Questioning Consumption.
Q.What is consumption?
A. The use of goods and services, materials and energy, by humans
www.egreenideas.com/glossary.php
At the Forum
The participants debated the strengths and weaknesses of this campaign. These can be read here
Why this is an important Issue
The Western world spends more on luxury products than it would cost to achieve the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.
The rich countries expect cheap and readily available goods which are dependent on the availability of cheap labour and raw materials to make and transport. This leads to unacceptable abuses of human rights and the environment.
With a growing population there are now almost seven billion people are demanding ever greater quantities of material resources, decimating the world’s richest ecosystems and dumping billions of tons of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.
We can’t have never ending growth on a finite planet. According to the New Economics Foundation, total consumption exceeded sustainable levels for the planet’s ecosystems back in the late 1970s.
The UK’s carbon footprint has grown so big that if the whole world wished to consume at the same rate we’d need 3.4 Earth’s to sustain us all. Any actions taken by governments or scientific advances to deal with climate change are doomed to failure unless people reduce this excessive consumption.
The effect of economic growth increase inequality between rich and poor. As economies grow wealth does not trickle down to the poor, in fact, to generate even small benefits for the poorest the current system it requires those who are already rich and ‘over-consuming’ to consume ever more.
