Environment
Shop till we Drop. Photo WIlliam Edmondson
Consumption Gone Wild
By William Edmondson
It has always been fairly easy to pass the buck when it comes to our planet in peril, but make no mistake: the path we are on is not likely sustainable. While governments with soft policies are often great patsies for oil companies with record profits, in the end we first-world inhabitants (that includes you and me) must awaken to the reality that until we become part of the solution, we are part of the problem.
So agrees Erik Assadourian, senior researcher at the World Watch Institute and project director for its book-length report 2010 State of the World – Transforming Culture. Assadourian says, “It’s no longer enough to change our light bulbs. We need to change our culture.” The biggest catalyst to our world’s ecological crises, he claims, is the Western culture of consumption – we just use way too much stuff.
Collectively, our consumption has skyrocketed six-fold since 1960, reaching $30.5 trillion in 2006. “Two centuries of intentional cultivation of consumerism,” Assadourian says, “has led to us seeing it as perfectly natural to define ourselves by what and how much we consume.”
Look around you – how much of the stuff in your house is just fluff? That new flat-screen may be bigger and better, but did the last one stop working or did you just feel the need to upgrade? How much of your life is defined by what you own rather than who you really are? Studies show, and it makes sense, that after we have achieved basic economic security what really makes us happy are close relationships, meaningful work, connections to community, and good health. In the end we all die alone and that old saying still holds up: You can’t take it with you.
To give a better idea of just how our cultural consumption has led us astray, Assadourian points out how we perceive it as natural to be able to rattle off hundreds of brand names and recognize even more logos, while a small minority of us are able to identify a furry marmot and a beaver. That’s a product of our culture. When a two-year-old recognizes Rotten Ron’s golden arches before the letter ‘M’ itself – more culture. When people’s pets have become more humanized than some actual humans –dogs with toys, sweaters, haircuts, massages, and tiny misshapen jeans with wallet chains – that’s culture gone wild. To put it in perspective, Assadourian adds that two German shepherd dogs use as many resources as the average Bangladeshi human.
But let’s not start pointing paws. There are plenty of examples of this consumption gone wild. Nowadays we consume more than just products. Locally, security at the 2010 Winter Games will cost over $1.5 billion for an eight-week event in one little corner of one country. Globally, we consume $643 billion a year in advertising. Recreationally we spend over $400 billion on narcotics each year. No, that’s not just Whistler but “en todo el mundo”– the whole world. This is, however, not including cigarettes or alcohol. If we partied even one-eighth less, we could more than double all the additional expenditures needed to provide basic education ($6 billion), water and sanitation ($9 billion) and basic food and nutrition ($13 billion) for everyone on the planet.*
But in the problem may lie a solution. If advertising and media play such an influential role in selling us consumer culture, surely we can use the same medium to encourage a more sustainable culture.
Jonah Sachs, Director of Free Range Studios, a design and communications firm, agrees. He co-authored a chapter in 2010 State of the World called “From Selling Soap to Selling Sustainability: Social Marketing.” Sachs says, “Social marketing has helped discourage smoking, promote seatbelt use, and raise awareness about obesity. If advertising and marketing helped create consumerism in just a few decades, social marketers could undermine it just as quickly.”
So maybe there is hope for us as the internet brings word-of-mouth to a global level. One thing is certain – there doesn’t appear to be a silver-bullet solution. Whether we social-market our way out of this, shift our culture altogether, or redirect our spending to more meaningful pursuits, it does appear some slight pressure on the reset button is in order.
