I remember a story on HN about how it was the plastic industry that promoted the narrative of recyclable plastic. Doesn’t make sense at first glance, perhaps; why not sell more plastic instead of telling people to recycle it? But they promoted that narrative because it is inefficient/hard to recycle plastics, and thus there is apparently no “sustainable” way to keep using plastics.

It was a useful tale to spin past a certain point of environmental consciousness.

So that narrative—engineered by the plastic industry itself—became just another part of RRR (reuse, repurpose, recycle).

Now think about all the billions of dollars that are in marketing. How much of the popular eco-agenda could be corporoate-sponsored?

(This is just to suggest that it is possible—there are always at least a dozen people in the comments who will demand direct proof in the form of leaked memos from at least three different giant corporations were they directly and explicitly (no innuendo) tell their subordinates to come up with such agendas, signed off by at least three executives. But it might be something to consider.

Or not.)

Now the Zeitgeist tells us that the world will be saved by middle class Joe making better consumer choices. I.e. rock the person, not the system.

The same thing goes for the economic system writ large.