Being green – abstinence and accumulation

For a long time being green has been a statement – a declaration of opposition to the mainstream; a shout against the status quo. The green movement has a long and worthy history and in the 21^st century it represents a broad church, which if it was painted would encompass more shades of green than a 70’s Dulux chart. We would have vermillion deep-greens, pastel shallow-greens, radical leftist red-greens and plumy conservative blue-greens. Several generations of sociologists have cut their teeth developing such typologies which provide rich maps to this complex and fascinating realm of identity politics.

The axis along which I want to explore contemporary greenness relates to how self-described middle-class greens organise their consumption habits and in particular how they deal with the problem of excess. I am not promising a comprehensive picture here – just another way of cutting up the colour chart, which might prove timely given the recent green turn in UK centrist politics.

There are two ideal types of identity I want to contrast here, which I will term the green aesthete and the green accumulator. For the aesthete the diagnosis of climate change and the widespread recognition that affluent elements of Western society are living beyond their means demands abstinence. For some this is an earthy retreat to the land, to local scales of living, self-sufficiency and recycling – picture Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall without his sports car. For others this abstinence takes a more urbane form – it is about downsizing, investing in durability, bicycling and a near obsessive attention to the provenance and footprint of their purchases. These aesthetes are generally pessimistic about the future; emphasis is placed on treading more slowly and lightly on the earth, on using less for longer.