Another retrieved post after the nasty hacking attack.
I normally purchase each year the State of the World Report from the Worldwatch Institute. I have been reading the 2010 issue. I’d characterise the content as ‘green left’ in character. It essentially argues that consumerism – the social ethic whereby the possession of an increasing range of goods and services is the main cultural aspiration of people and the route to individual happiness – needs to be replaced by an ethic of pursuing sustainable use of the earth’s resources. In short the cultural roots of human behaviour need to be changed.
Capitalism hasn’t failed as Marx suggested it would because of a declining rate of profit and an emerging army of unemployed. In fact, if anything, it is argued to be too successful in raising living standards and in increasing humanity’s claims on the earth’s natural resources. Now 6.8 billion people are pumping out billions of tons of greenhouse gases that are destroying the global climate and unsustainably utilising the world’s natural ecosystems.
Moreover pressure on the environment will increase further as developing countries develop. Ecologists predict that even a fraction of US-style consumption standards are inconsistent with sustainable use of the planet’s natural resources. Of course one can suppose that technical progress can come to the rescue or adopt what Claude Henry characterised as a ‘Japanese view ‘of the world where people live in a totally synthetic environment but have their resource needs met by technology. But this is simply optimism/wishful thinking.
Climate change is only one aspect of the unsustainable attack that humans have made on the planet earth’s resources.
There are two difficulties in combating consumerist-based environmental and ecological destruction. The first is that capitalism has created a set of consumerist values that seem so natural that they are barely recognisable as a cultural construct. What could be more natural than wanting to consume more? In economic theory the key agent in the economy is not a person but a ‘consumer’. Secondly while it is true that modern lifestyles are environmentally destructive the constant range of new goods and services available does provide real utility and in some cases is environmentally friendly. For example, the revolution that has stemmed from the use of PCs and the internet continue to improve our lives and in some cases to improve the environment. E-books that seem destined to replace the printed book over the next decade or so will reduce demands on forest resources. This is not a small issue when it is understood that the earth is depleting 7 million hectares of forest annually. Somehow we need to create a more sustainable long-lived basis for our consumptions but still derive the benefits that arise from knowledge accumulation and technical change.
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