I have struggled for some time to explain an increasingly alien concept to friends, family, and to my colleagues and superiors at work: the concept of enough. We are each trained, from the moment we are born, to want more. More of everything - more money, more possessions, more property, a faster car, more expensive clothes, and so on, forever. I have had incredulous and occasionally heated responses from managers who, when asking what my goals are in terms of work progression, cannot compute the idea that "I have none; I have enough", or are almost offended that I would countenance doing more work without material or financial reward if it meant being able to help more people. These people are not uncaring, or evil - they are merely following their programming: despite having good jobs, (more-than-)comfortable incomes, and a level of material luxury that was almost inconceivable within the lifetime of their grandparents, we are conditioned to want not just more than we need, but to pursue exponential growth in what we want, and what we are willing to be satisfied with. The idea that we need to be happy with what we have as enough, or even - heaven forbid - contemplate having less, is beyond the pale.
The problem with this is that while our desire for more is self-sustaining and, as a result, almost infinite, our planet is not. We are rapidly approaching a point of no return, after which our "wants" will change from more expensive holidays, fancier food and greater levels of luxury to newly emerging "luxuries" - potable water, breathable air, a planet capable of sustaining life in a way that any of us would recognise as familiar or desirable. The difference with these austere future luxuries will be that wealth will only be relatively effective in securing them, and the returns will be ever-diminishing - eventually, our money will not help us. If the ship goes down, there are no lifeboats, not even for the wealthy. There is no Planet B.
In previous pieces, I have discussed how - as nice as it is, and as much as I love it personally - our societal addiction to, and expectation of, meat is not sustainable, and how - while the pleasure derived from driving a big powerful petrol car may be considerable, and the convenience it provides seem essential - our reliance on private vehicles in general, and fossil fuel powered vehicles in particular, is one which will ultimately lead us to a state of climate breakdown. I will touch lightly on these themes again, but also delve more broadly into how we will have to make a conscious choice to consume less, consume differently, and eschew convenience in some cases, and luxury in others, if we're going to save ourselves.
We'll start with food. As I've discussed previously, we need to drastically reduce the amount of meat we consume. Meat production contributes a huge amount to global carbon emissions, and - despite scientific warnings that, in order to even keep global temperature rises below 2 degrees, the average world citizen needs to eat 75% less beef, 90% less pork and half the number of eggs, while tripling consumption of beans and pulses and quadrupling nuts and seeds - global meat consumption is on rise, as developing nations see great leaps forward in disposable wealth, and chase the creature comforts (no pun intended) that this wealth enables, and this means meat. We do not need meat, at the very least not at the levels we currently consume it, but have become conditioned to crave it, and have been provided access to it at unnatural levels, with pervasive ease - we have to make the active choice to eat less, and we need to do it now. The promotion of meatless alternatives is a priority, and needs to be promoted by a series of taxes and subsidies to make the choice an economic one; philosophy will work on fewer people than financial incentives, at least initially. But the problem is a philosophical one - meat = prosperity in the common consciousness, and until this is subverted, and meat is shown to be an unsustainable and selfish (if delicious) choice, at least at the levels at which it is currently being consumed, we will need other ways to change habits, and fight our conditioning.
It's not just meat. Many of the meat-free alternatives that have exploded in popularity as people begin to move away from meat - avocados, quinoa, soya, almonds, cashews - may be healthier, and have less of an environmental impact than beef, but, given the resources required to farm and deliver them around the world, do not necessarily form part of a "planetary health diet". The idea of an exotic diet is sold to us constantly, both consciously and subconsciously, and while variety is enjoyable, it is unsustainable. The ease of access to a wide variety of foods means that we cannot be blamed for eating unsustainably, but we must choose to eat sustainably as a consequence. Much of the harm in these foods is the same as is caused by the rising demand for meat - not only in the farming methods, but in the transport, as many of the most popular meat alternatives can only be grown in specific climates, often far removed from their major markets. Clearing rainforests to grow soya is only marginally better than doing so to rear beef, and ultimately still represents a cost far greater than the benefit being gained from its production and export, other than in a world driven by profit, rather than long-term self-preservation. Transporting food around the world, and the associated emissions, are luxuries that may increasingly be ones that we cannot afford. We need a change in mind-set - localism, and a recognition that, as much as more exotic and varied diets using ingredients from around the globe are desirable, the importing of food on the scale we currently do as a species is contributing to an unsustainable amount of carbon emissions that may ultimately lead to crop failures, hunger and chaos as our climate ceases to be able to support adequate food production. You may want more - I do - but we have to choose to be satisfied with what we have, to see it as enough, and endeavour to be happy with having less.
Meat, if produced responsibly and on a small-scale, can be justifiable, just as vegan alternatives, if produced on the other side of the globe and imported can still have a major impact on climate change. We need to change not just what we eat, but where we source our food - the two are intertwined, but will require an acceptance that "want" is increasingly not a good enough justification for how much, and what, we consume when faced with a coming disaster. We have to eat to survive - this is not a choice; how and what we eat (at least in the West, but to some extent everywhere) is, and we need to recognise that how much we eat, and the nature and origin of that food, is going to play a large role in deciding whether or not we are able to maintain our planet's viability for future generations. We have been programmed into eating unsustainably, in terms of volume, variety, and source - we have to push back against this, and we have to do it now.
Food is a necessity; we will always need to consume food in order to stay alive. However, much of what we consume is - beyond personal desire and gratification - pointless, and represents empty consumption, and environmental damage without any tangible benefit beyond economic gain for producers, and material want, both of which we are conditioned to see as inherently good, and desirable. We have to fight this messaging, and change how we think, and how we consume as a result. Fast fashion is increasingly harmful to the environment, for many of the same reasons as mentioned for food production, but without the underlying need. In order to provide cost-effective production, fast-fashion items are often produced far away from the markets they serve, and shipped around the globe. The clothes are often designed to be disposable, and priced so as to make this disposability be not financially onerous on consumers, and the short life span of the garments, both due to cost-savings on garment quality and constant reinforcement of the idea that consumers need to always be keeping up with ever-changing trends, means that economic gain is being pursued over responsible stewardship of the planet, and the health and wellbeing of future generations, and the planet they hope to inhabit. I have been guilty of this myself - I own, at a conservative estimate, thirty plain H&M t-shirts, as they are cheap, of decent enough quality to justify the meagre expense, attractive, and endlessly available. This combination of affordability, advertising, availability and social conditioning makes fast fashion hard to avoid, but we must, for the sake of our future. As fashions move so quickly, unsold or overproduced items are routinely destroyed or sent to landfill without ever being worn, and as countries become richer, billions of newly financially empowered consumers are now joining the chase for these latest trends. As Kaya Dory notes, the waste is not only environmentally unsustainable, but hugely costly:
"More than US$500 billion in value is lost every year due to under-utilized clothes and lack of recycling. We as consumers need to educate ourselves about Circular fashion: we need to buy less clothing and when we do, we need to make sure that is more sustainable and higher quality. We also need to demand transparent sourcing."
As with most of the issues raised in this blog, individual changes in behaviour can only do so much, but can work to put pressure on companies and governments to change how clothing is produced, marketed and distributed. For my part, I am trying to buy no new clothes in 2019, and have made it thus far without any real discomfort, but if and when new clothes are needed, we need to look at responsibly produced clothes, designed to last, and not buy unnecessary, disposable items, driven by fashion trends and a desire for "more". I am not convinced of how comforting I would personally find it to look fabulous while stood on the deck of a sinking ship.
And finally, and speaking of unsustainable vehicles, we move on to travel. I love to travel. Low-cost airlines combined with relative economic prosperity have enabled me to travel all over the world, and see places that would have been off-limits to all but the ultra-rich in previous generations, and I have enjoyed the experience. I own a car, and love the freedom that it gives me to travel around the UK, see family and friends, and get away and into nature whenever I am able. I also recognise that, increasingly, non-essential air travel is difficult to justify and, as I have mentioned previously, the need to shift to electric cars is ever more pressing. As with the previous issues, the growth of emissions from air travel will continue to grow as developing nations become increasingly affluent. Despite representing a relatively low percentage of emissions at present, air travel is growing at an astonishing rate as new middle classes, particularly in Asia, take more holidays, visit far-away families — and travel on business. Business travel, given the growth of communications technology and video conferencing, seems to be an increasingly unjustifiable luxury, and one which, while enjoyable, is increasingly not necessary. Consumers will have to choose to travel less - local holidays, reducing business travel, using public transport over private vehicles, and switching to electric cars. Government policies that place greater levies on airlines could be used to either reduce air-travel due to cost, or to force companies to seek out alternatives, such as the first steps towards electric or solar powered planes. Once again, we have the capability to do these things, but it will firstly require the political will to play the long game - to forego short-term economic gains in favour of longer-term economic and environmental benefits - and the choice, against our social conditioning, to accept less consumer luxuries, and to change our behaviours to be more mindful of our impact on the environment.
This has been a broad post, and has covered a large amount of ground in a short space of time, and these issues will likely form the basis of future, more narrow policy-focused pieces - these challenges have no single solution, and nor can individual choices, in and of themselves, make the kinds of changes that will be required to prevent climate disaster. However, it is our responsibility to do what we can on a personal level, and to put pressure on companies and governments to use their power to make sweeping changes to how we consume goods and services, and how reliant our economies are on relentless and ever-growing consumption. It might seem unpalatable to accept that we have enough, or even to choose to have less, and - given the pervasive nature of the message that "consumption is good" and "more is better", and the conflation of "want" with "need" - it is difficult to avoid the drive to consume more goods and chase greater luxury, but a more utilitarian approach is required to prevent catastrophe. In general, we live lives with a level of material wealth that is unprecedented in human history - we need to appreciate that, and recognise that to continue to seek more, as we are conditioned to do, cannot go on forever, and will ultimately leave us, and the generations that follow, lost, with nothing left to use.
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