There’s a lot to like about Alanis Morissette. She’s an epic rocker, writes with honesty and courage, and is generous with her time across a number of charitable causes. Morissette also has some earth-friendly personal cred, adopting a vegan lifestyle and vigorously supporting wildlife conservation. Bonus points for dating an environmental lawyer.
But the eco press does her no favors with articles such as Alanis Morissette on Green Tips for Rock Stars, published today by Planet Green. This is because there are no green rock stars, and pretending there could be such a thing trivializes both the environmental movement and the personal contributions of musicians working within an unsustainable industry.
Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic
The Planet Green piece cherry-picks comments made by Morissette on a video segment over at Spin Earth. Jared Sagal asked the performer what musicians can do to help the environment. Morissette replied, offhandedly, that her tour uses buses run which run on biodiesel, donates uneaten backstage food to local shelters, and favors rechargeable batteries. The performer went on to say that she tries to keep the lights switched off in her hotel room and uses towels until they’re good and nappy.
All of which sounds ridiculous. It’s not that these actions are a bad thing — quite the opposite. But in the context of a modern rock tour, worrying about laundering an extra towel or two is laughable when considered alongside the tons of waste generated by event concessions; the vast amounts of energy consumed by concert lighting, sound, and air conditioning; and the entire culture of consumption which surrounds any mass event. Morissette’s buses may be biofueled, but not the thousands of cars which brought people to the auditorium.
You have to be pretty deeply inside the green loop to ignore such obvious paradoxes. Most people aren’t, so when they see a celebrity stepping off a chartered jet to lecture about the necessity of reducing one’s carbon footprint, they just snicker. And the environmental movement gets a little smaller.
Beyond the cult of celebrity
The real environmental heroes aren’t the glitterati, and it’s time we stop appropriating their fame for the cause. The authentic champions of the earth are people like our grandparents, who knew how to repair clothing, grow some of their own food, and enjoy entertainment which didn’t involve a credit card and a day-long drive to some faraway venue. Real environmental heroes live modestly. They know that embracing simplicity — minimalism, if you prefer to call it that — is the real key to restoring environmental balance.
Reduce your consumption, and you are the true green rock star.
