The unsustainable lifestyles of the successfully wealthy.
Imagine if a government encouraged people to live sustainable lifestyles.
This would be in stark contrast to the current neoliberal sociopolitical and socioeconomic paradigm that has encouraged unsustainable lifestyles in the name of economic growth. Ways of living that are based on increasing the amounts of resources society consume (e.g., bigger cars, houses and not sharing products)
"Consumerism" is an umbrella term. However, the most ecologically damaging aspect of consumerism is due to a "free" (where products are not free) market economy where business activities have not been linked to sustaining the planet's life support systems.
A market trades products and services. In other words, supply and demand. Therefore, to critically evaluate a business's environmental impact, the supply and demand environmental impacts of the businesses' and end consumers' activities must be analyzed.
Let's take a worst-case example of an extremely unsustainable lifestyle.
A Fuel Company Executive (FCE) who relatively receives a high income (e.g., millionaire +). The FCE managers business activities that use various methods to extract "fossil" fuels (Coal, crude oil, gas). "Fossil" fuels are Carbon Based Fuels (CBF). These industrial activities degrade (damage & pollute) or destroy natural habitats so as to extract the CBF (or metal, etc) that are under the ground (on land or the seabed). These extraction activities also use machinery that burns CBF (combustion engines. e.g., diesel) to extract the CBF, and transport and process the CBF (e.g., crude oil refineries > fuel stations). At the end of all these power and resource-consuming activities, the final product is incinerated (to fuel machinery). That's a linear-based economy that is burning finite materials. That's an unsustainable economy.
A Fuel Company Executive (FCE) generally works in an office. These office blocks or skyscrapers also burn Carbon Based Fuels (CBF) & use electricity generated by burning CBF (e.g., for construction, maintenance, heating, air conditioning, etc). Wealthy FCE live lifestyle (including personal business activities) that burns a relatively high amount of CBF and uses a relatively high amount of resources in general (e.g., large car, regular trips on Jets, etc).
Generally, people that are living lives that are only taking (e.g., consuming materials) and polluting (e.g., burning fuels) can not be sustained (evidently).
Imagine if a government encouraged people to live sustainable lifestyles. "Government" is fundamentally management. For a government to promote ecological #sustainability it must understand the relevant subjects such as #ecology and #climatology. It must also have a long-term plan (e.g., hundreds to thousands of years). Generally, for a population of people in a democracy (e.g., in a country) to develop a sustainable culture the general population must have a form of intelligence that understands how the Planet's ecosystem functions (based on the evidence of the science of ecology). Also, the government must align with the voter's motives to live sustainable lifestyles (e.g., not greenwash the public as has been the norm with many governments. e.g., the UK's Conservative Party tend to greenwash the voters that they will mitigate the environmental problems in twenty years or so. Rather than dealing with them now by developing the appropriate fast-acting environmental policies now (they've been greenwashing the voters for decades)
Fundamentally, because a sustainable lifestyle is practically possible - https://qoto.org/@Empiricism_Reloaded/110511036586999020
- the fundamental problem that is causing ecological degradation, therefore, climate change is political. More broadly psychological (e.g., uneducation, misinformation, corruption, disinformation, greed, vanity, ideologies, delusions, etc)
The Planet's biosphere (e.g., weather or more broadly in time and space climate) is the regulator of all human lives and activities. As human activities degrade (e.g., pollute) components of the Planet's biosphere, this is causing ecological negative events (for humans) such as climate change. These events will increasingly regulate human activities.
Consider a spectrum (e.g., more or less of a variable). The variable is human activities. On one extreme of the spectrum is the Fuel Company Executive (or the millionaire or billionaire lifestyle). These are the people that are evidently living High Ecological Impact Lifestyles (HEIL). At the other end of the spectrum are people that are living Low Ecological Impact Lifestyles (LEIL). For example, those people that have incorporated sustainable living into their lifestyle (their thinking). In fact, in practice, LEIL can repair the damage that the HEIL has historically caused to natural habitats by restoring the local ecosystems (whilst also growing food & providing other goods and services to the local economy)
Further reading and guidance about Low Ecological Impact Living. https://qoto.org/@Empiricism_Reloaded/110511036586999020
