This is a big meaty report done by the UK's Sustainable Development Commission called Prosperity Without Growth that I plan on diving into over the next week and will offer some thoughts along the way. It's interesting to me in that it attempts to answer an emerging and difficult question. How do you reconcile capitalism and sustainability?
Along the way I think there's a dilemma that Americans in particular, but Western societies in general, will need to ask themselves. Where is the line between capitalism and consumerism? We almost intuitively understand that the latter is dangerous and perhaps even immoral but are also deeply suspicious of it as foreign or perhaps vaguely communist. Ironically it also leads us to embrace anti-capitalist systems like China and become dependent on slave labor to pay for cheap goods.
We tend to think of costs only in terms of the dollars it costs us as the consumer, but ignore the costs to others and the world. Your laptop may only cost a couple thousand, but its toxic components may cost a person their life when it is dumped. The minerals used in its processor were mined by someone who is so indebted to their company they're basically a slave. So while it seemed like a great deal at Walmart, the cost is simply being transferred to someone else. Is that really fair?
Since future growth by more exploitation is impossible, what will work? That's a question I'm interested in answering. Greenbiz has the money quote in their summary:
Fundamentally, the message of the report is this: If we try to build a sustainable future that requires everyone to play status games through material possessions -- that is, we continue with our culture of consumerism -- then we will fail.
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