The Fable of Conscious Consumption Under Capitalism

It’s no secret: the earth is experiencing a climate emergency. One-third of our forest coverage has vanished (Ritchie, 2021). The occurrence of natural disasters has increased tenfold since the 1960s (ETR, 2020). We’ve entered a possible sixth mass extinction, with the current rate of extinction being anywhere from 100 to 1,000 times higher than the normal background rate (Begum, 2021). These crises, among many others, are owed almost entirely to human activity; scientists attribute 100% of all observed warming (partially culpable for the previous developments) since the mid-20th century to human activity (Hausfather, 2017). In fact, scientists predict that without further efforts, humanity will reach a “point of no return”: the date after which no amount of counteraction could reverse our environmental damage (Sorab, 2019). Dates for the arrival of this doomsday vary. Some scientists predict that it could come as soon as 2026 (Sorab, 2019). Others suggest 2045 to be more accurate, considering measures currently being implemented to fight climate change (Sorab, 2019). While the exact year varies, one grim fact remains: if us perpetrators do not take more drastic measures, within our lifetimes, we are effectively guaranteed to witness the beginning of the destabilization of life on earth (Franzen, 2014). This means crop failures, starvation, disease, extreme weather occurrences, and more — all paving the path for a catastrophic collapse in our established ways of life (Figueres and Rivett-Carnac, 2020).

Scientists and activists alike have scrambled to implement measures against the growing climate crisis. Some measures, known as regulatory solutions, suggest battling global warming through carbon and consumption taxes. These solutions primarily target corporations and large-scale polluters. Others instead regulate the individual’s actions in relation to climate. This class of consumption-based solutions propose that consumers shift their purchasing patterns in order to combat emissions and global warming (Grant, 2011). Cue conscious-consumerism — the practice of buying goods with the intent to make a positive “social, economic, and environmental impact” (Agood, 2020). Otherwise known as ethical consumerism or green consumerism, conscious consumerism is one form of voter activism that has gained media traction in recent years. A green consumer purchases (almost) exclusively from green companies, therefore reducing their individual contribution to global warming. Ethical consumption is also an attempt to “vote with one’s dollar” (Wong, 2019). By increasing market demand for eco-friendly products, practitioners of the concept hope to effect change up the production chain.

The image of the consumer-producer relationship that conscious consumerism creates is certainly alluring. It makes us feel as if we as individuals are making a difference through the simple act of better buying habits. With a moderate investment of time and money in green products, we can save the earth — right? While it would be convenient for such a seemingly-uncomplicated solution to fix our environmental woes, the safety that conscious consumerism affords is false. Green consumption is simply a fable; it feels comfortable, and portrays a complex topic in a frilly, digestible way. The reality is far grimmer. Green consumption has no hope of ever working when the system it functions in is inherently incompatible with a sustainable future. Actions on an individual level cannot resolve an issue requiring far larger systemic change. At this point, the obvious question arises: what is the system? And how is it incompatible with environmental stewardship? Let’s run through the logic together.

We function under the economic system of capitalism. For a company or corporation to survive in the long-run , it must outperform its competitors. This creates an insecurity and uncertainty that necessitates the continuous accumulation of capital. In other words, a company must expand continuously, encouraging ever-increasing levels of production and consumption to last. For a number of reasons, this type of eternal economic growth cannot exist with consumption-based environmental efforts.

Consider the drive for profit inherent to capitalism. A company must and will always exploit consumers if it intends to succeed. Well-meaning groups, like conscious consumers, do not represent or signal a need for change to corporations. Rather, the group becomes a new demographic to market to — a new way to accrue capital. Investing in better production processes is far too time and resource exhaustive. Instead, it is far more worth-while for a company to create an illusion of ethicacy in an attempt to attract green consumers.

Take the practice of greenwashing. Greenwashing is the practice of misleadingly branding products as eco-friendly; companies often invest more money into marketing their products as green than actually investing in cleaner operations (Osman, 2020). Single-use plastic bottles are a prime example of this. The Coca-Cola Company and Nestlé, and Niagara Bottling are all being targeted by a class-action lawsuit, alleging that their “100% recyclable” bottles are in fact barely recyclable at all. These companies promote their bottles as being environmentally conscious, knowing full well that the chemical composition of single-use bottles are generally unprocessable at most, if not all, recycling facilities (Rizzi, 2021). Rather than being recycled, every day, more than 60 million of these bottles end up in landfills (Rizzi, 2021). We have been aware of plastic’s environmental harms for decades, yet these corporations have knowingly fed the public a false narrative to capitalize on demand for green products. They want to make the consumer believe they are making an environmentally responsible decision by buying (and later recycling) a plastic water bottle. In this way, greenwashing is a symptom of capitalism and a need for deeper change; under the status quo of capitalism and infinite growth, companies are so intent on maximizing profits, that they willingly engage in misleading consumers.

Even companies who have committed to some form of internal climate goals often take performative half-measures. Rather than accounting for the greenhouse gas emissions from the full life cycle of a given product — including the ones that come from a product’s use and disposal (i.e. downstream emissions) — companies take responsibility for only a small fraction of their true impact. P&G, for example, has committed to reducing emissions by 50% by 2030 (Axelrod, 2019). While this ambition appears progressive on paper, a deeper probe reveals that the company only aims to reduce emissions generated by the energy and operating demands of their own facilities. When taking the emissions generated by sourcing and disposing of materials, we find that P&G’s climate objectives account for a measly 2% of their actual emissions (Axelrod 2019). To the well-meaning consumer, brands who tout progressive measures against emissions (like P&G) may seem like a prime company to support with their coin. Yet again, however, the consumer and the public are misled into buying into false promises of being green for the sake of corporate appearances and profit. The action on the part of an individual (ie conscious consumerism) has no hope of being effective when the market simply does not allow for “better” choices.

Proponents of conscious consumerism may interject here, stating that their “solution” is still effective in the sense that it gradually effects a “transformation of consciousness”, changing how we consume and view our moral culpability with climate change (Plante, 2019). I have two responses to this. For one, a gradual shift is far too slow to do anything when our planet’s end is imminent. Secondly, how can we consume our way out of climate change? On a far more fundamental level, capitalism and sustainability could not ever coexist. Our earth, in a sense, is a closed system. Its resources are finite. The capitalistic aim of infinite positive growth is impossible in a closed system; it precipitates a future in which our resources are exhausted to the point of no return. We would need one and a half Earths to sustain the existing economy into the future, and this environmental overshoot only continues to grow (Alexander, 2014). You cannot hope to consume endlessly, albeit in a “green” way, and still come out on the other side with clean oceans, blue skies, and fresh air abound.

How can we actually achieve a greener future and mitigate the effects of climate change? Climate change is far too great an issue to be reduced to a single, simple solution. However, we do know that deconsumption (rather than consumption in a different form as green consumers advocate) is a powerful first step in turning the tides. The production and use of household goods produces 60% of global greenhouse gas emissions (Cho, 2020). By simply reducing what we consume to a minimum, we will be able to reduce the strain to our earth. “Degrowth”, somewhat associated with deconsumption, is another powerful idea; it requires that richest nations (those who consume and emmitt the most) dramatically downscale resource and energy demands until we reach a stable state “within Earth’s biophysical limits” (Alexander, 2014). It also requires equitable economic contraction and the acceptance that we cannot go on as we have been forever. It is a false hope to think we can continue our current capitalistic lifestyles, promote economic expansion, all while reducing our environmental impact enough for it to be sustainable. We need to take a far more drastic approach, one that understands that the Earth and its resources are not there to be exploited forever.

Degrowth asks us to examine our lives and what makes us rich. In the status quo, you and I are both guilty of material excess and success. It is simply the way our current standards of life program us to behave; along with the rest of our nation, we are raised to consume. We are brought up to live in ways that produce disharmony with the Earth and the rest of its inhabitants. While consumption and the pursuit of material wealth is what we know and understand, however, it does not have to be that way forever. The next generation could have a different perception of what makes us rich; we do not have to be rich in terms of money, but rather in terms of experience and lifestyle. A degrowth future is one that reduces how much of our life is dedicated to work, instead encouraging us to have more freedom and leisure. In realizing that enough is plenty — that living far more frugally brings about a far richer existence — we could collectively be freed from the economic systems that bind and constrain us. To save the earth, we must radically reconsider the ways we live and how incompatible capitalism is with sustainability.