Adam Werbach has an impressive CV. Whilst still at High School, he founded the Sierra Student Coalition, said to be the largest student environmental group in the USA. At 23 he was elected as President of the Sierra Club, America's oldest (and some would say stuffiest) environmental organisation.

Today Adam is on the board of Greenpeace International and has been a Commissioner for the San Francisco Public Utilities board. Today, his businesses include Ironwood Films, a progressive DVD club and Act Now Productions, which is essentially a green public relations company.

Adam is clearly a big cheese in the environmental movement and deserves to be listened to.

Act Now Productions recently merged with the global conglomerate Saatchi & Saatchi and as CEO, Adam had the difficult task of working with some of the biggest multinationals. In a recent speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, he highlighted what he considered to be the future of the environmental movement, with particular reference to Wal-Mart -- the world's biggest retailer.

Tonight I invite you to join me in Wonderland. I ask you to consider joining me in building a movement that goes beyond the political to the personal, that views the existential threat of global warming as a chance to change the way we treat ourselves and the planet, that aspires to have one billion active participants across the earth. Tonight I'll contend that we need to invest more time in making a difference through our routine activities and the things we buy every day. To achieve this we need a broader platform than green." -- Adam Werbach at the Commonwealth Institute, April 10 from Grist

Adam envisages a movement which grows out of the green movement. He calls it BLUE.

In all of those places, I've seen people seeking something broader than a green or environmentalist solution to the myriad problems they face in their lives. Yes, they believe climate change is happening, but they also want to feel good about the way they look in the mirror and the way their kids look at them at the dinner table. They want to be part of something larger than themselves without having to sacrifice their identity. They want joy, not guilt, and a little money in their pocket so that they don't have to trade down on yet one more thing in their life. -- ibid

Basically it runs a bit like this: Wal-mart want to change their ways. They came to Adam with three goals:

1. Zero waste
2. Renewable Energy
3. Green products

So the idea was born -- to change the two million Wal-Mart workers worldwide with the environmental message, so that they would then go on to change the 200 million Americans that shop there. A change in the structure of a massive multinational that could then affect millions of people is the way to force environmental improvements. A kind of combined top-down and bottom-up approach focusing away from environmental concerns and onto personal needs.

I have to tell you that I have some big problems with this concept.

First, is it not something of a failure when the environmental movement has to admit that the only way forward is via consumerism? Does anyone remember Bono's (RED) movement? Doesn't anyone else have a problem with the concept of buying things to give? Surely the best way to give money is by the tested system known as 'giving money' rather than via the irrational and inefficient system known as 'buying stuff'?

What is it about people creating movements that are colors in capital letters anyway?

Second, correct me if I am wrong here, but isn't Wal-Mart one of the most profitable companies in the history of profitable companies? Doesn't Wal-Mart have, lets say, quite a reputation? Aren't there issues with the way that Wal-Mart works with suppliers? Are you seriously telling me that Wal-Mart is going to change all that to become part of your BLUE movement, Adam? Are they not going to be interested primarily in something else -- i.e. profitability? Or maybe I missed a memo and we're talking about a different Wal-Mart altogether.

Finally, I don't know about anyone else, but I've been brought up to believe that Small is Beautiful.

For the modern economist this is very difficult to understand. He is used to measuring the "standard of living" by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is "better off" than a man who consumes less. A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption. Thus, if the purpose of clothing is a certain amount of temperature comfort and an attractive appearance, the task is to attain this purpose with the smallest possible effort, that is, with the smallest annual destruction of cloth and with the help of designs that involve the smallest possible input of toil. The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity. It would be highly uneconomic, for instance, to go in for complicated tailoring, like the modern West, when a much more beautiful effect can be achieved by the skillful draping of uncut material. It would be the height of folly to make material so that it should wear out quickly and the height of barbarity to make anything ugly, shabby, or mean. What has just been said about clothing applies equally to all other human requirements. The ownership and the consumption of goods is a means to an end, and Buddhist economics is the systematic study of how to attain given ends with the minimum means. -- E. F Schumacher, Buddhist Economics

I don't think we can achieve the changes we need to see happen by relying on changing the structures -- because those structures are not designed for change. They are not designed to produce the long-lasting, person affirming, environment protecting products that we need. We don't need people trying to capitalize from packaging the green dream, or even the BLUE dream. Multinational supermarkets by their nature can never be part of the solution, however much they try to persuade us with eco-advertising. It might be convenient to imagine that we can make small changes to a few big corporations and that will be good enough, but it isn't the truth.

Further Reading:

• Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
• World’s Largest Companies Exert Pressure on Supply Chains
• Wal-Mart, or Small-Mart?
• Santa Claus is Chinese