No effort is too small to start the shift from consumerism. From consumerism to sustainability: an interview with Erik Assadourian
Resources are being used at a rate never seen before: the equivalent of the output of 1.5 planets. This means that we are using future generations’ natural capital right now, 50% faster than it can regenerate. And demand is growing!
Since there is only one Earth, living beyond our natural means is unsustainable. The choice to thrive or damage our own life support systems is ours.
We need to make sustainability the new “natural way” of living. Erik Assadourian, senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, has investigated ways to transform our culture from consumerism to sustainability.
In 1987 the United Nations defined “sustainable development” as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs.
The deeply rooted consumerist attitude has developed over several centuries. It’s so pervasive that it’s almost like breathing, making people believe that they find meaning, contentment and acceptance through what they consume. It will take decades to change course.
We all need to make bold social choices, preferring those that have minimal ecological impact or even restore the Earth’s ecological systems. According to Assadourian, choosing these options will have a more fundamental effect than adopting new technologies or government policies. People who are able to critically examine their cultural realities and work to redirect key culture-shaping institutions, such as education, business, government and the media, are considered “cultural pioneers” and are the key to success.
For some researchers, one of the reasons that ecosystems are so threatened today is that we have become separated from nature. “We no longer understand our dependence on the planet,” Assadourian told Living City. More and more children are growing up playing video games, watching TV and eating foods that are so processed that previous generations would not even recognize them as food. With new technologies, children today spend around eight hours a day with media. If we separate the times when they watch TV and text at the same time, the total could reach 11 hours. Adding seven hours of sleep, it means that we pass most of our day plugged in to some sort of media that is not reinforcing any natural themes. “It is creating an electronic wall between people and the Earth’s systems,” he explained.
Since environmental degradation is happening so fast, Assadourian thinks that the odds of changing our culture to be centred on sustainability are not very high. Many people don’t understand the problem, and most of the economic and political resources are working hard to maintain the current culture.
“Most people, either implicitly or intentionally, are reinforcing the consumer culture because that is what they know. We are being aggressively pushed in the wrong direction by many forces, like advertising and the media,” he said.
His goal is to make many people understand the need for this cultural transformation and work towards it. “So when the consumerist society falls — and fall it will, due to its unsustainable nature — it will be possible to implement a culture of sustainability in the cultural vacuum created,” said Assadourian. He also compared it to the recent revolution in Egypt. The so-called “Twitter and Facebook Revolution” was actually prepared by activists, who worked for 30 years behind the scenes, organizing, studying and training in civil disobedience, and they were thus able to seize the moment when it arrived — brought on perhaps by a sudden jump in food prices, due to scarcity driven by climate change and growing demand for the consumer diet.
According to Assadourian, the more people work actively to build a culture of sustainability, the more opportunity there is to drive forward the cultural shift needed as the consumer society unravels.
“What is happening today is a nesting of ideas in a variety of scales,” he said. The cultural change could be driven by a teacher who shifts the curriculum toward sustainability, integrating fresh food into the school menu and planting a little garden. That small scale could touch 200 people in the school. Somewhere else a corporate enterprise shifts its practices and affects the lives of 10,000. A politician who moves the political discourse away from promoting perpetual economic growth could have a global impact.
“Hopefully, all of these are happening and will continue to grow in scope and numbers. It is the aggregation of all these efforts that really could have an impact,” said Assadourian. “The more people that push at the edges by questioning the current culture and advocate and implement a culture of sustainability is what will drive this cultural transformation.”
Assadourian sees himself as planting seeds for getting people engaged with their culture and shifting it to sustainability. He hopes that in decades they will take root, but warned that it would be naive to think that technology alone will solve all problems. “Technology will be a small part of the mix, but ultimately we have to reduce our consumption to a small fraction of its current level,” he commented.
He emphasized that no effort is too small to change the cultural tide toward sustainability.
He emphasized that no effort is too small to change the cultural tide toward sustainability.
Lucia Martinez
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