Treat the cause, not the symptom

When the Other Half and I find the occasional moment to sit down in front of the television, we’re left bemused and unnerved by the constant barrage of messages to buy, buy, buy.

It doesn’t matter whether the message is overt in the form of an advertisement or covert in the form of a lifestyle portrayed as desirable by almost any television programme.

It’s the same when you open a newspaper or magazine, listen to the radio, walk past advertising hoardings or enter a shop. It even happens when you stop to talk to a friend, drive down the street or visit someone’s home.

We’re constantly told to consume more and more.

And whatever we consume - whether food, clothes, housing, heating and lighting, agriculture, transportation, goods and technology, holidays, healthcare and education - is completely dependent on the continuing exploitation of just one thing. Fossil fuels.

Yes, we could point the finger at businesses who want us to buy more in order to create greater sales and greater profits, sales and profits that must always rise year on year.

But the problem is much deeper than that.

The push to consume more comes from the perception that we must have continual rises in living standards and that we must have perpetual economic growth.

This is the underlying cause of both consumerism and one of it’s most obvious symptoms - global warming.

Very few of us seem prepared to challenge the consumer capitalism orthodoxy that is pursued by most people, almost all businesses, all governments and all nations.

No one seems prepared to ask why we have to have all these things. It’s no longer about need, especially in the industrialised countries, as we already have far more than we need or previous generations needed.

Instead, we’re like drug addicts. We have to have more and more because it’s the only way to keep the illusion going.

If we start consuming less, then the wheels will come off the whole system and harsh realities will start to intrude.

We have to have more things that we don’t need, we have to keep buying to keep the businesses going, we have to keep the businesses going so we keep everyone employed, we have to keep every employed to pay the taxes that keep the state services going, and we have to take what we want even when someone else doesn’t want to part with something we desire.

And like addicts we break into our neighbours’ houses and steal their land to feed our food consumption, we steal their labour to make every cheaper consumer trinkets, we steal their oil and gas to keep our industries rolling, we even steal their seeds and traditional medicines so we can sell them back to them at vast profits.

Some of this theft is like an addict robbing you in the street - only it’s called war. Some of this theft is like the addict who steals covertly from his family and then sells the goods on - only it’s called trade.

Of course, reality has to hit home at some point and this is happening with global warming.

Some politicians, some policymakers, some powerbrokers and some businessmen are starting to realise that the drug supply is drying up and the comfortable house is stripped almost bare.

They are starting to talk about the fact that it can no longer be business as usual, they are starting to say “something must be done”, and they are starting to cast about for solutions.

However, is this really a change? Do they really want to change the underlying problem or do they simply want to change one drug supply for another?

The solutions being dangled before us are technological, not cultural.  We’re offered quick fixes of nuclear power, bio-fuels, hydrogen fuel cells and engines, solar power, wind power and tidal power.

We’re told all we need to do is switch from fossil fuel to nuclear and renewable fuels and then we can all keep on consuming more.

But like the drug addict, all we’re doing is switching from smack to crack.

And like the addict, in switching suppliers we’re almost certainly going to make things worse.

We’re already deforesting vast swathes of land to make way for industrial agricultural to meet our insatiable demand for food. If we switch to bio-fuels, we’ll simply speed up the deforestation and increase the speed of global warming.

If we switch to nuclear power, we’ll rip open ever larger swathes of the landscape to extract uranium, leave toxic dumps of tailings and spoil, use up vast amounts of concrete and plastic to build the power stations, and then leave future generations with the problem of clearing up the waste.

Nuclear power stations also need conventional power stations to keep them running - if the incoming power supply is disrupted, nuclear plants shut down. And uranium, which is far more scarce than oil, will quickly run out too.

If we switch to hydrogen, we’ll actually use more power to produce it than we’ll produce from burning it.

If we make a major switch to wind and solar, then we’ll actually need more fossil fuel or nuclear power stations to cover the times when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. The more wind and solar power stations there are, the more standby power stations are needed.

Where does that leave us?

We can switch from fossil fuel to genuine renewables were appropriate and where there is actual need, but if  we are to kick our addiction without overdosing or going cold turkey then a major, global paradigm shift is inevitable.

It means that instead of seeking technological fixes, we should be seeking cultural change.

We need to stop seeking quantity and start seeking quality.

We need to stop looting our neighbour’s houses and start rebuilding our own.

We need to move from be wasteful to being frugal.

We need to change from being consumers and destroyers to being sharers, makers and builders.

We need to stop accumulating consumer goods and trinkets and start developing and enjoying the spritual aspects of life - friendship; time for ourselves and each other; appreciation of the world about us; and music, art and writing for their own sake.

And above all, we must dare to say to politicans, to governments, to businesses, to lobbyists and to our own greedy, addicted selves that “the emperor of consumerism has no clothes - he’s sold them all to pay for his addiction”.

Shed the illusion, stop the habit and maybe, just maybe we can get out of this.