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This year John Woods was one of the speakers at the Humanist Summer School which is held in Carlingford at the end of August. He spoke very effectively about our consumerist society and the unsustainable toll that it is taking of our environment. His withering comments on the failure of NI politicians to engage meaningfully with green issues struck home, but he also challenged the audience to take stock of its impact on the environment through driving and flying too much, and through buying products with an obscene carbon cost, eg bottled water.

He was sensibly cautious on the causes of climate change. Some people like to wrangle over the causes, instead of discussing the practical measures which need to be taken. He said that, whether climate change is anthropogenic or not, we still need to reduce the environmental damage which is being inflicted by our profligate lifestyle - 'affluenza' as he termed it, though the word has since appeared as the title of a book.

Overpopulation was identified as a major problem. Many countries are overpopulated and it is causing starvation, disease, violence and mass migrations. Humanists at the Summer School were keen to highlight the effect of religious bans on contraception and family planning. There was also a question raised about ending family allowances in the UK and RoI, but he refused to be drawn on that, saying that child poverty is a significant problem too.

John Woods promotes a green perspective very effectively. It is a pity that our politicians and our media do not seem to be paying attention. The prospect of environmental disaster does not generate in N Ireland the calls for action and the preventive measures that it should. Complacency rules, but it is not ok.

Les

A very worthwhile post.

Indeed it has occurred to me that the current economic downturn may give us as a society an opportunity to reflect on our throw away consumerism.

A return to the 'waste not, want not' thoughtfulness of a previous generation might reap benefits for us in a variety of ways.

If only we could promote simplicity as a virtue.

I tend to think these issues can be solved without reverting to the dark ages, folks. The term 'affluenza' has been around (and parodied) a long time. Consumer'ism' is to be appreciated, welcomed and loved, as it gives us the highest standard of living human beings have ever enjoyed. To wish otherwise is wrongheaded and futile.

John

When I speak of 'waste not want not' I think of the people who do not understand that with, for example, an average chicken, a family (of 4, like mine) can, with care, creativity and a store cupboard, cook about 3 meals.

Hardly the dark ages!

And personally I think of this to be a much, much higher standard of living than a Mickey D's, 'bargain' bucket, the wrappers of which usually end up blowing down my high street.

Peter,

Leaving aside the environment (because there are other ways of dealing with that problem), only good can come from wasting chicken. The more chicken that is bought, that many more people are employed by the industries involved. In other words, let's separate the amount of chicken we consume into percentages of what is needed (to sustain life) and what is 'luxury' (unneeded but bought anyway whether it's stuffed into a body that doesn't need it, thrown away, whatever) - say it's 60/40. That 40 percent now represents 40 percent more jobs, 40 percent more people feeding themselves and responsible for themselves, not in welfare deriving from the wealth of others. This is how a healthy society works and how 'consumerism' benefits us all: people are employed to make iPods and luxury cars and to serve meals we don't need and to design clothes and to put on events. We pay them all, because we like what they do; they benefit and we benefit. The anti-consumerist may be the most foolish member of modern society.

I sure as hell wish we all wasted more chicken, Peter.

John

"The anti-consumerist may be the most foolish member of modern society."

He or she may well be, but I, John, do not plan to go hungry because I have not learned to save a little for a rainy day.

Nor, by the way, do I consider food to be mere sustenance; I consider it to be a blessing, a joy, and an opportunity to share my life with another.

As for wasting chicken, there is no greater waste than the, anti-biotic filled, force fed, bandy legged, fat saturated, tasteless, anaemic, soulless, fast reared, plastic shrink wrapped and abused production line type that sells for £1.99 in the local, 'not so super' market.

I think they call it 'value brand'.

But sure, never mind, we can all die fat, dumb, young and 'happy', surrounded by our toys.

Peter- You assert that we can "all die fat, dumb, young and 'happy', surrounded by our toys" as though it naturally follows from what I said in comment 5. How so?

(And by the way, the 'awful' chicken you describe is responsible for keeping millions of people out of poverty; I wouldn't be so keen to rid the world of it, even though I prefer organic, healthful free range chickens myself.)

John,

Your defence of consumerism takes no account of the fact that resources are finite. It is profligate to squander resources like fossil fuels which are irreplaceable. You seem to think that we can burn as much as we like of the Earth's stocks of fossil fuel, regardless of the rate of depletion, because we are generating employment for millions of people. That is a recipe for disaster: a short-lived binge on the finite fuels of the planet will be followed by a slump when the fuels run out and the whole superstructure which we have built on that false economic basis collapses.

Your argument using the example of chicken production also raises the difficulty that mass production of the kind that you describe results in sick poultry packed in disease-ridden intensive units. And the meat is tasteless too.

Instead of overpopulating the planet and resorting to brutal, overcrowded factory farming to feed the seething masses, we should be exercising some restraint and trying to protect the environment from pollution, over-fishing, reckless fossil fuel depletion, urban sprawl, loss of habitats, etc.

Consumerism offers only a short-term fix, like heroin. A green politics, by contrast, offers a sustainable future.

Les,

I love that your answer to me included the phrase, "The meat is tasteless"! LOL! But your criticisms citing fossil fuel do not apply to chickens, Les. There is ample land for farming, ample metal for industry, ample molecules from which to make plastics.

Blaming consumerism for the issues it raises is like blaming food for gastrointestinal upset. Wanting to abandon consumerism because it has raised problems (as well as solved them) is like wanting to abandon eating because it sometimes causes diarrhea.

These problems can be solved without abandoning consumerism, which has been very, very (VERY) good to all of us.

John,

You say that consumerism has created problems and it has also solved them. I suppose what you mean by "solved them" is that supermarkets have introduced green products like environmentally friendly detergents and biodegradable carrier bags.

Do you really think that we can just carry on ravaging planet Earth at our present, relentlessly increasing rate and that green detergents and carrier bags will solve the problems?

For every biodegradable carrier bag, the supermarkets squander tons of fossil fuel transporting French and Italian bottled water to Irish shops. Reckless profligacy.

When I wrote ".. we should be exercising some restraint and trying to protect the environment from pollution, over-fishing, reckless fossil fuel depletion, urban sprawl, loss of habitats, etc." there was some indication of the scale of the problems that humanity now faces. Saying that it creates employment and is therefore a good thing strikes me as an all-time high in complacency.

Hi John,

Sorry to disagree with you, but

"There is ample land for farming, ample metal for industry, ample molecules from which to make plastics."

How long will that last, with the current growth rate of the world population (growing by about a quarter of a million a day)? I assume you agree that it can't last forever that way?

You are not going to say 'This or that technology will solve it', are you? I probably appreciate the benefits that technology bring us more than most, but I'm not so blindly optimistic to think that that will take care of everything. Technology has been making advances for a long time. The worlds population has been growing for long time. But demands on resources have always grown faster. At least I don't recall many instances of the worlds farm land acreage decreasing, etc. Perhaps Ireland during the 1840s was an exception, but not a significant dent in the large picture.

So how long do you think your position can last?

Les- Sorry if I wasn't clear; by consumerism "solving" problems I don't mean the late greenism in corporations. I mean that its very existence solved the problems of how to feed people, how to trade, how to create wealth. Our entire economies are built upon consumerism, and a damned good thing. But you're still focusing on fossil fuel. Let's say we move on from that, as we're beginning to do already. You would still object to consumerism in principle, and that's where I disagree with you. I think we can solve issues of sustainability while continuing to embrace consumerism. And if I may be so bold as to suggest; the reason that's such a minority position is because those who generally care about sustainability tend to read from the same left-wing hymn sheet and couldn't devise an original idea if they sat in a room for forty years thinking about it.

Peter- One problem with living in Europe is that you tend to assume that every square inch of land on earth is claimed and used up, as it is (largely) in Europe. We're a long, long way from reaching capacity on earth. The American population is 300 million people and yet most of its land is undeveloped (as anyone who's flown over continental North America can attest). Moreover you'll notice that the countries which are MOST consumerist also reproduce the slowest; in fact, in most of the 'consumerist' countries, the populations are only increasing through immigration, not through reproduction. So your overpopulation concerns should be directed at those whose policies are least consumerist! Consumerism (or capitalism per se) fixes as many problems as it solves, as the car industry, for example, is currently doing as they innovate alternative fuels. In short, I think my position can last a very, very long time to come.

Hi John,

I also prefer the idea of a smaller world population living a pleasant existence over that of an overcrowded world of shortages. So I'll go along with much of what you say. If the whole world population could be magically transformed into being prosperous and all preferring their long Summer holiday traveling over changing the diapers of their 7th child, I would agree 100%. Unfortunately, I'm not so optimistic about what state the planet will be in if less developed countries follow the same path of Europe and the US towards such a state of prosperity and zero population growth.

Some very broad numbers from the top of my head:
The US accounts for under 5% of the world population, yet accounts for over 30% of oil usage. In other areas, it also 'punches above its weight' by a factor of 4 or 5 or so. I suspect that Europes numbers would not be much lower. Most of the world doesn't have our level of prosperity, so if everyone were achieve it, the required resources in the world would multiply by say, a factor of 3-4 probably?

If everyone had adopted your views a long time ago, thereby starting from a lower initial population and stabilizing it (eventually even shrinking it it), it might have worked without a hitch. With the present population number, I'm a bit pessimistic if all will go that well.

Peter- I understand your concerns. I still think we've a way to go before this becomes the 'crunch' issue (I suspect it's mere arrogance on our part to think of THIS moment, and US as the crunch people in the crunch time... if you see what I mean).

This continues to be about fossil fuel, primarily; it's not a coincidence that it's the first example both you and Les think of. But we're developing ways to get around that issue. Once it's dealt with, we've taken steps most of the way toward a sustainable consumerism.