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  Straits Times 29 Jul 07
Still carrying plastic bags?
It's hip to be green but is there a line between being genuinely concerned about the planet and being an eco poseur?
By Sumiko Tan

IT'S been cloudy and raining the past week and I love weather like this. My bed's next to a window which I keep open, and I love it when lightning and thunder wake me up at night. I love the sound of the rain. I love it when the downpour gets so heavy that sheets of it slant past my blinds and raindrops start splattering against my face. I love the mossy smell of dampness seeping up from the ground during a storm, and I love digging deeper under my blanket and going back to sleep.

This wet weather is weird for July, but then the world's weather has gone all screwy. Floods in summertime Britain and China but heatwaves in Romania, Austria and Bulgaria. Mother Nature has become one capricious old lady.

The most common explanation for all this is global warming. Temperatures around the world are rising because cars, factories, power plants and the like are emitting a lot of carbon dioxide, trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Global warming is said to be the villain behind weather woes from droughts to floods, wildfires to melting glaciers. Some even say it caused 2005's Hurricane Katrina in the United States.

The thing is, a lot of what constitutes global warming - as well as the green movement itself - continues to baffle me.

Oh, I've watched Al Gore's 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth. He did a good job of explaining global warming. He was also convincing in putting across the message that much of it is caused by humans and that we'll be in big trouble if we don't stem the emission of carbon dioxide.

It's not a view that everyone accepts, but the problem with the green movement for neutral observers like me is how vicious and personal debates always degenerate to.

Green advocates and sceptics alike are so zealous in their views - just read the Internet forums - that they put off more open-minded folk like me who want to find out more about the issues, which are often complex. (Do you really understand how carbon offsets work?)

As I gather, one hot topic right now is whether buying eco-friendly products actually reduces global warming, or is it something one does just to appear 'cool'.

With celebrities lending their names to the green cause and companies rolling out stylish, expensive earth-friendly products from clothes to bedsheets, has the focus moved from saving the planet to making a fashion statement?

There's a term for people who indulge in this - eco poseurs. The urban dictionary on the Internet defines this as one who 'buys all the eco-friendly non-toxic household products, organic local growns, hybrids and other gree'ery'.

'They really do not 'do' anything to help our earth, they just purchase over-priced stuff from companies that try to help. So they wear the hemp and eat the organic, but do they actually take time out of their cell phone lives to give a helping hand?'

TAKE the much-hyped Anya Hindmarch I'm Not A Plastic Bag bag. The British accessories designer is most famous for her Be a Bag project where customers can get their photographs printed onto her bags. (I've got one with my niece's face on it).

Earlier this year, she worked with a British non-profit organisation to design an affordable, environmentally friendly bag that people could use in lieu of evil plastic bags. Made of unbleached cotton and sold for £5 (S$15), the bags with the cute logo were snapped up in Britain. Women lined up from 2am to buy them and celebrities were spotted carrying them.

When the bags came to Asia, fights broke out in Hong Kong as women rushed for them. In Singapore, there were more people on the waiting lists than the number of bags alloted. They are now sold on eBay for many times their price. Fakes have appeared in China.

Kudos to Hindmarch for her contribution to the cause, but what can one say about the consumers? How much of the rush for the bag was because of a genuine desire to use it in place of plastic bags, and how much merely coveting the latest trendy must-have and to be one up on your neighbour because you have the bag and she doesn't?

You see the same green chic bandwagon mentality in fashion. The in thing now is for designers to have 'eco' lines that boast raw materials - natural silk organza, organic wool - and 'ethical' production and manufacturing processes.

All well and good, but their price tags are laughable - $700 silk dresses, $2,000 clutch bags with wooden beads, $5,000 blazers made of cork. Is this what being green is about? Shopping choices, and expensive ones at that?

I'd always thought that the starting point of the green movement was consuming less rather than more.

Then again, who am I to sneer at the green chic chick for being insincere? If Anya Hindmarch's I'm Not A Plastic Bag bag was dangled before me, I'd grab it too and, yes, because it is trendy and cute.

It's the same reason one of my favourite T-shirts features a huge recycling logo. It's a cool cause to be associated with right now.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter if you're latching on to the eco cause just because it's the fashionable thing to do so. It's better than not being bothered at all.

In any case, taking small steps is the only way that we, digits on the planet, can help.

While politicians and big businesses slug it out over the causes and effects of global warming, it's actually quite simple on the personal level to do your part to bring down global warming.

According to Gore's An Inconvenient Truth website, it's as easy as this: Replacing a regular lightbulb with a compact flourescent one; driving less; recycling more; checking that your tyres are properly inflated to improve gas mileage; using less hot water; avoiding products with lots of packaging to cut down on garbage; adjusting your thermostat; planting a tree; turning off electronic devices when not using them.

I'm late in the game, but I'm trying. The other day, I surprised myself when I was buying doughnuts. The cashier was putting the plastic bag of doughnuts into another plastic bag when I told her I didn't need it - the doughtnuts could easily fit into another (plastic) bag I was already carrying.

It was no big deal of course, but I did feel virtuous and smug.

And my most important contribution of all to alleviate global warming? I never sleep with the air-conditioner on. I get ventilation from an open window. Which, of course, is also perfect when it rains in the early hours of the morning, as has been happening.
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