Last night NPR’s Marketplace ran a story titled “Discovery discovers green programming doesn’t sell.” Planet Green is a specialty cable TV channel owned by Discovery and dedicated to the subject of living green. Marketplace interviewed broadcast-industry journalist Tom Umstead who said: “It was laudable that Discovery tried to use Planet Green to promote a green lifestyle. But in the end, it’s a very niche audience.”
A top goal of STAND FOR LESS is to change behaviors through educating people about the importance of sustainability. After three years on the beat we are as committed to education as ever, yet we are also aware that larger market forces and trends are arguably more important in influencing and changing consumer behavior. We hope that we can give people context, deepen their understanding, even change behaviors, but on a broader scale markets drive consumers more than we ever will.
STAND FOR LESS was launched after the great contraction of the economic collapse of 2008. That collapse led people to STAND FOR LESS, because they simply had to as they were forced to face hard economic realities.
Now gas prices are rising again, and again Americans have an increased interest in standing for less with more fuel-efficient cars and driving less.
At STAND FOR LESS we are cheerleaders for policies that will lead to changing behaviors.
Clean energy and energy conservation are two of the most critical components of lightening the human impact on the planet. A gas tax, phased in over a period of 12-24 months is one idea that will have a massive impact on energy consumption. After all, how idiotic is it that Americans still drive cars that rarely exceed 30 miles per gallon when the technology for 50 MPG cars has been around for decades and is only better today? We can drive cars and STAND FOR LESS, and it’s important to drive less too!
No amount of great programming from the likes of Planet Green, or posts from STAND FOR LESS, will change habits when fuel prices remain low, as they have when adjusted for inflation. We can wait for gas prices to rise, as they will, or we can use public policy to change behavior and lessen our demand for things like oil. Long-term policies have supported cheap oil, at a high cost. Even with the most aggressive policies supporting conservation and clean energy we will need oil for years to come, but it’s time to accelerate the shift.
Smart policies like a phased-in gas tax can be sold to the public, but it will require bold political leadership as well as bipartisanship. That may seem unrealistic but the writing is on the wall for our civilization’s future if we fail to make these types of changes.
Planet Green may have failed, but we cannot give up the fight for proactive public policies that will change behaviors because living in more sustainable ways grows more important with each passing day.
