Consumerism is the path to planetary ruin, but there are other ways to live

Faced with the now undeniable impacts of climate crisis created by humans, political leaders in wealthier countries incline towards one of two competing responses. They either question the urgency and feasibility of meeting net zero targets and generally procrastinate (the rightwing tendency); or they proclaim their faith in the powers of magical green technologies to protect the planet while prolonging and extending our present affluent ways of living (a position more favoured on the left and centre).

Common to both approaches is a wrongheaded presumption that we can carry on growing while managing to hold off the floods and fires of growth-driven capitalism. Both also take it for granted that the consumerist lifestyle is essential to the wellbeing of rich societies and the ideal to which less developed economies should aspire.

It is true that measures to alleviate poverty will be an integral part of any national or international green transition. And some economic growth will be required in areas such as renewable energy, housing, care and education. But overall growth is not, as many of its advocates seem to presuppose, essential to any effective economy. And the evidence, carefully reviewed in recent reports by the European Environmental Bureau and the European Environment Agency, does not support the claim that green technologies will allow for the uncoupling of growth from increased carbon emissions.

Sustainable production and consumption must therefore replace undifferentiated economic growth as the goal of 21st-century political economy. And making the case for this means challenging the belief that sustainable consumption will always involve sacrifice, rather than improve wellbeing.

Our so-called “good life” is, after all, a major cause of stress and ill health. It is noisy, polluting and wasteful. Its commercial priorities have forced people to gear everything to jobseeking and career development, but still leave many people facing chronically unfulfilling and precarious jobs and lives. Consumer culture, formerly seen as a vehicle of self-expression, is better viewed at this stage in its evolution as a means of extending the global reach and command of corporate power at the expense of the health and wellbeing of the planet and most of its inhabitants.

Conversely, there is much to recommend a slower-paced, less work-centred and more community-oriented way of living. A work culture less dominated by profit-driven ideas of efficiency would free time for other activities. Slower and more hybrid modes of working (making use, for example, of artisanal methods alongside smart technologies) could enhance job fulfilment and allow more job sharing. Ecologically benign methods of production would exclude built-in obsolescence and radically reduce waste. People would have the gratification of knowing they were no longer contributing to environmental breakdown and threatening the very survival of their children and grandchildren.

If we shopped less and did more for ourselves, we would have to forgo the enticements of brand buying and fast fashion. But more communally based ways of meeting needs could allow people to make use of specific talents and eccentric interests for which they may otherwise have little outlet. The provision of hubs for the hiring, borrowing and sharing of vehicles and tools, educational and financial services, arts centres, and the like, could transform high streets and city centres, foster new forms of citizenship and lessen the isolation of elderly and lonely people. Allotments and shared gardens might be expected to multiply, allowing more people to enjoy the pleasures of growing and eating their own food.

Reducing our reliance on cars and planes is an unavoidable ecological priority. It will come at the cost of the thrills and ease of high-speed transport. But slower travel has pleasures of its own, and could be more widely enjoyed as policies are adopted to make air travel dearer and rail travel cheaper. In towns and cities, the expansion of public transport and the reduction of car traffic – already happening across Europe – will return urban spaces to those who live in them. More of us will then enjoy the pleasures (and health benefits) of the physical activity, solitude and peace denied to those who travel faster. Freed from traffic dangers, children will come out to play again – and once more enjoy walking or cycling to school.

I recognise that the transition to a more reproductive level and kind of material consumption, and a less work-intensive economic culture, is made difficult if not impossible in the current system by the very considerable constraints that would be placed on capitalist growth and profits. Indeed, any such transition would ultimately require fundamental restructuring of basic economic institutions and modes of welfare provision. The reach of the market would be curtailed and a more devolved and participatory economy would be encouraged and developed. All such moves will be forcefully resisted by corporate power and its allies in the political establishment. They will begin to make headway only if popular support for them becomes so strong that business and government have little choice but to yield to it. Given the resistance of most people to changing their habitual ways of living, there is little likelihood of that at present.

But if it seems unrealistic to hope for such far-reaching change, it is also unrealistic to suppose that we can continue to expand production, work and material consumption over the next few decades, let alone into the next century and beyond. By offering a broader cultural dimension to the existing arguments of those who dissent from today’s economic orthodoxy and want to promote a less unequal world, a compelling vision of alternative ways of living can help to inspire a more diverse, confident and substantial opposition. And in expanding on that vision we now need to look beyond western ideas of progress to include other influences and sources of inspiration, whether it be past methods of provisioning, the knowledge and experiences of the poorer nations and marginalised communities, or the less growth-driven imaginings of thinkers, technicians and cultural workers wherever they are to be found.

• Kate Soper is emeritus professor of philosophy at the Institute for the Study of European Transformations (ISET) and Humanities Arts and Languages (HAL), London Metropolitan University. She is the author of Post-Growth Living: For an Alternative Hedonism

Composite: Getty Images/Alamy - 'Reducing our reliance on cars and planes is an unavoidable ecological priority.’