Monday, January 31, 2011

Environmentalism: Instead of Aiming for 'More Is Less', Let's Aim for 'Less Is Less'

Last week, I attended the St. Louis Green Confluence which was held at St. Louis University. Advertised as an event that "connects employers, educators, public policy makers and citizens for the future of our region's green economy", throughout the morning the speakers talked about bringing 'green jobs' (i.e. employment that is environmentally friendly) to the St. Louis metropolitan area that could boost the local economy and make St. Louis the 'national center for the green economy'. The information was quite educational and illuminating. Just knowing who the 'local players' are in the expanding green jobs economy was, alone, worth the effort to attend the conference, and the methodologies that are being proposed for achieving lower costs and less energy use will be extremely helpful to know for future reference.

But all day long, the speakers kept emphasizing the concept of 'more is less': that we can have 'more' commodities, more jobs, a better lifestyle, for 'less' cost in resource use and 'less' pollution of the environment by engaging in more efficient use of those resources. Which, by itself, was very positive. Yet, the nagging question in the back of my mind, all during the symposium, was "When are we, as a society, going to stop wanting more stuff?" Because if we keep acquiring more stuff, we are going to use more energy, not less!

I've been reading a number of articles lately about the 'environmental cost' to our planet of the capitalist economic model that encourages people in the United States and western Europe to continue buying more items of production. In the last decade, China and India have jumped on that bandwagon as well, and now energy use -- and environmental pollution -- are reaching record levels around the world. One report I read noted that, in order for the 'rest of the world' to have the kind of lifestyle that Americans maintain, we would have to have another 2.5 Earths available for resource depletion.

The continual 'stuff acquisition' of First World and developing economies is simply unsustainable. And the other countries, which have been poor relative to the First World economies for at least the past three hundred years, are simply not going to back away from their desire to have the kind of lifestyle enjoyed by Americans since at least 1900 and definitely since the end of WWII.

Hence, Americans are going to have to learn to live on less, not more. We can't continue to burn up the resources of the planet to support our profligate lifestyle, even if we engage in more efficient use of the resources that are available. Under present circumstances, Americans are 6% of the world's populations and we use 50% of it's natural resources; western Europe constitutes another 6% of the world's population and uses [more efficiently] another 30% of the planet's natural resources. Which leaves 20% of the resources for the remaining 88% of the world's population. That is clearly unsustainable, as well as being frightfully unfair to everyone else on the planet. And whether or not one worries about 'fairness', that inequitable distribution and use of resources creates a security concern, since the rest of the people on our planet are increasingly aware of and angry about the level and extent of the inequity. The critical question, though, is: Can we restructure our economy in such a way that it is sustainable without continually growing larger?

Our 'more is less' mentality reminds me of something my intimate partner recently told me about an article she had read. Apparently, the obesity epidemic in America has not been much affected by the expansion in the availability of low-fat foods. Americans appear to believe that since many foods are lower in fat content, they can simply eat more food, rather than eating the same amount for less caloric intake. Additionally, many of the fast food outlets offer bigger portions for less money, since they are supplementing the meat content with low-cost soy-based substitutes and using greater quantities of factory-raised cows, pigs, and chickens, thereby giving the customers the ability to purchase even more food than they ate before. This isn't helping to counteract the obesity epidemic -- clearly, it's making it worse. It is also negatively impacting our healthcare costs.

Of course, in many ways, eating more food, or buying more stuff, or using more resources is avoiding the more important issue. We live in a culture where people feel empty in their souls, and they are trying to fill that emotional emptiness with external commodities. It won't work, it is unsustainable, and it is destroying the world in which we live. There is no point in trying to fill the empty place in your heart if the world in which your heart thrives is being polluted to the point of causing your heart (and the planet's heart) to fail.

It's all an addictive cycle -- a concept that many authors have written about, none more persuasively than Anne Wilson Schaef in When Society Becomes An Addict. As she notes, we as a society have become addicted to our 'stuff', to having more 'stuff'. As a society, we have reached a point whereby conspicuous consumption is an end, in and of itself. This is not to ignore the fact that many people really don't even have the basic survival needs covered, but rather to point out that survival, once achieved, is insufficient to satisfy the craving. It's sort of like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs gone berserk. As an American society, we are addicted to more and more and more 'things', bigger houses, more land, more substances, more food, more power.

For the last several millennium, the focus has been on "man's conquest and control of nature" -- supposedly, that's what the rise of civilizations is all about. But, with global warming causing melting polar caps, rising sea levels, hotter summers and colder winters, more tornadoes, hurricanes and typhoons, and generally more freakish weather patterns, nature is clearly fighting back. Unless we, as a society, can learn to live on less and be satisfied with less, we are going to have more problems, including more environmental crises.

Hence, I propose that instead of focusing our efficient use of resources on 'more is less', we begin aiming for 'less is less'. Use less resources more efficiently and be satisfied with 'less' -- and construct an economic model based on those changed realities that, indeed, is sustainable.

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