CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOR AND THE ENVIRONMENT

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CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOR AND THE ENVIRONMENT

• HOW OUR CONSUMPTION PATTERNS AFFECT NATURE

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Quote of the Week The individual serves the
industrial system not by supplying it with
savings and the resulting capital he serves it
by consuming its products.John Kenneth
Galbraith, The New Industrial State
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Inequality has the natural and necessary effect,
under the present circumstances, of materializing
our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class,
and brutalizing our lower class. Matthew
Arnold, English poet and the foremost literary
critic of Victorian times. He lived from
1822-1888.
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THE GREAT DEBATE CONCERNING THE CAUSES OF
ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION

• Paul Ehrlich
• Population
• Affluence (consumption)
• Technology
• Barry Commoner
• Technology
• The economic system

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The role of the economic system as a plausible
cause seems to have diminished, and now the
expressions of concern focus on

• Population
• Technology
• Consumption

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We will focus on population growth next week.
And the reading for this week by Richard Benedick
certainly leads into that discussion.

• But, this week we will be concerned with the
  levels of consumption of stuff as a cause of
  environmental degradation.

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There are four distinct views of the issue of
consumption as it affects the environment

• 1. The view of physics
• 2. The view of economics
• 3. The view ecology
• 4. The view of sociology

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The View of Physics

• Matter and energy are not really consumed (used
  up).
• Rather they are transformed and this
  transformation entails scattering and dissipation
  (entropy).
• Think of the sun and its energy
• Think of a tree that is cut down

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The View of Economics

• Consumption entails the acquisition of goods
  and services, the use of which provides benefit
  streams into the future
• Consumers exchange one form of a benefit
  stream (money) for another benefit stream (the
  benefits that will arise from having and using
  the thing consumed)

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The View of Ecology

• Consumption entails the transformation of
  pieces of an ecosystem into stuffthe bulk of
  which will reappear in the ecosystem in another
  form (garbage in a landfill, smoke up a chimney,
  gunk in a river)

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The View of Sociology

• Consumption is a way to gain status
• Big house (perhaps several of them)
• Big car (at least 3 if not more of them)
• Big lawn on which one can ride a big mower (or a
  small tractor)

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Key Questions

• When is more stuff too much stuff?
• Can we do more with less?
• Reduce
• Recycle
• Reuse
• When is more enough?

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The answer to these questions forces us to
discuss values and norms of behavior.

• Why do certain things give status?
• Why do we care about status?

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Lets return to our discussion of beliefs, rules,
and behavior
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THINKING ABOUT BEHAVIOR
BEHAVIOR
RULES
BELIEFS
Rules are the structural parameters of a
societythese are both legal and cultural (or
customary habits of mind).
Beliefs are the thoughts and attitudes that
inform and shape both rules and behavior.
Behavior is the actual choices that people
makewhat they do.
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Some observers suggest that prudential and
economic arguments have been more persuasive in
affecting attitudes and behavior than have moral
or spiritual arguments
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But the conversation worth having is one that
seeks to focus precisely on these two ways of
discussing the environment

• The proper conversation is one that focuses on
  the moral and the spiritual dimension
• Otherwise, we end up engaged in instrumentalism
  about nature

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By instrumentalism we mean

• Seeing nature only as a tool (an instrument) to
  process greenhouse gasses as in carbon
  sequestration by tropical forests
• Or as a tool (an instrument) to filter dirty
  water (wetlands)
• Or as a tool (an instrument) to provide
  recreation days
• Or as a tool (an instrument) to cure cancer

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Nature is too important, too vital to our moral
and spiritual existence, to be instrumentalized
in this way

• We must not objectify nature
• We must avoid anthropocentric conversations about
  nature

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Indeed, this brings us back to Barry Commoners
insistence that the fundamental problem is that
of the economic system

• Commoner insists that as long as the
  environmental debate is conducted in terms of the
  physical limits to growth rather than the MORAL
  purposes of growth, the instrumental logic of
  price and physical abundance will prevail.

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As John Kenneth Galbraith observed, we serve the
modern industrial state by consuming its products.

• Our economic and political systems celebrate
  consumptionand it is this that Commoner regards
  as the most serious issue for the long run.

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Consumption is endogenous, just as is
fertilitybut that endogeneity cuts in different
directions

• Consider the feedback on family size
• Modernization tends to encourage smaller family
  sizes
• Now consider the feedback on consumption
  behavior
• Modernization tends to encourage greater
  consumption

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Thus while we might expect population pressure to
subside from continued modernization and
development in the South, we can only expect
consumption pressure to become ever greater

• Hence, population growth is indirectly serious
  because of the implied and inevitable consumption
  that will accompany that growth

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Finally, let us consider technology

• First what is technology?
• Technology is properly thought of in two
  regards
• Technology allows us to do new things
• Technology allows us to do the same things more
  cheaply than at the present

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Technology Has Two Aspects

• Knowledge
• A technique (a tool) which is itself embodied
  knowledge
• So in one respect, new technology is new
  knowledge put to use

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Technology Is Not InherentlyGood or Bad

• Polio vaccine seems good
• DDT helps control malaria and thus seems good
• Air conditioning seems good
• Electricity seems good
• The automobile seems good

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The issue therefore must concern not technology
per se, but the manifestations, entailments, and
implications of technology

• The inevitable dialectics of technology
• Is it good or bad? Why?
• The role of technology as a mediator between
  humans and nature
• And this brings us back to the central role of
  beliefs and behavior

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THINKING ABOUT BEHAVIOR
BEHAVIOR
RULES
BELIEFS
Rules are the structural parameters of a
societythese are both legal and cultural (or
customary habits of mind).
Beliefs are the thoughts and attitudes that
inform and shape both rules and behavior.
Behavior is the actual choices that people
makewhat they do.