Sustainability as Culture

Good morning.

Before this week’s newsletter, I wanted to say thanks to you all for the wonderful messages you sent after my last dispatch, What Can We Break. I am deeply touched that it resonated with so many of you and loved hearing from everyone who reached out. 

I also just wanted to remind you, before you begin reading, that I typically include some links to important or interesting issues at the end of each newsletter. I realize I tend to go on for a while, and so if you do pause or stop mid-letter, please don’t leave before checking out the links at the bottom, especially after such an eventful week.

Thank you again for being here, you are appreciated in this community.

This is Present Tense, a bi-weekly newsletter about Sustainability, Culture and Impact. If you’re new here, you can subscribe by entering your email here:

On Monday, the long-awaited 2021 IPCC assessment report was released, “the most up to date physical understanding of the climate system and climate change”, and the report is ominous enough to inspire some serious doom spiral shame. In (much too) short, there is nothing we can do at this point to reverse or prevent the course of the next thirty years of projected climate change, all a result of the last 200-400 years of extractive capitalism by humans. As many of us have known for years, we stand to lose most if not all Arctic sea ice, unpredictable and dangerous weather will continue to proliferate, and it is now imperative that we build infrastructure to prepare for these inevitabilities, including and especially the communities that capitalism has been most extractive towards, who are already feeling climate change the hardest and are the most commonly impacted by climate disasters. 

It is also immediately necessary for us to overhaul our behavior in order to keep the outcomes from becoming much, much worse. 

Simultaneously, Copenhagen Fashion Week took place this week, a joyful celebration of the return of in-person runway shows in earnest even as the pandemic remains unpredictable, which of course also means the return of editors and models and so much of our industry traveling to witness these shows and events in-person and en masse, kicking off the next six-to-eight weeks of fashion activity globally. I will personally be so happy to see so many long lost friends over fashion month, and I have a difficult time balancing that feeling with the impact our industry makes on the planet with these outsized, traveling circus-like periods. 

If you and your organization are not already calculating the carbon footprint of your travels, there is a great and simple tool to calculate that footprint and purchase the corresponding carbon credits here. The term carbon footprint is indeed very controversial, as the total human cost of our travel behavior will never compare to the climate exploitation committed by even just three or four of the worst global corporations, I often find great comfort in contributing to the things I can control.

And to that point, your senator’s phone number is (202) 318-1885, and there is a wonderful site called Call4Climate that will help walk you through all of the concerns and issues that are currently being addressed by grassroots organizers and need the support of our government. Don’t forget to mention that you are their voting constituent when you call your senator. 

I’ll highlight additional direct action and civilian participation through the next few months so we can all tackle this together. What I wanted to get to in this letter is an observation I returned to this week. Like (probably all of) you, I have been unreasonably invested in the #BamaRush videos that took over TikTok this week: seemingly hundreds of young girls creating #ootd videos together as they traverse the sorority pledge process as University of Alabama, bronzed and blow-dried and filled with hope. Each girl walks you through a piece-by-piece outfit description, which means this week I found out that a place called The Pant Store exists (from what I can tell exclusively for the purpose of dressing sorority candidates?), and that most of these girls have been and continue to be investing in purchases from Shein. 

I wish no harm or ire on these girls, and in fact I think we all felt a little heart tinge remembering our selves at age 17 or 18, the level of expectation and excitement we had about the world and what it held for us. But I also remembered two things, while reflecting on these girls. One is that it is very challenging not to operate within a bit of an echo chamber in sustainable fashion. We assume people care, but to be honest most of us do not speak a language relevant to people outside of our concerns. We don’t translate, we assume others will be equally or even similarly moved by the injustices we are trying to correct, and honestly the reason this is a mistake is that for the vast fast-fashion buying population, we are not speaking a language that would allow others to hear us. This is left out of communications, marketing plans, development strategies every day. Part of our job, if we are to be leaders, should be to enlighten and empower new members into our community, and I have to say most of what we (and I mean me too) communicate does not do that. I do not think about #BamaRush sorority girls when I am crafting sustainability language at all, but I probably should.

The other thing I remembered, and this is very important, is that absolutely nothing in this world anymore is not related. There is no way to look at the way we have ravaged each living inch of this earth and not come to the conclusion that all of our work, anywhere, affects everyone else. And particularly when we work in a luxury aspirational field such as fashion, the downstream effects that we create with our work touch all humans. So there is no speaking about sustainability without speaking about all of the other issues it relates to, and any sustainability discussion in fashion that does not touch on social issues, geographical issues, political issues, et al is a farce.

On a related note, August 30th is the deadline for brands to sign on to the new Bangladesh Accord, an agreement on safe workplace standards put into effect after the Rana Plaza collapse of 2013. This is a very simple agreement designed to protect the safety and dignity of the people who produce a huge portion of the world’s clothing. Yet, the list of global, powerful brands that have not yet signed on is highlighted here by the Clean Clothes Campaign.

These are brands that have the power to make real change happen by showing their support for the people who produce their products. Please, email them, tag them, show them they are being watched.

Not coincidentally, Bangladesh is also considered extremely sensitive to climate disaster - according to the Environmental Justice Foundation, 23.5 million Bangladesh inhabitants were displaced by climate-related events in the year 2016 alone. So, as the people that produce the world’s clothes are marginalized by lack of support for their own safety and well-being, they are also marginalized by climate destruction levied on the earth by those same brands and their customers. 

I know that there is no overstating the importance of climate action and sustainable behavior, and you likely don’t need another person in your life telling you that Sustainability Is Important. I’m aiming to reach a little further than that, and think abstractly about how we make sustainability a priority for the groups of people that we are not truly speaking to right now, particularly young people who are in the midst of establishing their lifelong values and discovering the world we’ve created for them. 

How do we radicalize the #BamaRush girls into the sustainable future we need?

Let’s think about it.

Thank you as always for subscribing to this newsletter. If you’re new here, you can sign up for future newsletters by entering your email here:

Some additional considerations:

You may have read about the crisis in Lebanon, whose people are currently faced with no electricity, fuel, food, or government. The situation there is truly dire, and my friend Celine Semaan at Slow Factory is fundraising to support Lebanese community members on the ground there providing aid and support. If you can, please donate here. This is also a great time to learn about the U.S.’s relationship to the escalating crises there, especially in recent years. 

Additionally, Haiti was rocked Saturday morning by a magnitude 7.2 earthquake, the current death toll having already surpassed the 2010 earthquake they were still recovering from prior to the pandemic and recent presidential assassination. Haiti has an extremely troubled history of charitable organizations withholding emergency donations from Haitians in need, and so if you would like to help please thoroughly vet the charities and organizations you support. I like Hope for Haiti, rated very highly for its efficacy and transparency. 

If you liked my most recent letter, you might also like this latest episode of The Experiment, a podcast by The Atlantic, called Can America See Gymnasts For More Than Their Medals?

Aja Barber’s book, Consumed, The Need For Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change and Consumerism, has become available for pre-order - please support this wonderful advocate by pre-ordering from a local bookseller.

One of my favorite culture writers, Anne Helen Petersen, most recent newsletter was a wonderful piece on the importance of seeing a variety of lifestyles represented in the elders around you, which I highly recommend reading and then abstracting to all other areas of life, because - if you didn’t get the memo - no issue is an island. 

Thank you so much for being here.