The EconomistDecember 14th 2019 Business 59I
n some households’tis the season to be jolly cross. A young
generation of climate Scrooges will be on the warpath this
Christmas, ticking everyone off for the air miles travelled, Santa’s
carbon footprint, gorging on meat and the sacrilege of lighting a
log fire. It is not as if, like Dickens’s Scrooge, they think that “every
idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be
boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly
through his heart.” After all, boiling and burying would also re-
lease carbon dioxide. But as emissions rise, the killjoys are resort-
ing to shame and repulsion as weapons against environmental
evils. It is not just parents who are in the line of fire. Whole indus-
tries are, too.
From flygskam, or flight shame, to spurning fast-fashion to
shunning meat, a relatively small number of young consumers ex-
ert a growing influence on big corporations—and politicians who
regulate them. It is easy to dismiss the zealots. By and large they are
Western, wealthy, well-educated and “woke”. Much larger num-
bers fret about how far their next pay-cheque will stretch to trou-
ble themselves with issues of environmental sustainability. And it
is unclear to what extent shoppers in the developing world, where
airlines, garment-makers and food producers see growth for de-
cades to come, share the Western shamers’ concerns.
Yet even in consumer hotbeds like China, climate conscious-
ness is on the rise. It enjoys an Instagram-fuelled tailwind from
successful campaigns against plastics and fur. Everywhere it is
amplified by a small but growing coterie of investors not just wor-
ried about climate change, but looking for the next big thing. In
fashion and food, a new generation of startups is turning sustain-
ability into a brand, as Tesla has done for cars. Some of this may be
greenwash. But it is disrupting huge businesses.
Take flight shame. It began as an expression of personal guilt
over one’s carbon air trail, which is high per passenger and cumu-
latively accounts for about 2% of global emissions. But it has trans-
formed into something closer to collective culpability. Some air-
lines, especially in northern Europe, are taking it seriously. In
Sweden, where the movement was born, passenger numbers have
been falling for more than a year (though some of that may be
down to a slowing economy). klm, a Dutch carrier, is urging cus-tomers to “fly responsibly”—even telling them that it is quicker to
take the train to Brussels from Amsterdam than to fly. (In Swedish,
flygskam’s corollary is tagskryt, or train-bragging.) Awareness
about the environmental impact of air travel is spreading. On De-
cember 9th ubs, a bank, released a study showing that 37% of re-
spondents in a survey of eight big countries have reduced air travel
in the past year out of flight shame. Chinese flyers were among the
most concerned. Investors are, too. Citi, another lender, says flight
shame makes the industry’s current demand forecasts look “un-
comfortably high”. It could hit corporate valuations.
In fashion and food shame is rearing its head, too. Both produce
far more carbon emissions than aviation, use huge amounts of wa-
ter and pollute soils and rivers. Fast-fashion, led by brands such as
Zara and h&m, has vastly increased the number of collections sold
each year. The resulting throwaway culture has drawn the ire of
Western activists. Emerging-market shoppers may join the back-
lash. Even if they do not, clothing firms feel obliged to show that
they are doing something to clean up their act. This summer 32 of
the world’s best-known garment-makers, including Gap, Nike,
h&mGroup and Zara’s owner, Inditex, forged a pact to make fash-
ion less dirty. They are twitchy that alternatives to fast-fashion,
such as resale and rental clothing, which promote the peaceful co-
existence of altruism and narcissism, might be on the rise.
Vegan vitriol against animal products can resemble that of
“Carnage”, a British film from 2017 in which bucolic youngsters 50
years hence look back with disgust on their forebears’ consump-
tion of flesh and milk meant for calves. A voice-over likens Paul
McCartney’s promotion of “meat-free Mondays” to “ethnic-
cleansing-free Tuesdays”. The film may be a satire, but the trend
towards meatlessness is real enough for fast-food chains like Mc-
Donald’s and Burger King to be introducing plant-based burgers,
made by companies such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods.
Sweden, for its part, is in the throes of a long-running “milk war”
between Oatly, an oat-drink producer, and Arla, a dairy multi-
national. Oatly has run an ad campaign that says of its product:
“It’s like milk but made for humans.” The dairy industry hates it.Sugar and spice and all things nasty
Using consumption to make political or ethical statements is not
new. Lawrence Glickman of Cornell University, author of a history
of the subject, likens today’s shaming culture to that in the run-up
to the American revolution, when anti-British merchants in the
colonies refused to sell the crown’s goods. Protesters wore home-
spun clothing and ostracised those who drank English tea—even
the stuff washed ashore after the Boston Tea Party. In the late 1700s
British abolitionists, especially women, boycotted sugar and other
goods produced by slaves in the West Indies. Since then, action has
more often focused on specific companies. In the 1990s Nike and
Gap were pilloried for their alleged use of “sweatshop” labour. In
2010 Nestlé had to fend off a campaign alleging that it had orang-
utans’ blood on its hands because oil palms which provided ingre-
dients for KitKats had replaced the apes’ jungle habitat. This
month Peloton, an exercise-bike company, got into hot water over
a Christmas ad some deem sexist.
It is harder to shame diffuse behaviour than individual firms.
Green-tinged scorn may prove hard to sustain. But it is also hard to
counter—the shamers love to trash firms’ cuddly marketing guff.
As with any consumer trend, few will be as committed as pious
early adopters. But they can herald a genuine revolution. Compa-
nies ignore them at their peril. 7Schumpeter Green with shame
Stigma is a force for creative destruction