Full Citation:  Rogers, Heather.  Green Gone Wrong:  How Our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution.  New York:  Scribner, 2010.

Green Gone Wrong is a scathing criticism of current practices in the growing green economy.  Heather Rogers' investigative reporting tracks a dark underside to organic and Fair Trade certification, the bio-fuel industry, and carbon offsetting.  She explains why, even though the technologies exist to bring green transportation and architecture to scale, present political and market forces prevent us from doing so.  Rogers indicates that these problems run much deeper than simple “greenwashing” or misconceptions about finding salvation in green products.  Rather, she believes that the very idea of “natural capitalism,” which attempts to head off the collision between consumption and resource depletion by including environmental costs in the price of goods, is fundamentally flawed.

Organic and Fair Trade

According to Rogers, current food regulations, organic certification, and food processing and distribution channels favor large organic farming over smaller farmers who use better methods for the land and workers.  In spite of the higher prices that organic crops bring, small farmers in the U.S. who use ecologically sound techniques and no chemical fertilizers or pesticides are unable to make a living.  These unconventional farmers typically hold small plots of land on the outskirts of urban areas in order to sell their fruits and vegetables at farmers' markets.  Taxes are higher here, and they tend to rise with expanding urban sprawl.  For these small farmers, the fees charged for organic certification and the costs incurred from requirements that they keep detailed records on each crop are prohibitive, especially when innovative techniques such as broadcasting mixed seeds to find more pest-resistant varieties are employed.  Moreover, some of these unconventional farmers dismiss the organic label because private certifiers employed by larger farms are allowed by the USDA to simply visually inspect the land without taking soil samples or testing produce for chemical residues.  Large distributors, such as Whole Foods or Wal-Mart, prefer to do business with single, large organic suppliers for their produce because they can cut costs by dealing with fewer accounts and assure consistency in the produce they sell. 

Small organic meat producers face the additional problem posed by meat processing regulations geared toward large operations.  Regardless of size, meat-packing facilities are subject to the same USDA regulations, and the equipment needed to comply with these regulations drives the cost of opening a plant above a million dollars.  Large commercial meat-packing facilities can spread costs over many more animals; the inability to achieve such economies of scale prevents small organic livestock growers from competing successfully.

Rogers' investigation of the sugar industry in Paraguay suggests that organic and Fair Trade labeling does not always assure use of sustainable farming practices or fair treatment of workers.  Azucarera Paraguaya (AZPA), which grows a third of all organic sugar in the U.S. and supplies Whole Foods with its Wholesome Sweeteners brand, is apparently mono-cropping and either directly or indirectly clearing rainforest for new sugar plantations.  Mono-cropping is planting the same crop in the same place year after year, and although it is not explicitly banned by USDA National Organic Program (NOP) regulations, destroys biodiversity and erodes soil health over time.  AZPA sugar plantations have expanded into areas that used to be occupied by forest.  The company claims that they bought the land from others who cleared it, but it appears that expanding demand for more organic sugar is driving the deforestation.  NOP standards do not ban clearing trees to create cropland.

Wholesome Sweeteners has been working with a farmers’ cooperative in Iturbe, Paraguay to help them get organic and Fair Trade certification.  This cooperative has obtained “group certification,” meaning that all of the farmers can pool their money to obtain certification, and the group as a whole may receive the label even though only some of the farms are inspected.  In this particular case, AZPA, the company that buys their sugar, also paid for the group’s organic certification, a common practice in developing countries.  Under this arrangement, if the cooperative wants to receive the premium organic price, they must sell their crop to AZPA.  Wholesome Sweeteners has paid for the group’s Fair Trade certification, which increases their earnings by a third. 

One of the owners of AZPA also owns the hauling company that transports the farmers’ crops; during the past year, the trucks transported only a portion of the cooperative's crops; as a result, some farmers were unable to get their crop to market.  Apparently, AZPA gives priority to its own organic crops before transporting the supplemental sugar from the cooperative's fields.  If the farmers were to pool their money and construct their own sugar mill, AZPA would drop them for another co-op.  In this case, the cost of certification is helping to bind the cooperative to a single processor and trader.

Eco-Architecture

Roger’s story of eco-architecture strikes the most hopeful tone in the book.  Here, we have two communities striving to achieve sustainability, the Beddington Zero Energy Development green building experiment on the outskirts of London, and Vauban, a neighborhood of five thousand outside Freiberg, Germany.  The point of this comparison is that the technology exists for both of these communities to succeed in providing all of their energy needs themselves, but broader political support is critical to the difference in success each community has achieved.  With a community history forged in opposition to nuclear power and a strong commitment to the environment, Freiberg developed a supportive progressive political movement that has been instrumental in providing the resources needed to create serious investment in renewable energy and conservation.  For example, in 1992, Freiburg enacted a requirement that all new houses built on land bought from the city must include low-energy construction, using no more than six kilowatt-hours per square foot.  On average, a German house today uses about twenty kilowatt-hours per square foot, and the Passivhaus design employed in Vauban uses only 1.3 kilowatt-hours.  Energy-saving measures adopted in Vauban include making the community car-parking free, adopting a car-sharing  network, rainwater retention, use of local material for construction, thorough insulation, solar-generated electricity and hot water, and use of cogeneration plants that capture and use heat created by electricity generation. 

Although the Beddington experiment has achieved some of its goals, problems have arisen.  The company servicing the community's power station, which generated electricity from biomass, has gone out of business, and a waste-water treatment system has not been adequately maintained.  Without adequate political support and private investment, the Beddington project has been less successful than Vauban.

Bio-fuel

Use of corn ethanol and palm oil to create bio-fuel may be the most egregiously misguided, misleading, and destructive enterprise launched in the name of the new green economy.  Once the energy-intensive manner in which corn is produced is taken into account, it offers very little environmental advantage over petroleum.  But when the impact on food prices, and clearing of forests elsewhere for new food crops are taken into account, corn ethanol is a net negative both socially and environmentally.   Nevertheless, the U.S. government continues to subsidize ethanol and allow car manufacturers to use the relatively inexpensive production of "flex-fuel" vehicles capable of burning ethanol as a means of avoiding further measures to meet fleet-wide mileage standards. 

European countries have relied heavily on bio-diesel as the clean fuel of choice, and palm oil is the most efficient source of bio-diesel.  Unfortunately, increased demand for palm oil is creating wholesale destruction of Indonesian rainforest, cleared for palm plantations.  Clearing rainforest and peatlands not only destroys the ecosystem on which indigenous people depend, but also releases enormous amounts of CO2 into the air; the plantations cannot absorb nearly as much carbon as the forests and peatlands they replace.  At the present rate of deforestation, 98% of the Indonesian rainforest will be gone by 2022.  Because of this destruction, Indonesia is the third largest emitter of CO2 worldwide.  Greenpeace reports that destruction of peatlands alone in Indonesia accounts for 4% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.

Rogers tells the story from the perspective of the Dayaks, the native people of Borneo who are losing their traditional livelihood as they are swindled or simply robbed of their land by the palm oil industry.  In the village of Pareh, PTLL, a subsidiary of an Indonesian company called Dutra Palma Nusantra, has been stealing land from the Dayaks.  Archer Daniels Midlands holds a 16% interest in one of Duta Palma's major customers, Wilmar International, Ltd.  The Dayaks have filed complaints, and attempted to fight back by stealing chain saws from the company; but the Indonesian government has not only failed to uphold the law, they have provided military and police protection for the company as it illegally clears the forest.  This is a common favor granted by public officials receiving bribes. 

In Maura Ilai, a Dayak village south of Pareh, a company called Perseroan Terbatas Borneo Ketapang Permai (PTBKP) has succeeded in persuading villagers to give up their land in exchange for small plots planted with palm that they can farm for the company.  However, when the company forced the people to accept smaller plots than they originally agreed to, and the people refused, demanding their land back, local authorities backed the company. 

Another Indonesian company, Perseroan Terbatas Bumi Pratama Khatulistiwa, which is owned by Wilmar International, Ltd., succeeded in clearing peatlands around the village of Mega Timur by arranging a similar exchange of large tracts for farm plots with the peasants who live in this coastal district.  The arrangement allows the company to exploit its workers through a sharecropping-like web.  In spite of the fact that they had turned over their land to the company, the people had to take out loans from Wilmar in order to buy their initial plantings for their small farming plots.  The people must sell their crop to Wilmar at whatever price the company chooses, regardless of market prices.  The company deducts money from its payment to the people for fertilizers, pesticides, roads, and other administrative charges, and it requires the people to place some of the payment in a savings account, but the people do not know how much they have earned from the company or what they have saved.

The palm oil industry has formed an "oversight body" the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), which outlines a list of best practices, including sustainable land use and fair treatment of indigenous people.  When confronted with Rogers' account of the facts on the ground in Indonesia, the RSPO's reply was that they "can only do so much."  Members on the RSPO include Wilmar, Duta Palma, Archer Daniels Midland, and Cargill, as well as large companies that use palm oil in their products, including Unilever, Nestle, and Cadbury Schweppes, and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), an agency of the World Bank, which has provided Wilmar with millions of dollars to finance its operations.

In 2007, two activist organizations, Lembaga Gemawan and KONTAK Rakyat Borneo, and a Netherlands-based environmental group, MIlieudefensie, produced a damning report on Wilmar Borneo plantations, indentifying a range of illegal practices that included logging in protected areas, using fire to clear cut, clearing peatlands, and forced displacement of indigenous people. In 2008, the World Bank Compliance Advisor (CAO) launched an investigation, concluding that in dispersing money to Wilmar, the IFC had dismissed warnings from its own environmental staff and deliberately misrepresented Wilmar as a low risk investment to avoid an evaluation of social and environmental costs of its practices.

Nevertheless, the U.S. EPA has announced that it will continue to subsidize use of crop-based fuels as a bridge to next-generation (non-crop-based) bio-fuels, even though Steven Chu (Obama's energy secretary) has stated that such next-generation alternatives are at least five years from development.

Green Transportation

The American  auto industry is in no hurry to bring green transportation technology into widespread production for the simple reason that the profit margin on cleaner-burning vehicles is significantly lower than that on large gas-guzzling SUV's, trucks and performance cars.  Ford's sustainability executive, John Viera, explains that "Hybrids don't make any money; depending on the vehicle, you actually lose money."  For example, Ford's gas-electric Escape costs the company about $6,000-$8,000 more to manufacture than its non-hybrid counterpart, but the company can only charge an additional $3,000-$4,000 for the hybrid version.  A company can make a profit of a few hundred dollars on a small car that gets good gas mileage; by contrast, the company can make a profit of $5,000 or more on an SUV sold in the U.S. 

American consumers are mistaken when they believe that the reason that we do not have more fuel-efficient vehicles is that the technology has not quite arrived.  Rather, consumer preference and government policy are preventing full production of highly energy-efficient vehicles in the U.S.  Americans prefer big cars that go fast, and the U.S. government and automobile companies have followed that lead.  In Europe, where consumers pay 60% on fuel taxes, as opposed to 13% in the U.S., American auto makers sell highly fuel-efficient vehicles that are not available in the U.S.  For example, Ford sells a Fiesta ECO-netic that gets 88 mpg on the highway and 61 mpg in the city.  But in the U.S., vehicles such as the Chevy Volt have been confined to playing a PR role for companies, able to attract positive attention to the next, ever-elusive, eco-technology just around the corner rather than a standard way of doing business.  This will continue to be the case until profit margins for energy-efficient vehicles rise relative to alternatives, something that will not occur until consumer preferences change or the government adds environmental costs to the price of a car through higher fuel taxes.

Carbon Offsets

Carbon offsets are at best a misguided solution to our CO2 problems, and at worst a ruse for fooling the well-intentioned consumer.  Rogers illustrates the latter with a firm called Future Forests, which has been renamed The CarbonNeutral Company (TCNC).  In 2002, the British band Coldplay launched a campaign to have fans support their own efforts to neutralize the carbon emitted from their tour by donating money to Future Forests.  The money would be used to plant Mango trees in Gudibanda, India, which would in turn take carbon out of the air.   The enterprise was to serve a social, as well as environmental, purpose, employing local people in Gudibanda to plant and maintain the trees.  TCNC worked with Women for Sustainable Development (WSD), an Indian-based NGO that was charged with distributing the trees along with water and fertilizer needed to care for them.  Coldplay had donated enough money to plant 10,000 trees, and their fans contributed donations for many more.  However, the peasants in Gudibanda received only about 8,000 trees, many of which died because they never received the promised fertilizer or water needed to care for them.  WSD blamed TCNC for inadequate funding; TCNC blamed WSD.

Rogers also investigates an Indian renewable energy company, Decentralized Energy Systems India (DESI) Private Limited.  The company is receiving money from Myclimate, a Swiss carbon offsetting company.  Myclimate receives payments from people or businesses that want to offset their emissions, and Myclimate sends money to DESI for this purpose.  DESI claims that the money is being used to purchase biomass electrical generators, which are being distributed to villages in Bihar.  DESI is owned by the Sharans, a politically influential family in the Bihar region who also own the company that produces the biogas units it purchases.  They are the only ones responsible for verifying that the biogas units are being distributed in Bihar.  When asked to produce photographs of the units or operations in Bihar, they are unable to do so.  Bihar is a remote region, a dangerous place for outsiders to visit.  This effectively deters anyone interested in validating the company's claims about biomass generator distribution.

These stories highlight one central problem with voluntary offset programs, which is lack of oversight or regulation.  Third party certification companies, such as Gold Standard, do exist.  Rogers investigated a Gold Standard approved project in Malavalli, India.  The Malavalli Power Plant Private Ltd. (MPPL) was receiving carbon offset funds from Myclimate in order to build a biomass power plant.  The plant was using organic residues, such as sugarcane leaves left in the field, sawdust, or branches trimmed from paper pulp trees, to generate electricity.  However, in this case, Rogers discovered that the plant was subjecting its workers to dangerous working conditions.  For example, some men had been frequently bitten by cobras nesting in the biomass material that they moved and hauled, and another man had lost a hand in the shredder, which had no safety guards.  In addition, the use of biomass for the plant had removed a source for people's cooking fires, forcing more to rely on wood from trees for this purpose; some admitted to cutting trees and selling them directly to the biomass plant.  This led to an increase in tree clearing in the region.  Gold Standard was unaware, and "alarmed," to hear of the unintended harmful social and environmental consequences of the MPPL operation.

Something similar to voluntary carbon offsetting plays an important role in cap and trade.  According to the Kyoto Protocol, companies that exceed their allotted emissions can either buy shares from other companies or create offsets through the Clean Development Mechanism, essentially voluntary carbon offsets that are overseen by the UN.  Although greater oversight is provided in the cap and trade system, there are deeper problems inherent to carbon offsetting.

First, this system for controlling emissions requires a judgment about what would have happened had the carbon offsetting not occurred.  If, for example, a company were planning to invest in a wind farm without using carbon offsets, then it would be disingenuous to sell offsets to subsidize this wind farm.  People or companies who buy offsets do so with the understanding that they are removing so many pounds of carbon from the air, which, without their contributions, would not be removed.  But how do we know what governments or investment companies would do without such offsets?  Would they be willing to contribute or invest more without these voluntary contributions?  A related problem is that investors can simply lie - saying that particular clean energy projects are financially unfeasible and that they are unwilling to make investments without offsets, when this may be untrue, in order to attract additional funds for their investments.

Secondly, carbon offsets provide an incentive for developing countries to do nothing about their energy use in order to attract outside funding.  If India mandated energy efficiency, it might jeopardize some $5.73 billion the country is projected to receive in carbon credits by 2012.

Thirdly, the idea that future projects will "neutralize" present emissions is often misleading or difficult to assess.  Planting trees is a good example.  How do we calculate how many new trees are required to neutralize a ton of carbon emitted today?  Saplings do not sequester carbon at the same rate as mature trees, and slow-growing trees will not have much effect for some time.  On the other hand, trees that grow fast and die young will release carbon back into the air in a relatively short time.  Timing matters because the carbon we emit today will remain a problem for a very long time, and a tree planted today is only a temporary solution to that problem.  Whereas sustained commitment to protection of forests will reduce carbon long-term, the occasional tree that comes and goes will not.

Solutions

Once we acknowledge the economic and political underpinnings of the present crisis, we can turn to solutions that more effectively protect societies and the environment.  Rogers believes that agroecology will play a prominent role.  Miguel Altieri, a professor of entomology at U. of C. Berkeley has conducted research supporting the claim that industrial agriculture is not needed to feed the planet's 6 billion people because agroecological methods can double productivity of organic crops.  Rogers cites examples of agroecological efforts in Peru, Honduras, and Brazil that have led to substantial increases in productivity.  In the U.S., a Certified Naturally Grown program has been effectively operating outside the USDA organic program, providing a more affordable seal of approval for smaller growers and using peer-review in which farmers work as volunteers to inspect other farms and maintain the integrity of the label.  Organic Valley has formed a co-op of 1300 members that train others in organic methods and have equal say in management decisions.  When Wal-Mart pressured the co-op to increase production for less money, the members refused, recognizing that this sort of pressure would lead them to compromise on ecologically sound practices.

Widespread adoption of these methods will require political and economic changes that encourage the development of affordable processing and distribution networks for ecologically grown food.  The government can support these alternative forms of farming, providing an alternative set of food safety rules appropriate for the small farmer; subsidizing research, development, expertise, and training in agroecological methods; and providing low-interest loans to farmers forced to relocate due to urban sprawl and tax breaks for farmers who embrace agroecological methods. 

Assessment

Rogers rightly raises concerns about the misguided belief that we can solve the environmental crisis by buying green products or tinkering with our present market system.  Such misconceptions delay recognition that more profound political interventions and economic changes are necessary.  The emerging green economy is stumbling badly.  Bio-fuels, with backing from a very strong coalition of farming and automobile lobbyists, and essential support from U.S. and European governments, have proven disastrous.  Corn ethanol has turned our attention away from real solutions and  contributed to a rise in worldwide grain prices devastating to those most in need.  Palm oil plantations may be doing more to destroy biodiversity, indigenous populations, and precious carbon-sequestering eco-systems than any other industry.  The auto industry requires a much higher gasoline tax before it can rationally commit to widespread production of green cars.  Carbon offsetting is fraught with opportunity for fraud and is, at best, a cumbersome, inefficient, and imprecise method of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 

One concern I have about this book is that it will evoke a "throw out the baby with the bathwater" response.  For example, Rogers shows us a case in which AZPA, a large sugar company, is able to take advantage of a cooperative by paying their organic certification fee and keeping them in a kind of bondage through its exclusive control over sugar growing in Paraguay.  In this case, the cooperative's Fair Trade certification has not effectively protected farmers against exploitation from their buyer.  Unfortunately, some will draw unwarranted generalizations from this, illustrated, in fact, by one of the comments on the jacket of the book from The Yes Men -- "that 'organic' and even 'fair trade' don't mean squat."  Fair Trade should not be judged on the basis of a few cases in which it does not live up to its billing when broader studies indicate that it has made significant strides improving the lot of farmers around the world.

Organic and Fair Trade certifications do face a problem.  The more thorough they become in taking measures to assure that products are grown under conditions as advertised by the certification label, the higher their costs will run.  Confidence in certification is not possible without oversight and enforcement of standards, but the more checking a certification company does, the more it will have to charge for its services.  Rogers criticizes certification programs both for proving too expensive for the small farmer and for failing to provide adequate inspections.  But you can't ask for better independent, third-party inspections, overseen by multiple stakeholders, without incurring costs.  The issue comes back to the consumer.  How much more are we willing to pay for genuinely organic or Fair Trade?   If the answer is "not much," then we will not receive reliable labeling in exchange.

Rogers' answer to this problem is that we should have a different form of certification altogether - one less dependent on the large grower capable of paying high certification fees, and more closely monitored by the small farmers themselves.  While I agree that we need to do more to support agroecological methods, I fail to see how small farmers inspecting and certifying one another will remove the problem of inadequate inspections or potential abuse.  When money is an incentive to pay less attention or spend less time assuring compliance with standards, there are bound to be instances in which non-compliance is overlooked.

Moreover, while Rogers is persuasive that our current efforts are insufficient to drive a genuinely green revolution, her solution of greater support for small farmers employing agroecological methods hardly seems up to the task either.  Even if widespread adoption of these methods could, as Miguel Altieri's research suggests, feed 6 billion people, we need to aim for at least feeding 8 billion by mid-century.  Moreover, Rogers tells us that we need an alternative to our current economic distribution system, which is dominated by large distributors such as Whole Foods or Wal-Mart, but she does not explain what should replace our current system or how we could bring about this change.  The biggest shortcoming of the book is that while it is long on criticism of existing programs and systems, it is short on solutions. 

Nevertheless, as a piece of investigative reporting, Green Gone Wrong discloses flaws and systemic failure in major sectors of the green economy. It will be a significant voice in future discussions about how to effectively handle our impending environmental crisis.