JANUARY 13, 2010
ESSENCE
The University of Victoria Environmental Studies Student’s Association Periodical
ISSUE 2: CONFRONTING CONSUMPTION
TOILET FRAGEMENTS FROM THE CAPITAL REGIONAL DISTRICT’S WATER WISE REBATE PROGRAM. THIS PROGRAM IS CURRENTLY UNDER REVIEW. IMAGE BY MILA CZEMERYS
“World Report 2050”: Unstable, Unmanageable, and Unliveable”
MIKE LIVINGSTONE
Introduction
Global environmental politics between 2010
and 2050 were characterized by the inability
of the environmental movement to generate
institutional reform. By 2010, a few scattered
voices in and around the environmental move-
ment were beginning to argue that effective
responses to threats to the global environment
would have to centre on a strong challenge to
consumer capitalism. This was due to the grow-
ing body of evidence that human consumption
was causing major environmental damage.
Unfortunately, politicians and the pri-
vate sector were not interested in losing votes
or profits, respectively. Therefore, environmen-
tal issues were never able to take priority over
economic growth, and sustainable consumption
was not prioritized. As neo-liberal free-market
ideology dominated the first half of the century,
consumerism was encouraged and celebrated.
The best way to detail the history of global
environmental politics between 2010 and 2050
is to analyze the relationships between the en-
vironment and environmentalism, consumer-
ism and consumption, the global economy and
the private sector, and governments and insti-
tutions. In this way, it is possible to show that
the world of 2050 has been shaped by politi-
cal apathy, greed, and the failure of democratic
governance.
Consumerism and Consumption
Environmentalists’ early 21st century hopes for
transformation did not pan out, largely due to
consumerism and consumption. Neo-liberalism
promoted consumerism as a democratic right.
Sadly, as Juliet Schor, a professor of sociology
at Boston College highlights in “Tackling Turbo
Consumption”, consumerism was not an ideol-
ogy conducive to promoting human well-being
because it enabled a rapacious capitalist system.
Similarly, in “The Challenge of Sustainable
Lifestyles”, Professor of Sustainability at the
UK University of Surrey, Tim Jackson, identi-
fied that consumerism promoted consumption,
and people used consumption practices to show
their allegiance to certain social groups and to
distinguish themselves from others. By 2004 in
Europe and North America, 12% of the global
population accounted for 60% of consumer
spending, as Professor Dennis Soron of Brock
University recorded in “Death by Consump-
tion”.
By 2010, the developing world was showing
economic progress based on the free-market
principles championed by developed countries.
By 2020, China, India, Russia, and Brazil were
fully industrialized and were using their new-
found wealth to encourage a growing consumer
class to buy and use as much as possible. As
Allen Hammond predicted in “Which World?
Scenarios for the 21st Century”, by 2050
“Economic expansion…brought rapidly
worsening pollution to much of industrializ-
Killing Us
Silently:
The New
Consumption
NATHALIE DOWN
During the first half of the twentieth centu-
ry an ancient and vicious disease known as con-
sumption threatened the global population. Con-
sumption was a merciless plague, taking victims
young and old, rich and poor, and killing them
slowly over many years. With the death toll ris-
ing to millions, finding a cure for consumption
became a top priority. In the 1940’s, new medical
advances resulted in the disease’s decline, and it
was projected to be extinct by 2010.
Now, this disease is called tuberculosis,
and it continues to threaten people in many of
the world’s poorer countries. Today, a new form
of consumption seriously threatens the global
population, and I’m not talking about obesity
or type II diabetes. Rather than the highly con-
tagious bacterial infection, today’s consumption
is a highly contagious set of beliefs. More com-
monly known as consumerism, it is character-
ized by an obsession with accumulating money
and material goods. Riding on the back of a glo-
balized media and free trade economic policy,
consumption is once again spreading through
the global population like wildfire. It engenders
inequality and exclusion by determining peo-
ple’s social worth based on their material pos-
sessions. It creates vicious cycles of poverty and
illness by forcing people to abandon traditional
lifestyles. However, despite empirical and the-
oretical research unanimously concurring that
consumerism severely threatens human health,
it shows no signs of abating. Consumerism is
normalized, even idealized in many places.
Hopefully, awareness surrounding the dangers
of consumerism will reach a critical mass and
this disease will become widely recognized as
the silent killer it is. Awareness and choice is the
antidote, and our only hope.
ing Asia and Latin America as sprawling new
factories spewed wastes into the environment.
Ever larger numbers of cars and trucks choked
urban streets...but lack of money, political will,
and often the technical ability to enforce en-
vironmental laws meant that governments in
most newly industrializing countries did little
to rein in pollution.”
Why did things turn out this way? Why did
we not see evolution towards a post-growth
economy – an economy premised on sustain-
able levels of consumption? What obstacles
prevented that transformation? Why were those
advocating transformation not able to overcome
these obstacles? The answer to these questions
requires a look at the relationship between the
global economy and the private sector.
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