Thursday 17 June 2021

Best way to save the planet.

From The Guardian:

Author JB MacKinnon... thinks we should, in reality, restructure society over several years to support a sustained reduction in the amount we consume.

He sees this as an obvious, if difficult, fix to a big problem. Consumption – of fast fashion, flights, Black Friday-discounted gadgets – has become the primary driver of ecological crisis.

We are devouring the planet’s resources at a rate 1.7 times faster than it can regenerate. The US population is 60% larger than it was in 1970, but consumer spending is up 400% (adjusted for inflation) – and other rich nations, including the UK, aren’t much better.

“Many people would like to see the world consume fewer resources, yet we constantly avoid the most obvious means of achieving that,” says MacKinnon. “When people buy less stuff, you get immediate drops in emissions*, resource consumption and pollution, unlike anything we’ve achieved with green technology.”

That’s not to mention the impact materialism has on our mental health, inducing feelings of inadequacy and envy, and encouraging a culture of overworking.


As somebody who is chronically lazy, unambitious and happy with the simple pleasures in life, that's music to my ears. If I never have to get on an aeroplane, buy another car or call in a builder ever again, that will be quite soon enough.

Problem is, if everybody were like me, society would more or less grind to a halt (which is what The Guardian wants, of course). And I am aware that I am coasting on the efforts of others - I can only buy a cheap second hand car today because some mug bought an expensive new car twenty years ago and upgraded a couple of years later.

* CO2 emissions themselves have little impact on anything of course. But for some reason people have become obsessed with this one metric and are ignoring all the really bad stuff we are doing to the environment.

19 comments:

Lola said...

It's also a fallacy that we are 'consuming resources'. Apart for the fact that 'resources' are created, not consumed, the whole point of capitalism is to do more for less, every day. Hence we are using up less of the resources we create, on an individual basis. Of course more peeps will 'consume more resources' but yet again 'more capitalism' tends to lead to lower birth rates and declining populations. So if we want to 'consume less' we need more capitalism.

Lola said...

The other fallacy referred to is the 'paradox of thrift'...:-)

Mark Wadsworth said...

L, we are causing a lot of pollution and there is stuff we get out of the ground that is finite. That is what I understand by resources.

It's not an immediate massive problem, and far from being a crisis, but if we did a bit less polluting and less digging stuff out of the ground, that would be a good thing.

Lola said...

Stuff in the ground. Usually about 40 years worth. 'Cos that's the time horizon of men. Think on oil. The native American tribe on whose land it bubbled up thought it a bloody nuisance. New sources of oil are being found every day. We can now make petrol and diesel from atmospheric CO2. There is more gold in the oceans than anywhere else. To all intents and purposes - assuming good 'husbandry' (i.e. capitalism and markets) - resources are effectively limitless.

I absolutely agree about the externalities. The polluter must pay. And more and more she (see what I did there?) is. Stern's Pigouvian tax on road fuel. Stopping pumping CFC's into the air. And so on. Anyway you need to make holes in the ground to bury waste into...LMFAO

Mark Wadsworth said...

L, open cast mines are great for chucking rubbish in, but we need small, local open cast mines for that purpose, not massive holes in Chile or China.

Bayard said...

"The other fallacy referred to is the 'paradox of thrift'...:-)"

Not something that I was previously aware of, but, on examination, a classic piece of economic sleight of hand.

AFAICS, the "thrift" they refer to is not "thrift" in its common sense, avoiding waste and using things economically and efficiently, thereby enabling a saving over the average consumption, which is wasteful and inefficient, but "thrift" as in miserliness and hoarding. It is the Parable of the Talents, not the Fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper.
So, if we reject consumerism, defined as "buying things you don't need, with money you don't have, to impress people you don't like", the world will indeed slow down, as the first lockdown demonstrated, but that is because our economic model depends on consumerism, not because consuming less will necessarily make society collapse.

View from the Solent said...

"We are devouring the planet’s resources at a rate 1.7 times faster than it can regenerate. "

Show me the data. Covering all these resources.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B: "[not] "thrift" in its common sense, avoiding waste and using things economically and efficiently... but "thrift" as in miserliness and hoarding."

How is there a big difference? Where's the dividing line?

VFTS, agreed, that is a made-up number, the main question is, is it more or less than 1?

Bayard said...

"How is there a big difference? Where's the dividing line?"

Read the parable of the talents https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2025:14-30&version=ESV and then the fable of the ant and the grasshopper https://fablesofaesop.com/the-ant-and-the-grasshopper.html and you will see. There is a dividing line, but it is not a step change. There's activity that obviously falls into one camp activity that obviously falls into the other camp and there is activity which is debatable which camp it falls into, but that latter type of activity doesn't disprove the existence of the two camps.

A K Haart said...

I'm lazy, unambitious and happy with the simple pleasures in life too and I do have some sympathy with the finite resources crowd. The trouble is I don't want to join them, they carry far too much heavy baggage.

Lola said...

MW. AKH. Agreed. I should have said that before. #metoo It's the craic, not consumerism.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, that's a bit off at a tangent. Is buying second hand cars good thrifty or stingy, hoarding thrifty? what about patching clothes?

AHK, that's the beauty of it, you don't need to 'join' them or sign up to the weird doomsday CO2 cult, you just relax in the garden instead of going shopping.

L, ta.

Lola said...

MW 'going shopping'. Shudder. That phrase ranks up there with the likes of 'key worker' or 'social justice' in my particular lexicon of fury. (NB 'going shopping' for booze, cheese or - in my case - bits of kit like rivnuts say, and other treats is not 'going shopping'.)

Mark Wadsworth said...

L, buying essentials like food, drink and car parts is of course not "going shopping".

Bayard said...

Mark, both the things you list are "good" thrifty. "Bad" thrifty is hoarding up and not using stuff and preventing other people using it either. To take an example from Biblical times, a farmer hoarding grain and not sowing it because he thinks there will be a shortage and he can sell it at a profit and make more money than using it to grow more wheat is bad thrift, but a farmer keeping back a proportion of his grain against a bad harvest so he has something to eat and something to sow the following year is good thrift.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, hoarding is inefficient use of resources, see also panic buying loo rolls during a lock down. That's not thrift, that's stupidity.

Bayard said...

Mark, I think you need to re-read my comment, or are you simply agreeing with me?

Lola said...

B. That's what grain merchants do all the time. And it's A Good Thing. Speculation takes the slack out of markets.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, I'm sort of agreeing with you, but I am sticking up for the general idea of being thrifty and don't want to let people try and smuggle non-thrifty actions into the definition.

L, if it makes economic sense (and it almost certainly does), then good.