Confronting Consumption

This is a rather good book, a series of essays edited by three professors in the fields of politics, natural resources and environmental science, all of whom contributed essays. Despite being a bit heavy-going in places, it contains some important insights, a number of interesting ones and a few rather delightful ones. I found the discussion of the limitations of the reduce-recycle-reclaim, green-choice, tree-planting, bike-riding and similar individual-responsibility paradigms refreshingly frank. The explanations of how we lose sight of the environmental and social consequences of our consumption through 'distancing' and 'shadowing' were more difficult to stay with but important; likewise the chapter on the commoditization-value of various things and how it skews our attention (eg away from friendship and towards mind-altering drugs!). The inversion of the 'stages of production' to 'stages of consumption' is an insight that to me shifts this book up to 'important' status. The explanation of "frontier" styles of exploit-and-move (slash and burn) resource management was enlightening and, happily, crisp. I shared the pleasure of reviewer "takeadayoff" in the section on the Voluntary Simplicity Movement. I also enjoyed the section on off-grid power people and what actually motivates them, and the sections on more subversive ideas such as Adbusters and the power of organisations such as the Forest Stewardship Council.I would recommend this book in general to any readers intrigued by the title, but particularly to students in the fields of politics, economics and resource management and also to jaded eco-warriors who see the need to develop new ways to promote the conservation message.

Excellent!

Obviously you need to consume in order to survive and consume more in order to live comfortably. But in this country at least, it is almost impossible not to overconsume. Our president encourages us to spend more. Our vice president sneers that some "virtuous" people would have us conserve energy rather than use as much as we want to, at any cost. TV and other media bombard us with messages to eat more and buy more. Our financial advisors tell us to buy the biggest house we can afford. When was the last time anyone suggested saving money rather than "investing" it?Confronting Consumption tackles the problem from several angles. I'm afraid the larger global arguments Princen and his fellow editors and academics make are lost on me when they write of "commoditization" and "conceptualizing the consumption problem." But in the final section they get down to ground level and talk about voluntary simplicity, Adbusters, and alternate methods of home power (off the grid).An especially interesting observation appears in Michael Maniates's essay about the voluntary simplicity movement. He attended a voluntary simplicity day at a university. Thousands of people showed up, many more than the organizers expected. They wanted to know about cutting living expenses, downshifting, and job-sharing. They were not at all interested in the Sierra Club presentation or other "save the planet" groups. It isn't that people aspiring to live simply don't want to help save the planet. They just want to do it in a more manageable way, one person, one family at a time.Unfortunately, that won't undo the ecological, financial, and human damage already caused by overconsumption. For that, we will need leaders who at the very least acknowledge that overconsumption is a problem, not a virtue.