Citizen Renaissance and the limits of Green Consumerism
Via WorldChanging:
What will it take to restructure our economy into a system that promotes the well-being of individuals and the environment, while encouraging a voluntary decrease in superfluous consumption?
This issue is tackled in a new book by Jules Peck and Robert Phillips, Citizen Renaissance, introduced by Julia Levitt:
“Peck and Phillips posit that in order to make the economy work for both people and the planet, we must shift the focus from quantitative, growth-oriented measures like GDP and onto measures of qualitative development. They envision a new “Wellbeing Economy” and “Ecological Economy,” which will measure and define economic progress in a way that accounts for environmental and social issues, and that can supplement GDP as a central measure of the state of nations.
Among the models that they cite in their research are those put forward by York University economist Peter Victor and Fritz Schumacher, author of the book Small is Beautiful.”
An excerpt from their work:
“It is important to be aware that the idea of merely ‘greening’ consumption will not achieve the necessary absolute reductions in use of resources and creation of waste. The scale and urgency of issues such as Climate Change, ecosystem collapse, energy, water and food famine and poverty are such that ‘slightly better’ just will not do. The crucial part of the above definition of qualitative development relates to the ‘carrying capacity’ of natural systems. These are already overloaded. Achievements like an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 are impossibilities in the context of expected ‘business as usual’ growth.
What is needed, we think, is a shift in developed-country societal focus to psycho-spiritual real needs and away from an approach that attempts to deliver to created desires through relative-materialism. In addition we need to take an approach that no longer makes a god of growth and aims for a steady-state economy.”
