Deeper tones of green

On Monday, M. Jimmie Killingsworth, head of the Texas A&M English department, was on campus to give a lecture on Walt Whitman, as part of a yearly series of lectures held by our English department.

In addition to giving the lecture on Whitman, Dr. Killingsworth met with a small group of students (and me and my former professor Dr. Ashe) that had been reading and discussing his works in preparation for his visit. In this meeting, we covered a range of topics, but what Dr. Killingsworth seemed most interested in – besides House and NCIS, which he talked about extensively – was the study of environmental rhetoric or ecocriticism.

One of his more interesting points (perhaps because of its simplicity) was that people tend to call themselves environmentalists during moments of environmental crisis. In other words, green is trendy.

One of my students wrote a paper last semester (and I believe they're doing it again) about the different uses of words like green and eco-friendly in marketing and advertising. Monday night, I saw a Sunchips commercial advertising, primarily, a fully compostable bag, not Sunchips. Pepsi is big on an environmentalist kick with their "refresh the world" campaign. Right now, corporations see an advantage to being green.

But, according to Dr. Killingsworth, the green trend is on a downward slope, as all such activist movements have breaking points, so to speak: moments at which the often intangible benefits (and trendiness) of such ideologies are outweighed by their more tangible consequences.

He used an example that focused on private property, particularly beachfront property. Essentially, there comes a point – because of erosion, currents, and other natural causes – where beachfront property owners have to decide between holding on to their trendy environmentalist ideals and their actual beachfront property. In many environmental discussions, these decisions are just now bubbling to the surface.

And, the result is that people are jumping off the environmentalist bandwagon.

My guess is that when any position is trendy enough to reach popular advertising, much of the valuable progress has already been made. From that point on, I think the remaining bandwagoners are mostly just treading water.

My students, of course, seem ahead of the trend (as young people so often are).

I've tried, in the recent past, to hold conversations with my classes about environmental issues, but they've shown a consistent disinterest or even exhaustion with environmentalist discussions. Todd Gitlin might label this an effect of the media torrent. More conversationally, people tend to describe the sensation as numbness (often in relation to violence).

Environmental rhetoric may currently be too pervasive to have much effect.

I also talked to Dr. Killingsworth about football because he was recruited to play for Tennessee but couldn't because of an injury. I just thought I should throw that in there.

Quote of the Week:

"When an author appeals to a position of value, it is always one among many possible appeals. Choosing one possibility over another creates risk, and rhetoric is always risky."

M. Jimmie Killingsworth, Appeals in Modern Rhetoric