Why Schultz, Mackey, Gates, Sandberg et. al. Are Just More Of The Same Old Greenwash

[hatrack]

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This problem, particularly in the context of job-destroying technology, is generating increasing concern. Starbucks, along with 11 other U.S. companies including Walmart, CVS, Target, Microsoft, Taco Bell, and Macy’s, recently announced an initiative called 100,000 Opportunities to provide job training, internships, and jobs for up to 100,000 young people. In a press release, Howard Schultz, Chairman and CEO of Starbucks said “As business leaders, I believe we have a critical role to play in hiring more Opportunity Youth and offering these young people excellent training, and the chance to dream big and reach their aspirations.” But this will hardly put a dent in the problem of youth unemployment. As Catherine Ruetschlin and Tamara Draut of the think-tank Demos recently reported, the U.S. needs to add 4.4 million jobs just to get back to pre-recession youth employment numbers.

Schultz is interesting for another reason, however: he is part of growing group of elite storytellers who are raising their voices to critique and present solutions to some of the thorny problems caused by capitalism like poverty, environmental degradation, gender inequality, anxiety and alienation. These days the loudest critics of the status quo are not social movements or labor unions; they are people like Bill and Melinda Gates, Sheryl Sandberg, Oprah Winfrey, and John Mackey. Each of them has a plan to solve the problems of society, and they use their power and reach to share their stories and implement their ideas.

Bill and Melinda Gates, for example, believe in the power of markets and the profit motive to solve problems like childhood disease and unequal educational attainment. They believe that these problems exist because markets don’t serve poor people equally, so institutions like the Gates Foundation need to step in and engage in ‘creative capitalism’ by commoditizing health care and using market logic to make public schools and teachers more ‘competitive.’ John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods Market, thinks we need to foster ‘true’ or ‘free-enterprise’ capitalism to save the planet from ecological collapse. He presents another new model called “conscious capitalism” that emphasizes free markets and entrepreneurship to optimize value for stakeholders and create an “operating system” that is “in harmony with the fundamentals of human nature” and the planet.

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This might appear overly cynical, so an example is in order: take John Mackey’s model of “conscious capitalism.” Everyone wants to live on a clean, vibrant planet, and preserve nature’s beauty for their children and grandchildren. Mackey argues that this can be achieved by creating and supporting companies like Whole Foods that pay slightly higher wages, adopt eco-business practices, and sell sustainable products. If all companies become ‘conscious’ companies they can dig the world out of the environmental mess that traditional capitalism has created. This message, while certainly appealing, is not a solution. It ignores the fundamental imperatives of global capitalism that force every company, conscious or not, to continuously expand, overcome their competitors, and most importantly, earn profits. As researchers like Peter Dauvergne and Jane Lister argue, eco-business practices do very little to challenge the way we produce, consume, and dispose of material goods. When we channel our desire to end global warming or rainforest destruction or species extinction through corporations, our desires end up by getting absorbed into business strategies for growth and expansion, strengthening the production-for-profit architecture that’s consuming and destroying the world’s resources.

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http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-08-12/exposing-the-false-prophets-of-social-transformation

[truebluegreen]

1. What a load of hooey they are peddling.

Couple of facts: the power of the market has zero chance or interest in solving the causes of climate change (as if any energy company would deliberately put itself out of business: "Beyond Petroleum" my ass) and capitalism cannot work forever in a closed system of dwindling resources and increasing demand.

We need an entire new paradigm.

[pscot]

2. Schultz is a first class schmuck.

And that's apart from the fact that he sold the Sonics South. Gates once gave me a free beta of flight synthesizer but I don't think the guy knows who he is. He's still talking about some stuff we can start to do to keep temperatures from rising 2 degrees C. Which suggests he really doesn't have a handle on AGW. It's frightening.