Hannah Kramer
published 10 December 2020
When we imagine the future we talk about advances in technology, medicine, a better and happier world. However, the reality is much different: studies have shown that following our current trajectory in the next century all the rainforests will be gone and there will be many more islands that will have disappeared due to rising sea levels. Many animal species will have gone extinct and we could be facing mass famine worldwide and yet nothing is being done to address the largest cause of these problems. That cause, of course, is the rampant consumerism of the richest few countries in the world. The aggressive consumerist lifestyle of the wealthy countries, known as the global north, is caused not only by culture but governments’ obsession with economic growth, and it’s destroying the planet.
The need for economic growth, as measured by GDP, has put us into a state of ecological overshoot. Ecological overshoot is a state where we are using and wasting more resources than the earth is able to replace or absorb. Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a measurement of how much we produce and consume in a year, was devised by Simon Kuznets who warned that it should not be used as a measure of human progress because it excludes the negative social and ecological impacts of our consumption. Yet, this is exactly what it has become. All over the world GDP is used to measure progress. One of the goals of development is to increase the GDP of poorer countries so that they catch up with the progress of richer countries. However, if all the nations consumed as we do in the global north we would need 3.8 earths to sustain us. So why is this seen as the ultimate goal if there is no way the earth would ever be able to sustain consumption at that rate?
Another way to understand the ecological overshoot is by looking at an idea called earth overshoot day. Earth overshoot day is a symbolic date for when humanity’s consumption outstrips the earth’s capacity to replace resources and reabsorb wastage for that year. In 1999, it was September 29. In 2019 it was July 29. This illustrates how our increasing consumption and growth are compounding and giving the earth less and less time to replenish what we have taken. How long will it be until that day is January 1, until we have used all of our resources before the earth gets a chance to restore them?
So, the question is, how do we fix it? The push recently has been for everyone to make more sustainable choices: composting, shampoo bars instead of bottles, supporting sustainable fashion over fast fashion, buying food and other products locally, growing some of your own food. While these are all great ideas there are two problems with this. The first is that these more sustainable products and practices are often more expensive and time-consuming, making them inaccessible to many people. This has turned sustainability into a trend for those who can afford it, not for the masses. The second problem is that it doesn’t work. Studies have shown that an individual making sustainable choices has little to no impact on the environment as a whole. So how then can we hope to solve this problem?
The answer is systemic change. At this point, there need to be large scale changes to the way governments and companies run. The growth policies that are bleeding the earth of the very things that we need to be reformed. The job of the public is to inform others and push for change in the system. No one likes change, and while it may seem overwhelming, and a daunting problem to try and fix, something needs to be done soon or in the next century we could be looking at a very different world.
Interesting post. You mention systematic change and I am interested in what this change would look like. You also speak about GDP as being a negative idea, when the sale of goods is what puts money into people’s hands and allows them the freedom to advance out of poverty in many areas of the world.