Over Consumption is the Biggest Elephant

I was listening to a program on the CBC this afternoon talking about de-carbonizing the shipping industry. The person being interviewed was part of an alliance of professionals in British Columbia taking on the challenges and problems of getting cargo ships and the whole industry to net zero. It’s apparently estimated that the conversion to a net zero system will cost between 1.0 - 1.4 trillion US dollars.

The story sounds similar in most other industries. As we try and get our carbon emissions down, the cost to transition to renewable sources of energy feels almost insurmountable. But the experts tell us that this is what must be done to stop runaway climate change, as if it’s not already here.

It is remarkable that these incredibly important environmental conversations are so single focused, as if shifting to net zero is somehow going to solve all our problems. I mean, it’s start, but even I can see the long terms problems that are already starting to present themselves in greenifying a capitalist industrial economy.

And I’m no environmental expert.

We live on a planet with finite resources but every attempt to save our consumption-based economic systems seems to drive another nail into the coffin. Not only are we not considering the potential long term problems of de-carbonizing our industrial complexes to allow them to continue operating business as usual, but the solutions that are being developed aren’t even looking beyond energy consumption. What about resource depletion? What about garbage? What about plastic? What about wealth inequality? What about workers’ rights and cost of living and endless pollution? The shipping industry touches all of these issues but there was no mention of them. I have to imagine that some expert at some table somewhere is considering all of these issues when working on this “de-carboning the cargo ships” idea but I’m not hearing anything about it.

The elephant in the room, of course, is that we can’t keep consuming at our current rate for a myriad of reasons: we’ll run out of resources, the economy demands cheap goods and labour to continue output which causes dangerous and unfair working environments, the devastation to natural ecosystems is often irreparable, we’re experiencing a mass extinction because of habitat loss. I could go on.

It feels like part of the reason no one wants to talk about our culture of over consumption because, of course, it’s not equal across the board. Those with the ability to consume, aka. people with money, consume in vast quantities compared to people without money. So when we point fingers at each other, the blame cannot be places equally and that makes it hard. But hard or not, it doesn’t mean we should avoid the conversation.

I also feel that these large industry-wide planning initiatives are the best time to talk about strategies to shift to an economic system that doesn’t rely on consumption. All the big brains in one place talking about huge systemic change: it seems like the perfect time to address this enormous culture-shifting problem. Even coming out of summits like COP which are strategically focused on climate change, all the focus is on greenhouse gas emissions when there’s a huge opportunity to talk with industry and government leaders about this vast intersectional issue that covers a huge landscape of social, political, and economic challenges.

But it’s like crickets. More empty policies with little tangible action and all of it targeted specifically at reducing carbon emissions, even if that reduction never happens.

Why are we so scared to talk about shifting away from a consumptive-based economic system? Is it really all capitalist lobbyists buying out the decision makers? Like I said, I’m just a random person with no background in economics, politics, or ecology, and the problem seems really clear to me: as long as we continue to operate under a economic system that requires ongoing consumption while we live on a planet with finite resources, we are just going to create new problems in trying to solve the old ones. In other words, de-carbonizing is going to come at the expense of somethings else, likely resource depletion.

When we fail to have these conversations at the forty thousand foot view we place the responsibility squarely on the individual. People like you and I can clearly see that lowering our own personal consumption is an important step on the path forward, but then the issue becomes “individualized” rather than the systemic. We get this weird egoism that plays into the dilemma: “I’m doing my part by only buying fair trade! What are you doing to save the world??” (while of course continuing to support dozens of other unethical industries because there’s no other options). And, as mentioned, all consumerism is not created equal. Asking people struggling to make ends meet to spend all their money on ethically produced clothing is ridiculous when billionaires buy yachts.

I don’t want to appear reductionist: I know these problems are huge and complex and it’s likely that resource depletion and over consumption are being talked about behind more than one door. I know that there is no simple solution, but I’d really appreciate hearing more in the news and media about what it might look like to transition to an economy that isn’t just post-carbon, but post-over-consumption. I believe this conversation is integral, requires collective visioning, and must be part of the conversations around mitigating the effects of climate change as well as our current economic collapse.