Consumerism’s Big Role in the Climate Crisis
by Seo-Hee Hong
With the holiday season coming up and hordes of people flurrying into stores, we as a society are reminded of a fundamental problem that underlies our lifestyle — consumerism.
According to its textbook definition, consumerism is the ‘human desire to own and obtain goods above one’s basic needs.’ This definition often goes hand in hand with materialism, where society has turned to seek satisfaction in material possessions rather than spiritual values. Buying goods has become a way of life thanks to incessant marketing efforts by huge corporations.
C40 Cities, a network of 94 megacities around the world committed to tackling climate change, released a report that stated that the consumption of goods and services is responsible for “10 percent of global greenhouse gases.” As individuals, we do not think about the effect of the accumulation of our consumption habits, yet we are one of the larger factors causing the destruction of our environment. In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released an alarming report, stating that the world only has 12 years to prevent a climate change catastrophe and to limit global temperatures to a maximum of 1.5C, which if exceeded, will result in uncontrollable hazards to all of humanity. The new special 2019 UN IPCC Report is the newest climate warning stating that Earth’s land has already warmed more than 1.5 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution. The natural limits of our Earth are approaching dangerously fast to a point of no return and consumerism is a large contributing factor largely to the source of this crisis.
Last year, a paper published by Nature, an international weekly journal of science, found that ‘physical needs could be met for 7 billion people at a level of resource use that does not significantly transgress planetary boundaries’. Yet the endless vicious cycle of production, consumption, and inadequate waste disposal has crippled potential progress. For instance, it would take plastic approximately hundreds or thousands of years to biodegrade due to its components of petroleum. But despite warnings, our plastic consumption has been on the rise with bottled water consumption continuing to increase even though it costs up to 2,000 times more than tap water in the United States. The efforts in waste disposal are not any better as evidenced by the giant floating garbage patches all over our oceans taking up to 12 million tons of plastic every year.
A popular solution today takes the form of conscious green consumerism. Its basis is built on the belief that consumers can use their purchasing power to make a statement to companies; ‘we don’t like what you do, we’re not going to buy from you until you change’ mentality. Yet a small change in our purchasing behavior cannot be a substitute for systematic change. The fact holds that the new markets for these ‘green sustainable’ products are still contributing to the consumerist culture. In other words, we are still demanding and buying more goods — we are not cutting back. Consumption has become the backbone of our society and so individual conscious consumerism will ultimately have less of an impact than expected; this can be recognized through a study that compared the ecological footprint of green and brown consumers and found no significant difference being made on an ecological impact level. Thus we must acknowledge that although conscious consumerism is part of the solution, it is not the final answer to the climate crisis. Consumers need to use their power to act as a catalyst that forces governments, corporations, and citizens to work together and lobby to create effective long-term policies.
