While fostering economic growth everywhere we’ve been continuously eating into our planet’s resources. We’ve been damaging the systems that keep the planet a healthy environment for ourselves and many other species.
Since the beginning of the 20th-century economic growth has been the main metric for the measurement of human wellbeing. It’s an important economic metric that I don’t want to challenge. Humans get paid for their labor and growth in general leads to a better way of life not only for capital owners but also for regular workers.
But another dimension tends to be forgotten: who pays nature for its services? We outsource externalities of growth to the planet but who pays the bill?
The atmosphere and the oceans are the “free landfill” for all the emitted greenhouse gases. Wild waters serve as the waste dump for plastics of all kinds. Forests take CO2 and produce our oxygen.
Sooner or later the real costs for those services will find their way into the pricing calculation of all products. The externalization of those costs won’t be possible anymore when the negative effects become too real and painful for all of us.
We probably need to re-think consumption.
The negative effects of unconscious consumption on our own bodies become more and more apparent. Happiness cannot be bought. Although advertising most often tries to convince us of the opposite.
Facing the omnipresent temptations I’m struggling to keep following those principles:
- Buy only what you really need and not more
- Buy good quality and keep it for a long time
- Buy what keeps giving you joy, even after a first phase of excitement
- Buy what re-creates (the planet)