Strategies for transforming a society of over-consumption

A. Education

1. New worldview of ecology & biospheric limits

2. Critique of materialism & consumerism from "inside"

      New Roadmap Foundation
      Center for a New American Dream
      Overcoming Consumerism
3. Individual choices & awareness of alternatives in purchasing

4. Education for democracy; reform of political system

5. Build political support for crucial policies (see below)

6. Adult audiences

    1. Acknowledge life-patterns & economic / security concerns
    2.  Beware of reactance - avoid motivational pitfalls
    3.  Re-frame dominant beliefs about econ/ecol relationship
    4.  Build small changes within existing communities of interest, support insider leaders
    5.  Participatory
    6. Cultivate life-long learning
7. Tap & build on existing values
    1.  Real sources of satisfaction - learning, family, friends, time, talents
    2.  Nussbaum's Aristotelian conception of well-being: "to have well-being... is to function and to be capable of functioning in certain humanly good ways": physically, mentally, socially, and through expressing one's singular identity -- and a balance among these ways.
    3.  Investment in community & common good
    4.  Obligations to future generations
    5.  Religion, patriotism, service
    6.  Caring about the natural world
8. New (really old) route to "affluence." Affluence = condition where wants are easily met. Two routes:
a) assume (and stimulate) infinite wants & produce like crazy to meet them
b) assume (and cultivate) limited material wants, and live within limits meeting them


B. Policy - key leverage points

1. Decrease need to over-work

    1. Provide strong social & health safety net & basic services
    2. Encourage savings, investment, early retirement & pursuing higher goals
    3. End mandatory consumption & indebtedness: Promote collective ways of meeting needs; alternative forms of product usage and ownership
    4. Remove labor market from constraint of 40-hour work week - let workers choose how much they want to work based on how much income they need: Provide part-time jobs with comparable pay, full benefits, flexible hours
    5. Educate consumers to make consumption decisions critically, with full information
    6. End easy-credit policies
    7. Promote ethic of self- & mutual-reliance
2. Government reform -- openness, responsiveness, reduce special interest influence, accountability; especially campaign finance reform.  E.g., Common Cause

3.  Media reform -- Advertising, corporatism, materialism, nihilism, exploitation of psychological needs and insecurity, basic view of reality, gender relations, etc. etc.

4. Use ecological economics (EcolEcon resource link) to prevent pervasive externalities from degrading natural capital, by solving problem of scale.  Do this by:

    1. Determine scientifically what biosphere can withstand for each category of natural capital; include margins of safety and uncertainty. Use these criteria to:
    2. Set absolute limits on pollution
    3. Set absolute limits on depletion
    4. Then create market mechanisms to allocate resources within these set limits
5. Strong regulatory context--Drives innovation & substitution to create ecol. sound alternatives

6. Change accounting procedures to favor green industries

    1. Incorporate localized externalities in prices
    2. Count env. liabilities against calculation of profitability, industry-wide
    3. Support external watchdogging & Right-to-Know legislation
    4. Encourage higher voluntary standards Global Reporting Initiative;  Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES)
7. Re-invent mainstream institutions that demonstrate strong environmental management
  1. Academia (Resources on campus environmental management)
  2. Industry - "Industrial Ecology"-- Pollution prevention, life cycle assessment (LCA), eco-design, materials flow analysis (MFA), eco-industrial parks
8.  Shift from quantitative economic growth to economic development (qualitative improvement & integration of products & services) as goal of economics
    1. New indicators of economic welfare (Genuine Progress Indicator vs GNP)
    2. Ecological Footprinting
9. Green consumerism
    1. Strict product standards and labeling
    2. Promote socially / environmentally responsible investing
10. Subsidies & tax policy
    1.  Shift away from dirty/inefficient technologies to clean/efficient
    2.  Tax consumption
11. Strengthen international governance
    1.  International accountability of corporations
    2.  Standards & agreements on specific issues
    3.  Create binding / enforced env. provisions (at least equal to WTO's "teeth")
12. Trade standards
    1. Upward harmonization of env. rules
    2. Accountability
    3. Responsiveness
13. New model of economic development
    1. Away from debt / investment / industrialization / trade model
    2. Favor local culture & self-reliance
    3. Transfer of appropriate technology
    4. Industrial countries act as models of lower consumption
    5. Avoid this happening: Philip Pan, Bicycle no longer king of the road in China: Cars take over in race to modernity (Wash. Post article)

 
 

Gene Myers,WWU, 3/14/01