carrotmob.org
Sunday June 22, 2008 at 12:35 am | Filed under On the Web
We all get those emails that say “don’t buy gas on May 31st! — we’ll teach those oil companies!” and then we never know what happens, even if we don’t buy the gas that day. There’s a group that’s take this kinda idea and applied to it to the flash mob idea. Carrotmob.org is proposing that consumers band together and use their purchasing power to change the way businesses think about energy efficiency. They do this by focusing a lot of consumer power at one brand or location who have agreed to use a percentage of their profit to decrease their carbon footprint. Their first test was a smashing success and I’m looking forward to hearing out their future projects.
What I love about this approach is that is that it doesn’t involve any negatives: no boycotts, no strikes, no horrible letters. Everyone wins here. Great idea!
6 Responses to “carrotmob.org”
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Curly Says:
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:27 pmFirst of all, I want to give a friendly shout-out to my man JP. Long time no see, brother! Hope all is well and that we can hang out in December! Keep posting those pix of cutie-pie B.
Second . . . oh man, environmental stuff pushes my buttons. The “mob” in Carrotmob is appropriate, since the founder appears to favor the same simplistic arguments and scare tactics common to all environmental dogmatists. “Save the world,” “government and business are evil,” ” ‘people’ are the answer.”
I might agree that everyone wins here, were it not for the fact that the consumer pays a lot more by shopping at a mom & pop place. The corner market near me charges $2.59 for a 2-liter Coke . . . it’s $1.25 at the supermarket.
But the Carrotmobbers and Greenpeacers will go out of their way to make you feel like you’re somehow guilty if you take the cheaper soda, or don’t shop at the mom & pops. They are ultimately concerned not about saving the world, but about wielding political power.
The supermarket also gives money back to the community—at no additional cost to shoppers, it donates money to our church school (.5% of all purchases made by members of my church). Not sure what can be said about the corner store, but based on sales volume alone I’m sure their charitable activities don’t come close to those of the Evil Corporate Giant.
So I save money and they give money to my church. What do I care if the local liquor store pledges to spend an arbitrary 22% on energy efficiency improvements? If business owners buy into the Carrotmob lie that NOT buying energy efficient coolers will somehow increase their bottom line, then that’s their problem. Cities have also addressed this problem by offering homeowners and businesses incentives and rebates for upgrading their old A/C and refrigerators. (For cities, it’s primarily a question of being better able to supply energy needs and secondarily a question of “carbon footprints.”) It just makes sense to upgrade . . . but Carrotmob makes it sound like you have to use apocalyptic rhetoric, and throw responsibility for the death of the planet at them, before businesses will budge out of their old ways—even if those old ways are hurting their profits.
Then there’s the question—not addressed by Carrotmob—of how energy efficient these liquor stores were prior to their going in to ask how much they were willing to spend on improvements. Maybe the guy who said 10% was already using energy efficient refrigeration and lighting, while the 22% guy knew he was long overdue to renew the infrastructure. Maybe the 10% guy makes 3x as much as the 22% guy, and thus was in fact pledging to spend more money than Mr. 22% was. Like I said, the environmental Brownshirts favor simplistic arguments: “How much will you spend?” is a totally simplistic approach to the issue.
Sorry to have gone on for so long! But that video gave me something to think about.
Happy Sunday,
Mr. Negativity -
Curly Says:
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:33 pmSorry . . . I just thought of this.
When Mr. 22% makes his improvements, will Carrotmobbers continue to shop there? Clearly, if they were to go through and ask the store owners how much they were willing to spend on improvements, the 22% guy would probably answer “0%” because he just made improvements and doesn’t need to make any more for the time being. Do the Carrotmobbers then take their business elsewhere unless he continues to spend 22% of profits on improvements, whether or not they are needed?
The long-term logic of the project is fuzzy to me.
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Jon Says:
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:51 pmSure, the test case of the liquor store was simplistic. But I love the idea. I signed up for the mailing list. Wonder what their next move is.
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Joe Says:
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:59 pmDoesn’t matter.. the only thing that would reduce the effort would be if the liquor store dude took out the improvements that he made, which would be silly. Not sure where you got the idea that the carrotmobbers are all about politics. They never mentioned evil anything. If the liquor store guy has a cheaper electric bill because of this, but cares nothing about the environment/doesn’t believe in global warming as the carrots do, then isn’t he still better off? He got press, has to pay less every month, yadda yadda.. he’s happy.
Personally, I don’t care if Mr. 22% did it just to get exposure for his store. That’s fine, that’s why everyone’s a winner. It doesn’t matter if the carrots ever shop there again — both parties got what they want, and it’s done. That’s what I thought was the genius in it.
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Curly Says:
July 1st, 2008 at 6:12 pmRE: “They never mentioned evil anything”: Carrotmob characterizes its goals in terms of a choice between good and evil on its website.
RE: politics: If the Carrotmobbers are part of the environmental movement, then I am sure they are at least as motivated by politics (and $$) as by a care for the planet. My reservations are more for the movement as a whole, than for Carrotmob in particular (I don’t think that came through on my initial post).
RE: politics: Consider the state of scientific research: many scientists don’t dare publish anything that challenges the “global warming” thesis, because if they do they will almost certainly lose funding and damage their careers. The system is currently rigged to admit evidence to support only one conclusion: global warming, with human activity as the culprit. Any data that challenges this is suppressed. That is politics guided by an a priori philosophical commitment, which is not susceptible to rational argument.
One might also ask why the environmental movement is opposed to nuclear power, which is clean and efficient and eminently “sustainable.” It’s not because they love the earth. It’s a political stance.
Like I said above, I’m not opposed to a one-off “deal” between a bunch of shoppers and a small store owner—of course, it’s better for the owner to have more efficient equipment, and better for everybody if he’s polluting less. But at a deeper level, I have serious, serious reservations about the motives of the environmental movement, many members of which seem to think that the inanimate earth is more valuable than the people who live on it.
See my post on “carbon offsetting” where I (following another author) characterize mainstream environmentalism as “misanthropic, anti-development, and devoted to keeping the citizens of undeveloped nations in abject poverty and daily suffering.” That’s the bigger picture in which I situate Carrotmob, and any other environmental group.
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Joe Says:
July 6th, 2008 at 6:19 pmWell, I disagree with you on pretty much everything you said, but it’s not because I’m buying the global warming thing. Conserving energy doesn’t always have to be tied to global warming beliefs. You can do it to save dollars. I try to conserve energy because it’s good for me and it’s good for the Earth, and it’s not that much effort to do a little bit. I’m also looking for other planets we can move to in my spare time. …and I’m collecting bottle caps (unrelated).
I haven’t read every word Carrotmob has written, so rather than say that I support everything they ever did and will do, why don’t I just leave it at the fact that I dig that market stunt they pulled off. Then you can tell me I’m wrong about that too.. I can’t wait ;-).