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Changing the lifestyle package
Brian Davey, openDemocracy
A refreshing change has come over the discussion about climate change. Suddenly newspapers and politicians are acknowledging that technology alone will not be enough to respond to the climate crisis, there will also have to be a change in lifestyles. The joint editorial published by 56 newspapers put it thus:
“Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.”
Clever gadgets and big engineering projects are not going to be enough. We will have to change too. But what does this mean? Is there a concept system that can help us think more deeply about the changes and what will be needed?
I believe that there is and we can best understand lifestyle change by considering the interplay between two concepts: lifestyle packages and life games…
(15 Dec 2009)
The fifth story
Jonathan Dawson, Gaiaeducation
Now back in Findhorn, I am letting all the sights and insights and new connections and friendships settle within me. I am left – not for the first time – to wonder at the capacity of our species to tell stories. Over the last week in Copenhagen, I have listened into countless versions of what this moment in history means and how we might navigate our way through it.
The stories seem to fall within four meta stories that, while there is overlap between them, represent distinct narratives. The first, associated most closely with the talks at the Bella Centre (the main UN conference venue), is that our political leaders can achieve ambitious targets for emissions reductions through the intelligent application of markets and technology. They just need to find the political will.
The second, predominant at the ClimaForum (the centre for NGO and civil society activities), is that the principal obstacle to the resolution of the climate change crisis is bad, intransigent, and/or reactionary negotiators representing imperialist and capitalist interests. Right the wrongs, ensure that the rich repay their ecological debts and put in place mechanisms that ensure equality of emission entitlements and all will be well.
Stories three and four are most commonly heard at the Bottom Meeting (the ecovillage-based event centre) in Christiania. Number three is that our political system is too corrupt and lethargic to deliver a deal, so we must create our own solutions through community mobilization. The fourth is that we are fundamentally in a moment of spiritual crisis that is so severe it will force us through the fires of purification into a place of higher consciousness and a new paradigm of seeing and experiencing the world that will be dramatically less energy-intensive.
…There is a fifth story that has got little airtime in Copenhagen but that feels more persuasive to me than any of the others. It is that we have entered a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions whose devastating logic is inexorable.
…The fifth story introduces an element of restraint – and of sadness. It declares that climate change is not a problem that we can solve but a predicament to be dealt with in the way that has the least devastating consequences possible…
(Dec 2009)
Consumer Hell
George Monbiot, monbiot.com
How do we break a system which now permeates every aspect of our lives?
Who said this? “All the evidence shows that beyond the sort of standard of living which Britain has now achieved, extra growth does not automatically translate into human welfare and happiness.” Was it a. the boss of Greenpeace, b. the director of the New Economics Foundation, or c. an anarchist planning the next climate camp? None of the above: d. the former head of the Confederation of British Industry, who currently runs the Financial Services Authority. In an interview broadcast last Friday, Lord Turner brought the consumer society’s most subversive observation into the mainstream(1).
In our hearts most of us know it is true, but we live as if it isn’t. Progress is measured by the speed at which we destroy the conditions which sustain life. Governments are deemed to succeed or fail by how well they make money go round, regardless of whether it serves any useful purpose. They regard it as a sacred duty to encourage the country’s most revolting spectacle: the annual feeding frenzy in which shoppers queue all night, then stampede into the shops, elbow, trample and sometimes fight to be the first to carry off some designer junk which will go into landfill before the sales next year. The madder the orgy, the greater the triumph of economic management.
As the Guardian revealed yesterday, the British government is now split over product placement in TV programmes: if it implements the policy proposed by Ben Bradshaw, the culture secretary, plots will revolve around chocolates and cheeseburgers and ads will be impossible to filter, perhaps even to detect. Mr Bradshaw must know that this indoctrination won’t make us happier, wiser, greener or leaner; but it will make the television companies £140m a year(2).
Though we know they aren’t the same, we can’t help conflating growth and well-being. Last week, for example, the Guardian carried the headline “UK standard of living drops below 2005 level”(3). But the story had nothing to do with our standard of living. Instead it reported that per capita gross domestic product is lower than it was in 2005. GDP is a measure of economic activity, not standard of living. But the terms are confused so often that journalists now treat them as synonyms. The low retail sales of previous months were recently described by this paper as “bleak”(4) and “gloomy”(5). High sales are always “good news”, low sales are always “bad news”, even if the product on offer is farmyard porn. I believe it’s time that the Guardian challenged this biased reporting…
(4 Jan 2010)
