Stop Shopping or the Planet Gets It
Photo by Su-Chan, under a Creative Commons license
“Fascism. Communism. Democracy. Religion. But only one has achieved total supremacy,” says Jonathon Porritt, government adviser and sustainable-development expert. “Its compulsive attractions rob its followers of reason and good sense. It has created unsustainable inequalities and threatened to tear apart the very fabric of our society. More powerful than any cause or even religion, it has reached into every corner of the globe. It is consumerism.”
We’ve become a generation of shopaholics, Porritt says—unsurprising because we’re assailed by advertising from every conceivable medium. The singular message they extol: The more we consume, the better our lives will be. But although shopping has become a stand-in for fun, fulfillment, and self-identity, Porritt warns that it is also killing our planet. Switching to “ethical” shopping won’t cut it, either—the key is to shop less.
From The Observer: “Consumerism is central to the threat facing the planet, cannibalizing its natural resources and producing the carbon dioxide emissions which result in climate change.”
In a film for Channel Five, [Porritt] points out that Britons throw away their own body weight in rubbish every seven weeks, with 100 million tonnes of waste pouring into the country’s 12,000 landfill sites every year. If all six billion people in the world were to consume at the same level, we would need two new Earths to supply all the energy, soil, water and raw materials required.
“I think capitalism is patently unable to go on growing the size of the consumer economy for any more people in the world today because levels of consumption are already undermining life support systems on which we depend—so if we do it for any more people, the planet will go pop,” Porritt told The Observer. “So in a way we don’t have a choice about this: we’ve got to rethink the basic premise behind capitalism to make it deliver the goods. In the long run, when you really look at what happens on a planet with nine billion people and really serious constraints on the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that we can emit, it’s almost inevitable we will learn to have more elegant, satisfying lives, consuming less. I can’t see any way out of that in the long run.”
Read the rest of the article here.
Related articles:
1. Simplicity and Consumption
2. World Overshoot Day
3. I Shop Therefore I Am
sushil_yadav said,
April 13, 2007 at 12:35 am
In response to your post on Jonathon Porritt, Consumerism and Environmental Crisis I want to post a part from my article which examines the impact of Speed, Overstimulation, Consumerism and Industrialization on our minds and environment. Please read.
The link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues.
The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked. Our Minds cannot be peaceful when attention-spans are down to nanoseconds, microseconds and milliseconds. Our Minds cannot be peaceful if we destroy Nature.
Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment.
Subject : In a fast society slow emotions become extinct.
Subject : A thinking mind cannot feel.
Subject : Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys the planet.
Emotion is what we experience during gaps in our thinking.
If there are no gaps there is no emotion.
Today people are thinking all the time and are mistaking thought (words/ language) for emotion.
When society switches-over from physical work (agriculture) to mental work (scientific/ industrial/ financial/ fast visuals/ fast words ) the speed of thinking keeps on accelerating and the gaps between thinking go on decreasing.
There comes a time when there are almost no gaps.
People become incapable of experiencing/ tolerating gaps.
Emotion ends.
Man becomes machine.
A society that speeds up mentally experiences every mental slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.
A ( travelling )society that speeds up physically experiences every physical slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.
A society that entertains itself daily experiences every non-entertaining moment as Depression / Anxiety.
Fast visuals/ words make slow emotions extinct.
Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys emotional circuits.
A fast (large) society cannot feel pain / remorse / empathy.
A fast (large) society will always be cruel to Animals/ Trees/ Air/ Water/ Land and to Itself.
To read the complete article please follow any of these links :
PlanetSave
FreeInfoSociety
ePhilosopher
sushil_yadav
Adelin said,
April 13, 2007 at 9:12 am
http://antiadvertisingagency.com/category/projects/light-criticism/
I thought you’d enjoy this video… It’s a joint project by the Anti Advertising Agency and Graffit Research Lab.
~Dawn said,
April 13, 2007 at 1:01 pm
I never read any of Kurt’s books, I remember trying when I was in my early teens and getting turned off by the ‘rawness’ of it. I guess I should try again.
The Worsted Witch » What a Dream said,
May 21, 2007 at 7:40 pm
[…] I so rarely make personal purchases these days—a combo of ecological living and cheapskatednessa high joy-to-stuff ratio—but I just had to treat myself to one of Tamar Schechner’s beyond-gorgeous fairy-tale dreamcatchers, which she tells me makes use of fabric scraps and vintage buttons. […]