start with your parents, children, and friends. That was a significant factor in the international oil companies beginning to reverse direction from environmental indifference to adopting stringent environmental safeguards. Too many valuable employees were complaining or taking other jobs because friends, casual acquaintances, and their own children and spouses made them feel ashamed of themselves for their employer’s practices. Most CEOs, including Bill Gates, have children and a spouse, and I have learned of many CEOs who changed their company’s environmental policies as a result of pressure from their children or spouse, in turn influenced by the latter’s friends. While few of us are personally acquainted with Bill Gates or George Bush, a surprising number of us discover that our own children’s classmates and our friends include children, friends, and relatives of influential people, who may be sensitive to how they are viewed by their children, friends, and relatives. An example is that pressure from his sisters may have strengthened President Joaquín Balaguer’s concern for the Dominican Republic’s environment. The 2000 U.S. presidential election was actually decided by a single vote in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision on the Florida vote challenge, but all nine Supreme Court justices had children, spouses, relatives, or friends who helped form their outlook.
Those of us who are religious can further multiply our power by developing support within our church, synagogue, or mosque. It was churches that led the civil rights movement, and some religious leaders have also been outspoken on the environment, but not many so far. Yet there is much potential for building religious support, because people more readily follow the suggestions of their religious leaders than the suggestions of historians and scientists, and because there are strong religious reasons to take the environment seriously. Members of congregations can remind fellow members and their leaders (their priests, ministers, rabbis, etc.) of the sanctity of the created order, of biblical metaphors for keeping Nature fertile and productive, and of the implications of the concept of stewardship that all religions acknowledge.
An individual who wants to benefit directly from his or her actions can consider investing time and effort in improving one’s own local environment. The example most familiar to me from firsthand experience at my family’s summer vacation site in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley is the Teller Wildlife Refuge, a small private non-profit organization devoted to habitat preservation and restoration along the Bitterroot River. While the organization’s founder, Otto Teller, was rich, his friends who sensitized him to environmental issues were not rich, nor are most of the people who volunteer to help the Teller Refuge today. As a benefit to themselves (actually, to anyone living in or visiting the Bitterroot Valley), they continue to enjoy gorgeous scenery and good fishing, which would otherwise by now have been eliminated for land development. Such examples can be multiplied indefinitely: almost every local area has its own neighborhood group, landowners’ association, or other such organizations.
Working to fix your local environment has another benefit besides making your own life more pleasant. It also sets an example to others, both in your own country and overseas. Local environmental organizations tend to be in frequent contact with each other, exchanging ideas and drawing inspiration. When I was scheduling interviews with Montana residents associated with the Teller Wildlife Refuge and the Blackfoot Initiative, one of the constraints on their schedules arose from trips that they were making to advise other such local initiatives in Montana and neighboring states. Also, when Americans tell people in China or other countries what the Chinese should (in the opinion of the Americans) be doing for
the good of themselves and the rest of the world, our message tends to fall on unreceptive ears because of our own well-known environmental misdeeds. We would be more effective in persuading people overseas to adopt environmental policies good for the rest of humanity (including for us) if we ourselves were seen to be pursuing such policies in more cases.
Finally, any of you who have some discretionary money can multiply your impact by making a donation to an organization promoting policies of your choice. There is an enormous range of organizations to fit anyone’s interests: Ducks Unlimited for those interested in ducks, Trout Unlimited for those into fishing, Zero Population Growth for those concerned with population problems, Seacology for those interested in islands, and so on. All such environmental organizations operate on low budgets, and many operate cost-effectively, so that small additional sums of money make big differences. That’s true even of the largest and richest environmental organizations. For example, World Wildlife Fund is one of the three largest and best-funded environmental organizations operating around the world, and it is active in more countries than any other. The annual budget of WWF’s largest affiliate, its U.S. branch, averages about $100 million per year, which sounds like a lot of money—until one realizes that that money has to fund its programs in over 100 countries, covering all plant and animal species and all marine and terrestrial habitats. That budget also has to cover not only mega-scale projects (such as a $400-million, 10-year program to triple the area of habitat protected in the Amazon Basin), but also a multitude of small-scale projects on individual species. Lest you think that your small donation is meaningless to such a big organization, consider that a gift of just a few hundred dollars suffices to support a trained park ranger, outfitted with global positioning software, to survey Congo Basin primate populations whose conservation status would otherwise be unknown. Consider also that some environmental organizations are highly leveraged and use private gifts to attract further funds from the World Bank, governments, and aid agencies on a dollar-for-dollar basis. For instance, WWF’s Amazon Basin project is leveraged by a factor of more than 6-to-1, so that your $300 gift actually ends up putting almost $2,000 into the project.
Of course, I mention these numbers for WWF merely because it’s the organization with whose budget I happen to be most familiar, and not in order to recommend it over many other equally worthy environmental organizations with different goals. Such examples of how efforts by individuals make a difference can be multiplied indefinitely.
Afterword
Two recent books summarizing Angkor are: Charles Higham, The Civilization of Angkor (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2001) and Michael Coe, Angkor and the Khmer Civilization (London: Thames and Hudson, 2003).
Subsequent to the publication of those books, the Australian/French/Cambodian Angkor project obtained many important results. Recent papers describing those results include: Dan Penny et al., “Hydrological history of the West Baray, Angkor, revealed through palynological analysis of sediments from the West Mebon” (Bulletin de l’École Française d’Éxtrême-Orient 92:497-521 (2005)); Christophe Pottier, “Nouvelles recherches sur l’aménagement du territoire angkorien à travers l’histoire” (Comptes-rendus des Séances, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 147:427-449 (2007)); Damian Evans et al., “A comprehensive archaeological map of the world’s largest preindustrial settlement complex at Angkor, Cambodia” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 104:14277-14282 (2007)); Roland Fletcher et al., “The water management network of Angkor, Cambodia” (Antiquity 82:658-670 (2008)); Matti Kummu, “Water management in Angkor: human impacts on hydrology and sediment transportation” (Journal of Environmental Management 20:1413-1421 (2009)); and Brendan Buckley et al., “Climate as a contributing factor in the demise of Angkor, Cambodia” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 107:6748-6752 (2010)).
Two recent translations are available for the eye-witness account of Angkor in A.D. 1295-1296 by the Chinese visitor Zhou Daguan. They are: Zhou Daguan, The Customs of Cambodia, ed. J. Gilman D’Arcy Paul, 3rd ed. (Bangkok: The Siam Society, 1993); and Zhou Daguan, A Record of Cambodia: The Land and Its People, ed. Peter Harris (Chiang Mai: Selkivorin Books, 2007).
INDEX
Aboriginal Australians
Adenauer, Konrad
Africa, slaves from
age of exploration
agriculture:
and climate
composting
crop rotation
and deforestation
and drought
economics of
fallow land in
flexible cropping
and food shortages
and greenhouse gases
irrigation for, see irrigation
lithic mulches
and Malthusian problems
and population growth
and salinization
and soil, see soil
in stratified societies
swidden (slash-and-burn)
and weeds
see also specific locations
Ainu people
air quality
Akkadian Empire
Alaska Department of Fish and Game
Alcoa
Aloysius (pseud.)
Amundsen, Roald
Anaconda Copper Mining Company
Anasazi
agriculture of
architecture of
cannibalism of
Chaco Canyon site
complex society of
disappearing culture of
Kayenta people
map
merged into other societies
Mesa Verde site
packrat midden study of
population of
regional supply network of
survival of
water management by
Anatolia
André, Catherine
Angkor, rise and fall of
Angkor Wat
Antei, Miyazaki
Anuta Island
Apollo Gold mine
aquaculture
aquifers
Arawak Indians
ARCO
Arctic:
climate changes in
disappearing societies in
hunting in
Army Corps of Engineers, U.S.
ASARCO (American Smelting and Refining Company)
Asian long-horned beetle
Australia
Aborigines in
agriculture in
Anzac Day in
bottom-up management in
British cultural identity of
Calperum Station
climate in
cotton crop in
deforestation of
distance problems of
droughts in
ecological fragility in
economy of
fisheries of
Great Barrier Reef
human impact on
immigration into
Kakadu National Park
kangaroos in
Kanyaka farm
land degradation in
land ownership in
land values in
map
mining in
and New Guinea
population of
Potter Foundation in
rainfall in
settlement of
sheep grazing in
signs of hope and change in
soils in
species introduced in
trade with
water problems of
weeds in
Wheat Board of
Australian Landscape Trust
autocatalysis
Aztec Empire
Baffin Island
Balaguer, Joaquín
Bangladesh
barbarians, Rome attacked by
Bardarson, Ivar
Beck, J. Warren
bedrock
bees, as pollinators
Belgian Antarctic Expedition
Betancourt, Julio
Bhopal chemical plant
BHP mining company
big business
chemical industry
fishing industry
logging industry
long-term planning in
mining industry
non-environmentalist reputation of
oil industry
pollution-intensive
profit motive of
and public opinion
regulation of
in resource extraction
responsibility to shareholders
Big Hole Basin
biodiversity losses
Bismarck Archipelago
Bitterroot River, as “impaired stream,”
Bitterroot Stock Farm
Bjergo, Allen
Bolle Report (1970)
borax mining
Borneo, illegal logging in
Bosch, Juan
bottom-up environmental management
Australia
Inuits
New Guinea
Southwestern U.S.
Tikopia
and tragedy of the commons
Bougainville copper mine
BP (British Petroleum)
Buffalo Creek, West Virginia
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