Consumerism is the path to planetary ruin, but there are other ways to live
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 managing to hold off the floods and fires of growthdriven 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 workcentred and more community-oriented way of living. A work culture less dominated by profit-driven ideas of efficiency would free time for other activities. Slower and more hybrid modes of working (making use, for example, of artisanal methods alongside smart technologies) could enhance job fulfilment and allow more job sharing. Ecologically benign methods of production would exclude builtin obsolescence and radically reduce waste. People would have the gratification of knowing they were no longer contributing to environmental breakdown and threatening the very survival of their children and grandchildren.
If we shopped less and did more for ourselves, we would have to forgo the enticements of brand buying and fast fashion. But more communally based ways of meeting needs could allow people to make use of specific talents and eccentric interests for which they may otherwise have little outlet. The provision of hubs for the hiring, borrowing and sharing of vehicles and tools, educational and financial services, arts centres, and the like, could transform high streets and city centres, foster new forms of citizenship and lessen the isolation of elderly and lonely people. Allotments and shared gardens might be expected to multiply, allowing more people to enjoy the pleasures of growing and eating their own food.
Reducing our reliance on cars and planes is an unavoidable ecological priority. It will come at the cost of the thrills and ease of high-speed transport. But slower travel has pleasures of its own, and could be more widely enjoyed as policies are adopted to make air travel dearer and rail travel cheaper. In towns and cities, the expansion of public transport and the reduction of car traffic – already happening across Europe – will return urban spaces to those who live in them. More of us will then enjoy the pleasures (and health benefits) of the physical activity, solitude and peace denied to those who travel faster. Freed from traffic dangers, children will come out to play again – and once more enjoy walking or cycling to school.
I recognise that the transition to a more reproductive level and kind of material consumption, and a less workintensive economic culture, is made difficult if not impossible in the current system by the very considerable constraints that would be placed on capitalist growth and profits. Indeed, any such transition would ultimately require fundamental restructuring of basic economic institutions and modes of welfare provision. The reach of the market would be curtailed and a more devolved and participatory economy would be encouraged and developed. All such moves will be forcefully resisted by corporate power and its allies in the political establishment. They will begin to make headway only if popular support for them becomes so strong that business and government have little choice but to yield to it. Given the resistance of most people to changing their habitual ways of living, there is little likelihood of that at present.
But if it seems unrealistic to hope for such far-reaching change, it is also unrealistic to suppose that we can continue to expand production, work and material consumption over the next few decades, let alone into the next century and beyond. By offering a broader cultural dimension to the existing arguments of those who dissent from today’s economic orthodoxy and want to promote a less unequal world, a compelling vision of alternative ways of living can help to inspire a more diverse, confident and substantial opposition. And in expanding on that vision we now need to look beyond western ideas of progress to include other influences and sources of inspiration, whether it be past methods of provisioning, the knowledge and experiences of the poorer nations and marginalised communities, or the less growth-driven imaginings of thinkers, technicians and cultural workers wherever they are to be found.
Kate Soper is emeritus professor of philosophy at the Institute for the Study of European Transformations (ISET) and Humanities Arts and Languages (HAL), London Metropolitan University. She is the author of PostGrowth Living: For an Alternative Hedonism
down skull” were “deliberate fakes.” The report of the three investigators – Dr JS Weiner, Dr KP Oakley, and Professor WE Le Gros Clark – appears in the Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History).
Fluorine tests carried out in 1949, says the report, did not resolve the seeming contradictions between “a cranium closely similar to that of Homo Sapiens” and “a mandible and canine tooth of simian form.” Not until Dr Weiner suggested one possible explanation – “the mandible and canine tooth are actually those of a modern ape (chimpanzee or orang) which have been deliberately faked to simulate fossil specimens” – did the investigators take what they now find to be the right track.
Experiments produced evidence that the peculiar way in which the teeth were worn down could well have been brought about by the artificial abrasion of chimpanzee’s teeth.
“No Doubt”Further and more advanced fluorine tests left “no doubt that, whereas the Piltdown cranium may well be Upper Pleistocene … The mandible, canine tooth, and isolated molar are quite modern.” An analysis of the nitrogen content of these and other fossils, as well as of modern bone and teeth, confirmed this result. Other tests showed that the outer coating on the mandible and teeth did not correspond to that on the cranium. The black coating on the canine tooth turned out to be not, as the first discoverers had thought, ferruginous but a tough, flexible paint-like substance.”
“Whereas the cranial fragments are deeply stained (up to 8 per cent of iron) throughout their thickness, the iron staining of the mandible is quite superficial. A small surface sample analysed in 1949 contained 7 per cent iron, but, when in the course of our reexamination this bone was drilled more deeply, the sample obtained was lighter in colour and contained only 2-3 per cent of iron.”
The first pieces of the skull to be discovered, but not later ones, had been mistakenly dipped in a solution of bichromate of potash. It was, says the report, not to be expected that the mandible (which was excavated later) would be chromate stained.
“In fact … the jaw does contain chromate … The iron and chromate staining of the Piltdown jaw seems to us to be explicable only as a necessary part of the deliberate matching of the jaw of a modern ape with the mineralised cranial fragments. It is now clear (the investigators conclude) that the distinguished palaeontologists and archaeologists who took part in the excavations at Piltdown were the victims of a most elaborate and carefully prepared hoax. Let it be said, however, in exoneration of those who have assumed the Piltdown fragments to belong to a single individual, or who, having examined part of the Piltdown mandible the original specimens, either regarded the mandible and canine as those of a fossil ape or else assumed (tacitly or explicitly) that the problem was not capable of solution on the available evidence, that the faking of the mandible and canine is so extraordinarily skilful, and the perpetration of the hoax seems to have been so entirely unscrupulous and inexplicable, as to find no parallel in the history of palaeontological discovery.
Lastly, it may be pointed out that the elimination of the Piltdown jaw and teeth from any further consideration clarifies very considerably the problem of human evolution. For it has to be realised that Piltdown Man (Eoanthropus) was actually a most awkward and perplexing element in the fossil record of the Hominidae, being entirely out of conformity both in its strange mixture of morphological characters and its time sequence with all the palaeontological evidence of human evolution available from other parts of the world.”
See also: Bones in dispute for many years
device. Realising there’s no universally accepted response for when you’re on the toilet and someone knocks on the door. Being the only person to slip over on a rainy day when people around you are moving quicker in more precarious footwear. Spluttering “Have a nice weekend!” on a Wednesday. Maybe you too have this curse.
The other day I ordered takeaway and got a call from the delivery driver who was lost. He apologised for not understanding me as he’s French and still learning English, so I dug deep into my year 9 French classes and attempted to navigate him with a series of “tourner à gauche” and “aller à droite” which helped nobody because I had no idea where he was. I walked down my street and saw a delivery man on a bike speaking on his phone so I called out “Salut! Salut!” waving my arms like a desperate survivor waving to an overhead plane. My French didn’t help but some children near him did, pointing out that a crazy lady was jumping and waving in his direction. Thankfully, it was the driver, and I said “thank you so much” – in English this time, but with a heavy French accent for reasons unknown. He received a heavy tip.
When I was younger, these moments would affect me excessively. I’d feel stupid and embarrassed, wondering what part of my brain is missing that makes other people seem to approach social situations with grace and ease. It felt adolescent to stress over something so minor. But over time I’ve realised these moments are what make us human and show us who we are: some of us are a bit awkward, and some of us are kind and understanding to those who are.
There is no curse. Anxiety maybe, but nothing sinister or significant. If I could go back in time I’d tell myself that being a human is weird and awkward and even the most composed people will tell a cinema employee “You too!” after they say “Enjoy the movie!” It’s better to embrace and laugh about it than ruminate over it. Taking myself less seriously is a wonderful gift of leaving my 20s long behind. I now look forward to the postman coming to my door, knowing I’ll put a foot wrong somehow. We may never nail that perfectly smooth social interaction I dream of – and that’s just fine with me. I’m not sure such a thing even exists.
• Deirdre Fidge is a writer and social worker who has written for ABC’s Get Krack!n, The Weekly with Charlie Pickering and the BBC. Her work has appeared in ABC News, SBS, the Sydney Morning Herald and Frankie magazine, among others.