Brandishing the First Amendment: Commercial Expression in America

11. Commercial Expression and Environmental Instability

chapter 11 Commercial Expression and Environmental Instability Green is the new black.1 —Tamsin Blanchard, Green Is the New Black: How to Change the World with Style The ‹nal concern that Emerson identi‹ed as a reason to protect freedom of expression was that such protection acted as a safety value to promote social stability . As with the interest in promoting truth or democratic participation, social stability is a goal that re›ects the interests of society as a whole, not the individual speaker. Emerson believed protection for freedom of expression permitted dissent to be expressed, which in turn allowed political change to occur through dialogue rather than through coercion or suppression. Suppression, he argued, could cause opposition both to be concealed and to harden. Protection for freedom of expression, in contrast, might allow for cathartic expression. It would allow dissenters to blow off steam and thereby lessen the urgency with which they sought to press their positions. In this way, the First Amendment could act as a more benign tool of social control than coercion. It is not at all clear that protection for commercial expression would function this way. In the ‹rst place, since corporations are not human, they do not have any “frustrations” to express or cathartic bene‹ts to be gained from blowing off steam. More fundamentally, as previously discussed, forpro ‹t corporations have a very effective and powerful voice in government. Even if industry lobbyists are not invariably successful, they probably suc202 ceed in seeing their goals realized more often than any other single group in America. It is clear, however, that commercial expression contributes signi‹cantly to consumption practices that are destructive of the very physical basis on which all life depends—the integrity of the planet. While that may not be the sort of stability Emerson had in mind, global climate change and the political struggles surrounding the issue may ultimately endanger social and political stability. Recycling It has happened now more times than I can count. One of the grocery stores where I regularly shop has stopped using plastic bags and has begun selling reusable bags for loading groceries. Despite the fact that I have any number of saved shopping bags from shopping trips past that might have served as well (although I feel there is a curious etiquette about going into a store with a bag with someone else’s logo, even if it is not a competing business), I bought two of these bags and put them in the trunk of my car. There they remain . So far, every time I have gone shopping since I bought those bags, I have gone into the store without them and discovered halfway through my shopping (or later) that I forgot to bring them in. On four or ‹ve occasions, I have made a trip back to the car to retrieve the bags. More often, I have just thought to myself, “Forget about it! I’ll try to remember next time,” and— yes, you guessed it—I forget again the next time. I suspect it will take several more trips back to the car before I reliably remember to bring my reusable bags into the store with me. Of course, if everyone were bringing their bags, I would probably have an easier time remembering. This is one of the things that make environmental problems so frustratingly dif‹cult to address—habits are very dif‹cult to change. Until a lot of people change, it is hard to initiate change. But until some people initiate changes, widespread change will not occur. Stability of bad social practices is not necessarily desirable. Nevertheless, it is possible to change. The decline in smoking in the United States illustrates that, given the right incentives and information, people can change even very deeply ingrained habits like smoking, with its additional built-in mechanism of selfreinforcement and physical habituation. So why would we not be able to change consumption practices? Commercial Expression and Environmental Instability / 203 Initiating and reinforcing change is dif‹cult when one of the principal targets for change—consumption practices—fuels the economic welfare of the world’s largest enterprises and, by extension, perhaps the country as well. Many (if not all) of those enterprises see their very existence as dependent on the continuation (not to say acceleration) of those practices. In service of that continuation, they engage in a virtually nonstop barrage of speech...