Reviews
New York Times
April 2, 2010
‘Green Gone Wrong’: Can Capitalism Save the Planet?
By Devin Leonard
It may seem quaint to recall this now, but on the eve of the financial crisis, one of the biggest business stories was how large corporations were going to save the planet and make billions of dollars for their shareholders at the same time. More
Forbes
August 3, 2010
The Irony Of Buying 'Green'
by Jessica Knoblauch
Like a cloth bag with the words "I am not a plastic bag" stitched across the top, many of today's green products serve as symbols that "convey responsibility while glossing over the more significant issues of what goes into those bags, how much and how often," writes author and journalist Heather Rogers in her latest book, Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy is Undermining the Environmental Revolution. More
The Guardian (UK)
October 16, 2010
by Steven Poole
We might feel virtuous scoffing organic food and paying to have trees planted when we fly, but do such acts really accomplish anything? Rogers's excellent anatomy of greenwashing in corporate culture and personal life says not, and furthermore, that "eco-consumption" is a contradiction in terms. More
Environmental Expert.com
April 5, 2010
Green Gone Wrong
Environmental writer Heather Rogers has cut through the marketing buzz associated with the green consumer movement and asks a simple question: Do today's much-touted 'green' products-carbon offsets, organic food, biofuels, and eco-friendly cars and homes-really work? More
BNET
April 19, 2010
Fuel From Forests: Biodiesel’s Darker Shade of Green
by Jim Motavalli
Heather Rogers doesn’t do her research by surfing the Internet. For the chapter on biodiesel fuel in her new book Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy is Undermining the Environmental Revolution (Scribner, published Tuesday) she traveled to Borneo, first driving seven hours on rough roads and then motoring two hours up the Kumba River in a traditional river boat. And what she says she found is eye-opening: Production of palm oil (a biodiesel base) destined for the world market — especially Europe — that is unsustainable in just about every way. More
New Scientist
April 14, 2010
Green consumption and false economies
by Peter Aldhous
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, the epicentre of smug green consumerism, where self-proclaimed environmentalists drive to wholefood shops to load their fuel-inefficient hybrid SUVs with too much organic produce. They should read Heather Rogers's stories and weep. More
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
April 7, 2010
Who’s Green?
by Henrik Krogius
Some prominent environmental organizations have reacted furiously to an article in the March 22 issue of The Nation that was headlined “The Wrong Kind of Green.” The National Wildlife Federation, Nature Conservancy and even the Sierra Club were upset by the charge that they accept funding from corporations that are serious polluters and in return allow them to promote themselves as “green.” The author of the article, Johann Hari, an English columnist, noted that awards for “environmental stewardship” had been given to companies like British Petroleum (BP) and Shell, providing them “reputation insurance” against oil spills and emissions of warming gases. The Sierra Club was criticized for endorsing Clorox bleach as “green” despite failure to analyze its claimed environmentally superior qualities. More
Publisher's Weekly
Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution, Heather Rogers. Scribner, $25 (256p) ISBN 978-1-4165-7222-0
Rogers (Gone Tomorrow) leads readers into “forests, fields, factories, and showrooms around the world to draw out the unintended consequences, inherent obstacles, as well as successful methods that lie beneath the surface of environmentally friendly products”; her discoveries are disturbing. She finds organic farmers from the Hudson Valley to Paraguay frustrated by their difficulty in making a living; the dilution of USDA organic standards; and laxity, cheating, and conflict of interest among organic certification companies. American car manufacturers that “insist they need more time to get high-mpg cars on U.S. roads already sell them—profitably—in Europe,” and palm oil plantations grown for supposedly low-carbon biodiesel in Indonesia are destroying both carbon-sequestering rainforests and indigenous societies. Readers will be troubled by the laundry list of fallacies at the heart of “green” business, but the book’s final chapter, which discusses developing and very positive alternatives, will keep them from despairing. By going beyond exposé to analysis, Rogers gives a deeper assessment of environmental problems and solutions than the usual global-warming investigative book.(Apr.)
Booklist
Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution. Rogers, Heather (Author) Apr 2010. 256 p. Scribner, hardcover, $25.00. (9781416572220)
In Gone Tomorrow (2005), Rogers detailed everything that is wrong about wasteful packaging and choked landfills. Here she exposes how the “green” movement is failing to live up to the promise of sustainability and stewardship of the environment when the solutions are hijacked by economic and political interests. Industrial organic farms now resemble the conventional farms they were meant to replace; biofuels such as ethanol and palm oil raise food prices and replace precious rainforests, displacing indigenous peoples and creating more greenhouse gases than they save; carbon dioxide offsetting projects are mismanaged into failure. Yet despite the title Rogers found solutions that do work, such as truly organic farming methods, cutting-edge green architecture in Germany and the UK, and plug-in hybrid vehicles. Yet our corporate and political leaders continue to incentivize what poses the least challenge to established power structures, leaving out those such as the dedicated, truly organic farmers who can barely make ends meet. Once again Rogers’ clear-headed approach proves effective in uncovering the truths behind the mantle of greenwashing.