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Adbusters - Issue 154: Fake Planet
On the back cover of the first issue of Adbusters, published back in 1989, was a stern-looking Planet Earth pointing an accusing finger: I WANT YOU TO CURB YOUR CONSUMPTION.
The world was in a phase change. The Berlin Wall was about to fall. Solidarity was in the air, and the environmental movement was driving it. We’d seen the whole Earth from space and by God it looked vulnerable, hanging out there in the darkness.
Environmentalism wasn’t some kind of consensus we all arrived at: it was an existential reaction that prompted a million gut-level responses.
But let’s face it: fifty years of environmental activism has added up to little more than a rounding error on the climate emergency.
Now we need to go deep-down, system-wide, third-order.
So, in this issue we sink our teeth into the problem of climate change and shake loose one mighty idea — the mother of all metamemes — that’ll show the world a way out of the existential fix we’re in.
Don’t believe us? Read on...
The world was in a phase change. The Berlin Wall was about to fall. Solidarity was in the air, and the environmental movement was driving it. We’d seen the whole Earth from space and by God it looked vulnerable, hanging out there in the darkness.
Environmentalism wasn’t some kind of consensus we all arrived at: it was an existential reaction that prompted a million gut-level responses.
But let’s face it: fifty years of environmental activism has added up to little more than a rounding error on the climate emergency.
Now we need to go deep-down, system-wide, third-order.
So, in this issue we sink our teeth into the problem of climate change and shake loose one mighty idea — the mother of all metamemes — that’ll show the world a way out of the existential fix we’re in.
Don’t believe us? Read on...
160 pages, Unknown Binding
Published April 13, 2021
3 people want to read
About the author
Adbusters
19 books20 followersThe Adbusters Media Foundation is a Canadian-based not-for-profit, anti-consumerist, pro-environment organization founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz in Vancouver, British Columbia. Adbusters describes itself as "a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age."
Characterized by some as anti-capitalist or opposed to capitalism, it publishes the reader-supported, advertising-free Adbusters, an activist magazine with an international circulation of 120,000 devoted to challenging consumerism. Past and present contributors to the magazine include Christopher Hedges, Matt Taibbi, Bill McKibben, Jim Munroe, Douglas Rushkoff, Jonathan Barnbrook, David Graeber, Simon Critchley, Slavoj Zizek, Michael Hardt, David Orrell and others.
Adbusters has launched numerous international campaigns, including Buy Nothing Day, TV Turnoff Week and Occupy Wall Street, and is known for their "subvertisements" that spoof popular advertisements. In English, Adbusters has bi-monthly American, Canadian, Australian, UK and International editions of each issue. Adbusters's sister organizations include Résistance à l'Aggression Publicitaire and Casseurs de Pub in France, Adbusters Norge in Norway, Adbusters Sverige in Sweden and Culture Jammers in Japan.
[from Wikipedia]
Characterized by some as anti-capitalist or opposed to capitalism, it publishes the reader-supported, advertising-free Adbusters, an activist magazine with an international circulation of 120,000 devoted to challenging consumerism. Past and present contributors to the magazine include Christopher Hedges, Matt Taibbi, Bill McKibben, Jim Munroe, Douglas Rushkoff, Jonathan Barnbrook, David Graeber, Simon Critchley, Slavoj Zizek, Michael Hardt, David Orrell and others.
Adbusters has launched numerous international campaigns, including Buy Nothing Day, TV Turnoff Week and Occupy Wall Street, and is known for their "subvertisements" that spoof popular advertisements. In English, Adbusters has bi-monthly American, Canadian, Australian, UK and International editions of each issue. Adbusters's sister organizations include Résistance à l'Aggression Publicitaire and Casseurs de Pub in France, Adbusters Norge in Norway, Adbusters Sverige in Sweden and Culture Jammers in Japan.
[from Wikipedia]
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 19, 2021
I was 18 when I last read Adbusters and since then have held it in fairly high esteem. Perhaps because it has changed, or perhaps because I have, this issue of the magazine did a lot to undermine that impression.
Before getting into gripes, it’s worth noting that it is artistically excellent. The photos and illustrations have been selected with care and integrate - sometimes harmoniously and sometimes jarringly, but always deliberately so - with the magazine’s design and messaging. The section on Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire paintings is particularly good.
***
This brings me onto the politics of this issue - so, onto my problems with it.
Adbusters, as the name suggests, is an anti-consumerist organisation. I can align myself with it on this. But I also believed it to be anti-capitalist, which this issue is not.
30 of its pages are devoted to the “True Cost Manifesto”, extracted from a forthcoming book of theirs. This screed’s demand is “reform capitalism!”, not “end capitalism!”, and its proposals are for fairly drastic changes in the markets - but capitalist markets nonetheless.
The central idea is this: if we were forced to pay prices which reflect the true environmental cost of everything, this would drastically alter consumption and production. So “an avocado from Mexico will cost you $15” and become a luxury item; in fact, prices would increase for everything from Big Macs to “shrimp from Indonesia”. Meanwhile, the financial hit for producing plastic or releasing greenhouse gases would force Coca-Cola to change their bottles, automobile manufacturers to redesign cars, and the food industry to rehaul its model. In short, people and corporations alike would be forced to radically alter their behaviours. Environmental costs stop being externalities, instead made intrinsic to the price.
This would indeed have positive impacts on corporations’ behaviours. Under capitalism, capitalists usually fall in line with the profit motive; with True Cost, this would align less with environmental destruction than it does currently. I do not believe it would be enough, but I’ll leave that debate for elsewhere.
The glaring omission here is what True Cost would do to the majority of consumers, those who could not afford the price hikes. They are clearly not being pitched to here, with the most we get being an acknowledgement that “it will be tough, especially on lower income families.” This is an appalling understatement.
There is already a gap between actual wages for those on low incomes and the real living wage needed to meet basic needs. This means having no other option than relying on cheap food and clothes, without the luxury to buy more ecologically friendly options. Anyone who has lived in or even read about poverty knows that relying on these products is not enough to do away with sacrifices like skipping meals or forgoing medication.
The True Cost Manifesto proposes raising the cost of subsistence items without making any provisions for raising wages. This would mean massively increasing the gap being actual wages and the living wage, which is not just “tough” for lower-income people: it’s murderous.
Yet Adbusters doesn’t just ignore the suffering that would be caused, it seems to welcome it. Pain is necessary, it says, to shake us out of our slumber. At the moment, you can’t feel the urgency of climate change “because your hair isn’t on fire. Yet.” This may be a good approach to the super-rich, as the richest 0.54% of people emit one-third more than the poorest half (!!!) That 1/185th of people could be made to feel the urgency of what their luxury emissions are doing to the environment. But for that poorest half who may not make it through to the end of the month, holding them responsible for the end of the world is senseless and cruel.
Astoundingly, this is proposed as a plan that, despite “righteous indignation”, could become politically viable. The idea that “there might actually not be the almighty pushback you’d expect” from foisting suffering upon people seems absurd.
***
Adbusters isn’t just rejecting the anti-capitalist left, it’s also rejecting progressive social justice values by adopting right-wing talking points. On one page, an image of Pepe the frog is accompanied by a complaint about “virtue-signalling faux lefties”. Elsewhere, the only book promoted by Adbusters other than their own is by Paul Embery, who believes the left needs to prioritise the “working-class values of patriotism, family and faith”. In practice, this amounts to ranting about immigrants, queer people and 60’s counterculture, as many self-described “progressive patriots” end up doing.
This is the only concession with the working class that is hinted at in the magazine. Nothing will be done to alleviate poverty - precisely the opposite, because we must force people to feel the consequences of climate change. Instead, the compromise will be with their imagined bigotry, throwing all marginalised groups under the bus in an attempt to avoid the charge of being social justice warriors and win votes. This, too, is murderous - and most so for the people with marginalised identities who also live in poverty, a group never considered in the magazine’s 160 pages.
***
It’s a disappointing assessment that the organisation which played a commendable role in Occupy Wall Street is now, if this issue is any indication, advocating capitalist reforms and reactionary views on social justice.
Before getting into gripes, it’s worth noting that it is artistically excellent. The photos and illustrations have been selected with care and integrate - sometimes harmoniously and sometimes jarringly, but always deliberately so - with the magazine’s design and messaging. The section on Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire paintings is particularly good.
***
This brings me onto the politics of this issue - so, onto my problems with it.
Adbusters, as the name suggests, is an anti-consumerist organisation. I can align myself with it on this. But I also believed it to be anti-capitalist, which this issue is not.
30 of its pages are devoted to the “True Cost Manifesto”, extracted from a forthcoming book of theirs. This screed’s demand is “reform capitalism!”, not “end capitalism!”, and its proposals are for fairly drastic changes in the markets - but capitalist markets nonetheless.
The central idea is this: if we were forced to pay prices which reflect the true environmental cost of everything, this would drastically alter consumption and production. So “an avocado from Mexico will cost you $15” and become a luxury item; in fact, prices would increase for everything from Big Macs to “shrimp from Indonesia”. Meanwhile, the financial hit for producing plastic or releasing greenhouse gases would force Coca-Cola to change their bottles, automobile manufacturers to redesign cars, and the food industry to rehaul its model. In short, people and corporations alike would be forced to radically alter their behaviours. Environmental costs stop being externalities, instead made intrinsic to the price.
This would indeed have positive impacts on corporations’ behaviours. Under capitalism, capitalists usually fall in line with the profit motive; with True Cost, this would align less with environmental destruction than it does currently. I do not believe it would be enough, but I’ll leave that debate for elsewhere.
The glaring omission here is what True Cost would do to the majority of consumers, those who could not afford the price hikes. They are clearly not being pitched to here, with the most we get being an acknowledgement that “it will be tough, especially on lower income families.” This is an appalling understatement.
There is already a gap between actual wages for those on low incomes and the real living wage needed to meet basic needs. This means having no other option than relying on cheap food and clothes, without the luxury to buy more ecologically friendly options. Anyone who has lived in or even read about poverty knows that relying on these products is not enough to do away with sacrifices like skipping meals or forgoing medication.
The True Cost Manifesto proposes raising the cost of subsistence items without making any provisions for raising wages. This would mean massively increasing the gap being actual wages and the living wage, which is not just “tough” for lower-income people: it’s murderous.
Yet Adbusters doesn’t just ignore the suffering that would be caused, it seems to welcome it. Pain is necessary, it says, to shake us out of our slumber. At the moment, you can’t feel the urgency of climate change “because your hair isn’t on fire. Yet.” This may be a good approach to the super-rich, as the richest 0.54% of people emit one-third more than the poorest half (!!!) That 1/185th of people could be made to feel the urgency of what their luxury emissions are doing to the environment. But for that poorest half who may not make it through to the end of the month, holding them responsible for the end of the world is senseless and cruel.
Astoundingly, this is proposed as a plan that, despite “righteous indignation”, could become politically viable. The idea that “there might actually not be the almighty pushback you’d expect” from foisting suffering upon people seems absurd.
***
Adbusters isn’t just rejecting the anti-capitalist left, it’s also rejecting progressive social justice values by adopting right-wing talking points. On one page, an image of Pepe the frog is accompanied by a complaint about “virtue-signalling faux lefties”. Elsewhere, the only book promoted by Adbusters other than their own is by Paul Embery, who believes the left needs to prioritise the “working-class values of patriotism, family and faith”. In practice, this amounts to ranting about immigrants, queer people and 60’s counterculture, as many self-described “progressive patriots” end up doing.
This is the only concession with the working class that is hinted at in the magazine. Nothing will be done to alleviate poverty - precisely the opposite, because we must force people to feel the consequences of climate change. Instead, the compromise will be with their imagined bigotry, throwing all marginalised groups under the bus in an attempt to avoid the charge of being social justice warriors and win votes. This, too, is murderous - and most so for the people with marginalised identities who also live in poverty, a group never considered in the magazine’s 160 pages.
***
It’s a disappointing assessment that the organisation which played a commendable role in Occupy Wall Street is now, if this issue is any indication, advocating capitalist reforms and reactionary views on social justice.
June 8, 2021
Possibly the most inspirational issue of ADBUSTERS I ever read, and I've been reading since 2000. True Cost is a really innovative idea.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews