Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
and offer moral judgements on what they do (or don't do), both at a macro-aggregate
(society/planet) and an individual (personal) level. We can simply buy something to
make us happy and when that happiness wears off we can buy something else,
throwing the first purchase away. But in doing so, we can cause both societal and
individual psychological problems, and producers will continue to produce more if
consumers and the market demand it. For Princen, it is therefore incumbent on
producers and consumers to develop restraint if further ecological damage is to be
avoided. Simple living, micro-renewable energy generation and local currencies
as used in local exchange and trading schemes, and in some 'Transition towns' are
self-limiting behaviours that place ecosystem services ahead of ongoing material
production, capital accumulation and resource depletion. Consequently, a consump-
tion perspective highlights the nature of demand. Do we need more houses because
of population increases? Do new housing developments reflect their full ecological
costs and impacts? Is car use facilitated by subsidized road building? Does easy credit
encourage undesirable consumerism? Tied to all this, as Maniates (2002) argues, is
the individualization of responsibility for living lightly and reducing environmental
impacts. Apart from ignoring larger institutional responsibilities, eco-living has itself
turned into a consumer product growth industry, as the publication of green lifestyle
magazines and features seems to confirm. Capitalism is capable of incorporating and
commoditizing alternatives and ideological dissent, such as 'No Zone like the Ozone'
T-shirts or buying into tree-planting schemes to offset carbon emissions simultaneously
with your e-ticket cheap flight weekend break in Copenhagen, leading to little more
than building 'a better mousetrap' - unless organized social and political power, the
control and guidance of economic development, and technological innovation is
confronted through collective action (Winner, 1989). Maniates argues that the very
processes that individualize consumption can be addressed by revising the familiar
environmental formulation 'IPAT':
Impact = Population
Affluence
Technology
Maniates sees IPAT as naively obscuring an understanding of political power and,
as such, being quite disempowering. In its place, a convenient and more accurate
formulation might be 'IWAC':
Environmental Impact = Quality of Work
Meaningful Consumption
Alternatives
Political Creativity
For many people, work is deeply unsatisfying, arduous and insecure. Corporate
downsizing, restructuring and permanent change is not compensated for by either
salaries or the relentless search for consumer commodities, foreign holidays or the
soon-to-be-obsolete new media devices. This means that consumers will need to
ensure they extract the full benefit from their purchases, that what people need is
not more 'stuff' but more satisfaction. Manno (2002: 67) has devised the concept
of 'consumption efficiency' to help this process of challenging commoditization,
replacing the primary emphasis on the maximization of a good or service's potential
to be sold in a competitive marketplace with establishing economic arrangements
that foster an economy of care and connection.
