Shifting Baselines

That's the question posed by an article in today's New York Times. The answer? Probably NO, but the article explores the role of high end marketing in the environmental crisis and is worth a visit--if only just for the photos. In shishi corners of our society, rich designers are doing their part to make a better world (at least until the next fashion comes along).

Like recycled wreaths and other earth-friendly Christmas decor. "Rudolph the Recycled Reindeer" is the brainchild of Simon Doonan, creative director of Barneys New York. He used empty soda cans like mosaics in his Christmas windows this month.

"You can do this stuff at home," Mr. Doonan said. "You can go gold with decaffeinated Diet Coke, and there's lots of blue and silver in drinks like Pepsi and Red Bull. You can make wreathes out of old silver pot scrubbers. We've done a green version of the 12 Days of Christmas, which I will happily sing to you and which ends with 'a Prius in a pear tree.'"

The article points to the need of grand-scale eco-symbols, such as the 'Green Emmys'.

James B. Twitchell, a professor of English and advertising at the University of Florida, agrees. "It's all about symbols and sensation," said Professor Twitchell, whose many books deal with how marketing shapes a society. "That's what I find so fascinating about our Prius culture. We know things are wrong. We don't know what we can do. We can't know. And so we do what marketers encourage us to do to get those feelings we want to have. We buy the Prius, we recycle at the party, pretty much overlooking the fact that what we know about these objects and these actions comes from their marketing."

Greenwashing? Or just an understanding of how the world works?

UPDATE: What happened? When I wrote this post this morning, the New York Times article was titled "Can Fabulous Save the Planet?" This evening the title has been changed to "The Year of Eco Decorating". I suppose the answer to the first question must have been a resounding "NO"?