Rampant consumerism fuels climate catastrophe and inequalities David Suzuki with contributions from Senior Editor and Writer Ian Hanin Dec. 7, 2023In the Western world, year-end celebrations were once observed to give thanks, to mark the coming of brighter days and to enjoy the company of family and friends. Now, they’ve become little more than consumer orgies. FromBlack Friday and Cyber Monday sales to Christmas shopping, it’s hard to escape the frenzy. Corporations from small to large count on the increase in spending. Governments rejoice at the economic boost. Many products end up in landfills after little or no use. It’s all part of the rampant consumerism fuelling the climate crisis. Wealthy nations, especially the wealthiest people in those nations, are the biggest drivers of this climate-altering consumer madness. A recent Oxfam report, “Climate Equality: A planet for the 99%,” shows the top one per cent of humanity is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the poorest 66 per cent. Those emissions are “enough to cause the heat-related deaths of 1.3 million people over the coming decades,” the Guardian reports, noting that, “The suffering falls disproportionately upon people living in poverty, marginalised ethnic communities, migrants and women and girls, who live and work outside or in homes vulnerable to extreme weather.” Many products end up in landfills after little or no use. It’s all part of the rampant consumerism fuelling the climate crisis. The super wealthy — mostly white males in North America and Europe, with their superyachts, private jets, massive mansions and lavish lifestyles — have the most devastating footprint. They “also wield enormous and growing political power by owning media organisations and social networks, hiring advertising and PR agencies and lobbyists, and mixing socially with senior politicians, who are also often members of the richest 1%.” The report “reveals a perverse reality: those who have done the least to cause the climate crisis are the ones who are suffering the most. And those who have done the most will likely suffer the least.”

Prominent French economist Thomas Piketty argues that progressive carbon pricing based on income and ability to reduce emissions is needed, along with banning high-emission goods and services such as large vehicles, private jets and short-distance flights. We have to put class and the studies of inequality between social classes right at the centre of our analyses of environmental challenges in general,” Piketty told the Guardian.As the Oxfam reports notes, we must recognize “that a radical increase in equality is a precondition to ending climate breakdown and poverty.” It argues, “A tax of 60% on the incomes of the super-rich 1% of earners globally would cut the carbon equivalent of more than the total emissions of the UK and raise US$6.4 trillion to fund renewable energy and a transition away from fossil fuels.”"The focus on economic growth of any kind and endless extraction and overconsumption at any cost must end,” Oxfam says. “People should be put back in charge of their destiny, and democratically elected governments, not corporates, should shape our economy.” The oversized impacts and influence of the excessively wealthy don’t let the rest of us off the hook. Oxfam confirms what others have found: that high income countries are responsible for 100 times more emissions than low-income countries. But as Piketty notes, middle and upper classes are responsible for most of those emissions........read on       https://davidsuzuki.org/story/rampant-consumerism-fuels-climate-catastrophe-and-inequalities/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwztOwBhD7ARIsAPDKnkAirWq7cJROsn4uTDecyvTxnP7tYhj67lslyj8r2Jt9fIIXWtgtxT4aAn3tEALw_wcB  

How Buying Stuff Drives Climate Change. Did you know that Americans produce 25 percent more waste than usual between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, sending an additional one million tons a week to landfills? The COVID-19 holiday season, with online shopping the preferred gift giving method for many, generates even more waste mailing packages all over the country. In addition, over two billion Christmas cards are mailed every year, with enough paper to fill a football field 10 stories high. More than 38,000 miles of ribbon are thrown away and usually end up in landfills. Over the holidays, Americans discard half their total yearly paper waste, mostly holiday wrapping and decorations—about nine billion tons. And each person wastes almost 100 pounds of food.  

What’s all this got to do with climate change? In fact, our consumer habits are actually driving climate change. A 2015 study found that the production and use of household goods and services was responsible for 60 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Not surprisingly, wealthy countries have the most per capita impact. A new U.N. report found that the richest one percent of the global population emit more than twice the amount than the poorest 50 percent; moreover, the wealthier people become, the more energy they use. A typical American’s yearly carbon emissions are five times that of the world’s average person. In 2009, U.S. consumers with more than $100,000 in yearly household income made up 22.3 percent of the population, yet produced almost one-third of all U.S. households’ total carbon emissions. As more people around the world enter the middle class and become affluent, the problem is worsening.  After basic needs are met, consumers begin buying items for social status; as people try to acquire more and more status, more and more expensive status products are needed. Producing all these things generates climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions. And in fact, across its life cycle, the average product results in carbon emissions of 6.3 times its own weight, according to a study done by Christoph Meinrenken, associate research scientist at the Earth Institute’s Research Program on Sustainability Policy and Management.         

The problem with stuff.....While large oil companies like ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and Chevron are the biggest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions, we consumers are complicit. We demand the products and energy made from the fossil fuels they provide. One scientist found that 90 percent of fossil fuel companies’ emissions are a result of the products made from fossil fuels. The accepted wisdom about the economy has been that consumption is essential to economic growth, since our demand for things makes companies profitable and provides employment.To keep this engine running, companies intentionally plan obsolescence of their products by changing how they look, such as in the fashion industry, or updating the design or software of products and discontinuing support for older models. Prices are kept artificially low to encourage us to buy because the real costs of their creation—which should include their environmental and social justice impacts—are not figured in. So we keep buying, and as a result, only one percent of “stuff” is still in use six months from its purchase, according to Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff, the iconic 2007 film.                                                                                                                                                               

The psychology of consumption......read on, there's much, much more         https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/12/16/buying-stuff-drives-climate-change/

How Buying Stuff Drives Climate Change Renée Cho December 16, 2020 

Did you know that Americans produce 25 percent more waste than usual between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, sending an additional one million tons a week to landfills? This COVID-19 holiday season, with online shopping the preferred gift giving method for many, we will likely generate even more waste mailing packages all over the country. In addition, over two billion Christmas cards are mailed every year, with enough paper to fill a football field 10 stories high. More than 38,000 miles of ribbon are thrown away and usually end up in landfills. Over the holidays, Americans discard half their total yearly paper waste, mostly holiday wrapping and decorations—about nine billion tons. And each person wastes almost 100 pounds of food. 

What’s all this got to do with climate change?..... In fact, our consumer habits are actually driving climate change. A 2015 study found that the production and use of household goods and services was responsible for 60 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Not surprisingly, wealthy countries have the most per capita impact. A new U.N. report found that the richest one percent of the global population emit more than twice the amount than the poorest 50 percent; moreover, the wealthier people become, the more energy they use. A typical American’s yearly carbon emissions are five times that of the world’s average person. In 2009, U.S. consumers with more than $100,000 in yearly household income made up 22.3 percent of the population, yet produced almost one-third of all U.S. households’ total carbon emissions.                                                                                                                                                                                                            As more people around the world enter the middle class and become affluent, the problem is worsening. To keep this engine running, companies intentionally plan obsolescence of their products by changing how they look, such as in the fashion industry, or updating the design or software of products and discontinuing support for older models. Prices are kept artificially low to encourage us to buy because the real costs of their creation—which should include their environmental and social justice impacts—are not figured in. So we keep buying, and as a result, only one percent of “stuff” is still in use six months from its purchase, according to Annie Leonard’s   The Story of Stuff   the iconic 2007 film.                                                                                                                                The psychology of consumption......... Advertisers perfected strategies to keep people buying by exploiting our emotions, such as fears of what would happen if we didn’t buy a product, our need not to miss out, or our desire to be more attractive. By 1960, Vance Packard wrote in his classic book, The Wastemakers, “The lives of most Americans have become so intermeshed with acts of consumption that they tend to gain their feelings of significance in life from these acts of consumption rather than from their meditations, achievements, inquiries, personal worth, and service to others.”                                                                                                                                 For many today, leisure time is often spent shopping, but the pleasure it provides — getting a thrill from newness or a bargain, escaping one’s problems, or reveling in the status of owning the latest thing — is fleeting. This is because it is linked to the act of buying, not the product itself. If we really loved the products we purchased, we would take better care of them and not want to replace them. After World War II, consumer spending was encouraged because the U.S. economy needed to rebuild. People splurged on new appliances such as washing machines, refrigerators, and televisions and cars.....and there's a lot more         https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/12/16/buying-stuff-drives-climate-change/     

Consumerism is the path to planetary ruin, but there are other ways to live. A slower paced life with less work and more community focus – if enough people share the dream, we can make it happen    Kate Soper Thu 23 Nov 2023 Faced with the now undeniable impacts of climate crisis created by humans, political leaders in wealthier countries incline towards one of two competing responses. They either question the urgency and feasibility of meeting net zero targets and generally procrastinate (the rightwing tendency); or they proclaim their faith in the powers of magical green technologies to protect the planet while prolonging and extending our present affluent ways of living (a position more favoured on the left and centre).Common to both approaches is a wrongheaded presumption that we can carry on growing while mato hold off the floods and fires of growth-driven capitalism. Both also take it for granted that the consumerist lifestyle is essential to the wellbeing of rich societies and the ideal to which less developed economies should aspire. It is true that measures to alleviate poverty will be an integral part of any national or international green transition. And some economic growth will be required in areas such as renewable energy, housing, care and education. But overall growth is not, as many of its advocates seem to presuppose, essential to any effective economy. And the evidence, carefully reviewed in recent reports by the European Environmental Bureau and the European Environment Agency, does not support the claim that green technologies will allow for the uncoupling of growth from increased carbon emissions.Sustainable production and consumption must therefore replace undifferentiated economic growth as the goal of 21st-century political economy. And making the case for this means challenging the belief that sustainable consumption will always involve sacrifice, rather than improve wellbeing. Our so-called “good life” is, after all, a major cause of stress and ill health. It is noisy, polluting and wasteful. Its commercial priorities have forced people to gear everything to jobseeking and career development, but still leave many people facing chronically unfulfilling and precarious jobs and lives. Consumer culture, formerly seen as a vehicle of self-expression, is better viewed at this stage in its evolution as a means of extending the global reach and command of corporate power at the expense of the health and wellbeing of the planet and most of its inhabitants. Conversely, there is much to recommend a slower-paced, less work-centred and more community-oriented way of living. A work culture less dominated by profit-driven ideas of efficiency would free time for other activities.                       https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2023/nov/23/consumerism-planetary-ruin-life-community