Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Consumerism in developed countries appears to have two speeds—
fast and faster—and nobody has fi gured out how to slow this train before
it creates an environmental and social wreck of historic proportions. The
challenge is to redefi ne the meaning of “progress” and revamp economies
and societies to work in harmony with the natural environment and serve
all people. This means overturning some of the venerable pillars of
twentieth-century progress:
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The sole purpose of an economy is to generate wealth.
Collecting material goods is the major goal of life.
Waste is inevitable in a prosperous society.
Mass poverty, while regrettable, is an unavoidable part of life.
The environment is an afterthought to the economy.
Species and ecosystems are valuable for economic and aesthetic reasons
but do not have innate value.
Ethics plays a negligible role in defi ning progress.
Overturning these venerable pillars is a formidable task. Without an
intentional cultural shift that values sustainability over consumerism, no
government pledges or technological advances will be enough to rescue
humanity from unacceptably hazardous environmental and climate risks.
Does More Money Bring More Happiness?
Despite the obvious fact that nearly everyone wants to have more money,
we are all familiar with the cliché that money cannot buy happiness, and
this is verifi ed by data from industrial economies. When growth in
income is plotted against levels of happiness recorded in national polls
in industrialized nations, there is no correlation. In the United States, for
example, the average person's income more than doubled between 1957
and 2002 (with infl ation factored out), yet the percentage of people
reporting themselves to be “very happy” over that period remained fl at,
at 30 to 35 percent.
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And despite people having increasing disposable
income, between 1960 and 1990 the divorce rate doubled, the teen
suicide rate tripled, the prison population quintupled, and the number
of people suffering from depression soared.
This is the situation in well-off nations. But it is different in developing
or undeveloped nations, where data reveal that happiness and income
are indeed correlated, but only until income rises to about $13,000 per
year. Less than 10 percent of households in the United States earn less
than $13,000 a year. According to the Census Bureau, the median annual
