Magazines Feature Green Issues

By Lisa Pawlowski

May 9, 2008

My fellow Culture Feast blogger, Michael Callaway, has commented in this space on the many ways television celebrated “Green Week”. But television isn’t the only media that has sworn to raise your consciousness on what an evil polluter you are and how we’re all going to die from drowning in the melted ice caps. In honor of Earth Day (actually, month), several magazines have also launched green issues and as is often the case when it comes to the media and the environment, hypocrisy abounds.

It seems like every magazine must have a “green” or Earth Day issue these days. My favorite story on this subject is about the New York Times Magazine which just published its first “green issue”. It called itself a “low-carbon catalog” and dispersed bon mots for living an environmentally conscious life. The only thing is, according to foliomag.com, the magazine wasn’t printed on recycled paper. The magazine’s editor, Gerald Marzorati was quoted as saying, “Our printing is a very particular method, and these machines use a very old, not terribly good paper stock. It just wasn’t feasible…”

National Geographic has two lovely magazines, one for kids and the adult one which is familiar to everyone. The National Geographic society didn’t produce a green issue but the network has been beating the loudest drum on global warming. The Nat Geo network has aired fascinating programs such as The Human Footprint which shows how much food, clothing, water and energy a person uses in a lifetime and then makes you feel guilty for being a greedy consumer of the Earth’s resources. When I use the word fascinating to describe the show, I’m not being snarky. It was truly interesting, but I got tired of being preached to.

Now one would think that the people who promoted this program would be behind recycling. But the thing about the Nat Geo mags is that they aren’t printed on recycled paper, either and on their website, which features a green guide, they answer the question of what one does with old issues by suggesting that people donate them to prisons, nursing homes and libraries. Recycling past magazines doesn’t appear to be an option as far as National Geographic is concerned.

Two notable magazines, out of the many green issue publications, were Time and Vanity Fair. But you didn’t have to be a subscriber to these titles to know that they were putting out special Earth Day issues. You could have watched television. Much was made of the Time cover which featured a replica of the iconic Iwo Jima picture, only instead of an American flag, the soldiers hoisted a redwood tree in the air. Morning news shows breathlessly announced that this was the first time in the magazine’s history that the red border that has always framed the cover was turned green! Vanity Fair’s green issue featured many hand-wringing articles on how we simply must “do something.” But then doesn’t that describe every single green issue publication?

All of this enviromania isn’t going to go away anytime soon. In early August, Positively Green magazine will launch its inaugural issue. It will fill the niche market of women who want to live a more eco-conscious life and will have features on fashion, gossip (can one gossip greenly?), home décor, and juggling work and children.

Do all of the doomsday articles in these magazines help the environment? No. Do they make people more aware of environmental problems? I suppose, but then again, who hasn’t heard of global warming? The magazines are preaching to the choir but not providing solutions.