Do We Consume Too Much?
Do We Consume Too Much?
Marc Sagoff examines the relation between sustainability and the production and consumption of consumer products. He takes the optimistic view that economic production will never be seriously constrained by a lack of natural resources. None of the concerns that have occupied the environmental movement since the 1970s – global population, depletion of non-renewable resources, or food shortages – have materialized. He suggests that environmentalists embrace technological solutions instead of denying the power of technological progress or simply decrying consumerism as wasteful. Nevertheless, there are indeed good reasons to question consumerism. Although technology can overcome the physical limits nature sets on the amount we can produce and consume, there are moral, spiritual, and cultural limits to growth. Simply put, we consume too much – not because of the resources we use but because our market-driven consumerist culture undermines “the bonds of community, compassion, culture, and place.” We consume too much when consumption becomes an end in itself and “makes us lose affection and reverence for the natural world.” Sagoff wishes to focus the debate on consumerism on the social lives we seek to preserve rather than the resources we may exhaust. That way we might stop vilifying technology and Romanticizing nature.
Keywords: Sustainability, Production, Consumerism, Consumption, Technology
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