Teaching kids to buy their way to a better world? Maybe not.
People of faith are finally getting their act together and developing a consensus around global warming and other environmental concerns. It’s no longer a radical-fringe idea that people, individually and collectively, have a moral duty to do all we can to stop destroying our environment. With all the Earth Day talk going on this week, it might seem like the whole country is on board. Which is a good thing, right?
But there’s a new twist: what about when companies try to sell stuff by using Earth Day itself as a marketing tool? Maybe you’re too sophisticated to fall for that, but what about when the pitch is aimed at preschoolers?
This is the concern behind a recent piece in the Huffington Post, “Marketing Earth Day (and Other Stuff) to Children,” by Susan Linn and Josh Golin of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. (Sounds quixotic, doesn’t it? I don’t mean to…
