By matthews on November 6, 2009

The choice:

n      “There is enough on earth for everybody’s need, but not for everyone’s greed.”  Ghandi

n      “We can’t let the terrorists stop us from shopping.”  George Bush

 When I first heard the idea of  “Zero Growth” I have to admit I was sceptical but a day in London and a weekend at Woodbrooke has not only left me convinced we are on the right road but that we have arrived at, Joanna Macy’s ‘great turning’.

 Climate change is an enormous issue and it is hard to appreciate the scale and speed with which it is occurring. To simply stabilise the climate we need to cut our carbon emissions by 80/90% this may seem tough but if we do not we will be committing what Alastair McIntosh calls ‘ecocide’, driven by “manipulated human wants that find expression in consumerism.”

 When I first studied economics my hero was Ken Galbraith. In his seminal book the Affluent Society published in1958 he said,

 “If production is to be increased, wants must be effectively contrived.  The fact that wants can be synthesized by advertising, catalysed by salesmanship, and shaped by the direct manipulations of the persuaders shows they are not very urgent. One danger in the way wants are created lies in the related process of want creation. Consumer demand thus comes to depend more and more on the ability and willingness too incur debt. To furnish a barren room is one thing. To continue to crowd in the furniture until the foundations buckle is quite another.”

 Half a century later we see the true price of the affluent society and no amount of personal carbon virtue can save us unless we abandon consumerism as the driver of our economic system. So what drives that system?  Galbraith was influenced by the sociologist Thorstein Veblen he saw that classical economics defined humans as rational, utility-seeking individuals who try to maximize their pleasure. Yet here we are completely irrational creatures who chase after social status without much regard for our own happiness.

 Writing in 1899, in the Theory of the Leisured Class he said, “It is true of dress in even a higher degree than of most other items of consumption, that people will undergo a very considerable degree of privation in the comforts or the necessities of life in order to afford what is considered a decent amount of wasteful consumption; so that it is by no means an uncommon occurrence, in an inclement climate, for people to go ill clad in order to appear well dressed.”

 We attempt to impress others and seek to gain advantage through “conspicuous consumption.” Consumption not about need but as a social activity used to gain and signal status. Now a hundred years later this behaviour is not confined to the leisured class but infects the whole of society.

 The more you consume the higher your status, significant consumers give advice in the media as to what is fashionable, what is in this season, what is a  “must have”. High status and authority are given to high level consumers to the point were we have arrived at the cult of the talentless celebrity. They represent ‘everyman’ ordinary people with high purchasing power acting as living advertisements.

The problem with this type of society is that it is by definition unsatisfying as, Avner Offer, has written “The paradox of affluence is that the flow of new rewards undermines the capacity to enjoy them.”

  The fact is that whilst new acquisitions give us pleasure, it is for much less time than we expect. We become bored, feel cheated or short-changed, and are off to find the next new thing. We are working harder and longer to acquire more on: “The hedonic treadmill”. This is time not spent with friends, family and community and leads to a society in which children are neglected, marriages are unstable, jobs precarious and virtue has disappeared. (See: Avner Offer, The Challenge of Affluence: Self Control and Well-Being in the US and Britain since 1950, 2006)

 So what is to be done? I would put these things into three categories:

 1)      Economic: This needs Government intervention, in the form of green taxes to increase the cost of consumption goods and reduce the cost of experiential goods. We also need new measures of wealth moving away from GDP to wellbeing. We need to take more things out of personal into social consumption requiring new forms of public/co-operative ownership.

2)      Engineering/Technology: This requires planning laws that re-concentrate cities and eliminate unnecessary journeys for people and goods. The changes in taxation will create demand for greener products with recyclable/degradable new materials and drive investment into technological solutions to non-fossil fuel renewable energy production and the development of virtual goods and services.

3)      Ethical/ Social: We need to move away from the commodification and privatisation of all human activity with the return of the public space. As consumer capitalism is inherently unsatisfying a new ethics will be required based on the value of the person rather than their possessions with status derived from individual attributes ultimately leading to the abandonment of materialism.

 Of course all this is easier said than done but the scale of the problem is such that we all have to consume less. The alternative to a planned rational downsizing is the chaotic collapse of the economy and violent climate change. We may ‘only’ lose some of Norfolk and part of Essex but the consequences globally for communities already living on the economic and geographical margins will be devastating.

 So does that mean there is nothing we can do as individuals or as a small Society of Friends?  Not at all because,  “Even if we find ourselves forced to view the little steps we take today as patterns and examples for reconstruction after the grand melt down in some post apocalyptic scenario, what matters is that we never give up. Love does not succumb to compassion fatigue. Love cherishes the flesh-and-blood body of the world…infuses it…forgives it…constantly seeks to transfigure and to re-set the seeds of Eden as Heaven on Earth. That is our calling in these our troubled times.” (Alastair McIntosh, Hell and High Water, 2008).