SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
consumption
A Different 'Abundance Agenda': Avoiding Delusions and Diversions
If there is to be a decent human future—perhaps if there is to be any human future—it will be fewer people consuming less energy and creating less stuff.
Mar 30, 2025
For the next few weeks, the buzzword in US debates on the liberal/left about economics and ecology will be “abundance” after the release of the book with that title by Ezra Klein (New York Times) and Derek Thompson (The Atlantic magazine).
The book poses politically relevant questions: Have policies favored by Democrats and others on the political left impeded innovation with unnecessary red tape for building projects? Can regulatory reform and revitalized public investment bring technological progress that can solve problems in housing, infrastructure, energy, and agriculture? The book says yes to both.
Those debates have short-term political implications but are largely irrelevant to the human future. The challenge is not how to do more but how to live with less.
All societies face multiple cascading ecological crises—emphasis on the plural. There are many crises, not just climate change, and no matter what a particular society’s contribution to the crises there is nowhere to hide. The cascading changes will come in ways we can prepare for but can’t predict, and it’s likely the consequences will be much more dire than we imagine.
If that seems depressing, I’m sorry. Keep reading anyway.
Rapid climate disruption is the most pressing concern but not the only existential threat. Soil erosion and degradation undermine our capacity to feed ourselves. Chemical contamination of our bodies and ecosystems undermines the possibility of a stable long-term human presence. Species extinction and loss of biodiversity will have potentially catastrophic effects on the ecosystems on which our lives depend.
Why aren’t more people advocating limits? Because limits are hard.
I could go on, but anyone who wants to know about these crises can easily find this information in both popular media and the research literature. For starters, I recommend the work of William Rees, an ecologist who co-created the ecological footprint concept and knows how to write for ordinary people.
The foundational problem is overshoot: There are too many people consuming too much in the aggregate. The distribution of the world’s wealth is not equal or equitable, of course, but the overall program for human survival is clear: fewer and less. If there is to be a decent human future—perhaps if there is to be any human future—it will be fewer people consuming less energy and creating less stuff.
Check the policy statements of all major political players, including self-described progressives and radicals, and it’s hard to find mention of the need to impose limits on ourselves. Instead, you will find delusions and diversions.
The delusions come mainly from the right, where climate-change denialism is still common. The more sophisticated conservatives don’t directly challenge the overwhelming consensus of researchers but instead sow seeds of doubt, as if there is legitimate controversy. That makes it easier to preach the “drill, baby, drill” line of expanding fossil fuel production, no matter what the ecological costs, instead of facing limits.
The diversions come mainly from the left, where people take climate change seriously but invest their hopes in an endless array of technological solutions. These days, the most prominent tech hype is “electrify everything,” which includes a commitment to an unsustainable car culture with electric vehicles, instead of facing limits.
There is a small kernel of truth in the rhetoric of both right and left.
When the right says that expanding fossil energy production would lift more people out of poverty, they have a valid point. But increased production of fossil energy is not suddenly going to benefit primarily the world’s poor, and the continued expansion of emissions eventually will doom rich and poor alike.
When the left says renewable energy is crucial, they have a valid point. But if the promise of renewable energy is used to prop up existing levels of consumption, then the best we can expect is a slowing of the rate of ecological destruction. Unless renewables are one component of an overall down-powering, they are a part of the problem and not a solution.
Why aren’t more people advocating limits? Because limits are hard. People—including me and almost everyone reading this—find it hard to resist what my co-author Wes Jackson and I have called “the temptations of dense energy.” Yes, lots of uses of fossil fuels are wasteful, and modern marketing encourages that waste. But coal, oil, and natural gas also do a lot of work for us and provide a lot of comforts that people are reluctant to give up.
That’s why the most sensible approach combines limits on our consumption of energy and rationing to ensure greater fairness, both of which have to be collectively imposed. That’s not a popular political position today, but if we are serious about slowing, and eventually stopping, the human destruction of the ecosphere, I see no other path forward.
In the short term, those of us who endorse “fewer and less” will have to make choices between political candidates and parties that are, on the criteria of real sustainability, either really hard-to-describe awful or merely bad. I would never argue that right and left, Republican and Democrat, are indistinguishable. But whatever our immediate political choices, we should talk openly about ecological realities.
That can start with imagining an “abundance agenda” quite different than what Klein and Thompson, along with most conventional thinking, propose. Instead of more building that will allegedly be “climate friendly,” why not scale back our expectations? Instead of assuming a constantly mobile society, why not be satisfied with staying home? Instead of dreaming of more gadgets, why not live more fully in the world around us? People throughout history have demonstrated that productive societies can live with less.
Instead of the promise of endless material abundance, which has never been consistent with a truly sustainable future, let’s invest in what we know produces human flourishing—collective activity in community based on shared needs and reduced wants. For me, living in rural New Mexico, that means being one of the older folks who are helping younger folks get a small-scale farm off the ground. It means being an active participant in our local acequia irrigation system. It means staying home instead of vacationing. It means being satisfied with the abundant pleasures of this place and these people without buying much beyond essentials.
I’m not naïve—given the house I live in, the car I drive, and the food I buy from a grocery store, I’m still part of a hyper-extractive economy that is unsustainable. But instead of scrambling for more, I am seeking to live with less. I know that’s much harder for people struggling to feed a family and afford even a modest home. But rather than imagining ways to keep everyone on the consumption treadmill, only with more equity, we can all contribute ideas about how to step off.
Our choices are clear: We can drill more, which will simply get us to a cruel end game even sooner. We can pretend that technology will save us, which might delay that reckoning. If we can abandon the delusions and diversions, there’s no guarantee of a happy future. But there’s a chance of a future.
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Ultra-Rich Are Running Scared, for Good Reason
Budding entrepreneurs worldwide are devoting their time and talents to making our Earth as safe as possible for our planet’s top 1% that now holds more wealth than the entire bottom 95% combined.
Sep 29, 2024
Have our world’s super rich become absolutely paranoid about the future? Or do they, deep down, understand that our exceedingly unequal global distribution of income and wealth has placed them—and everyone else—in ever-present danger?
The Robb Report, a news service that offers our most awesomely affluent the ultimate in consumption advice, has no interest in psychoanalyzing what the wealthiest among us believe. But Robb Report analysts certainly do enjoy chronicling how these rich behave.
“Forget Butlers,” a Robb Report headline has just pronounced. “Private Security” has now become “the Ultimate Service for the Ultra-Wealthy.”
Real progress on the environmental and every other major problematic front, the new Oxfam report sums up, “will require all countries—both in the Global North and Global South—to realize that they have a common interest in tackling extreme concentrations of wealth.”
The Samphire Risk insurance firm, the Robb coverage goes on to relate, specializes in policies that insure the rich against the dangers that our world visits only upon them. Say, for instance, two monied motorcyclist pals get involved in a crash that leaves one of them badly injured and the other kidnapped amid the accident’s chaos. Samphire prides itself on providing “the connective tissue between the problem and the expertise needed” to solve whatever dilemma the rich may encounter.
The AHNA Group run by a Dubai-based former military operative from South Africa last year provided top corporate execs protective services for over 500 trips into more than four dozen countries. AHNA, says its mover and shaker Mac Segal, always goes the extra mile and even takes the time to prep its operatives on how to make conversation with their rich clients.
“You should speak in short sentences,” Segal advises, “so the client can stop the conversation whenever they want to.”
Still another new security service available for the fretful rich offers “a bodyguard in your pocket,” an artificial intelligence-powered mobile phone app that can tell if a deep pocket’s limo is following its normal daily route.
Budding entrepreneurs worldwide, in short, are devoting their time and talents to making our Earth as safe as possible for our planet’s most comfortable, that top 1% that now holds more wealth, relates a just-released report from the global humanitarian group Oxfam, than the entire bottom 95% combined.
This “immense concentration of wealth,” notes Oxfam’s new Multilateralism in an Era of Global Oligarchy analysis, has allowed large corporations and the ultra-rich “who exercise control over them to use their vast resources to shape global rules in their favor, often at the expense of everyone else.”
How dramatic has this wealth concentration become? Since 1987, as economist Gabriel Zucman has detailed, the combined wealth of the world’s 3,000 richest households—in effect, our richest 0.0001%—now stands at about $14 trillion. Their share of the world’s wealth has over that timespan more than quadrupled.
About 46% of the world’s population, meanwhile, lives on less than the local equivalent of $6.85 per day.
Our contemporary wealth inequality, Oxfam’s research details, connects up neatly with growing global corporate concentration. Seven of the world’s 10 largest corporations now have a billionaire either as CEO or top shareholder. Our wealthiest, Oxfam shows, don’t just benefit passively from all the corporate stock they hold. They’re increasingly shaping—in sectors ranging from pharmaceuticals to global digital advertising—exactly how corporations exercise their market and political power.
The ultra-wealthy and the corporations they dominate, as Oxfam puts it, are using “their vast resources to pressure governments”—through everything from lobbying and campaign contributions to influence over the media and threats to withhold investment—to lower the taxes rich people pay, weaken labor protections, and privatize public services.
In 2022, Oxfam points out, 182 of America’s largest corporations, spent $746 million on lobbying alone. For every lobbying dollar the nation’s 50 largest publicly traded corporations spent, they averaged back $130 in tax breaks and over $4,000 in federal loans, loan guarantees, and bailouts.
One consequence of this ultra-rich political influence: The Covid-19 pandemic, observes Oxfam, left in its wake at least 40 new billionaires.
The most dangerous long-term consequence of ultra-rich influence? That may well be environmental. The dollars of our global ultra-rich, notes Oxfam, continue to be “disproportionately invested in the companies driving climate breakdown.”
What can we do to break down this climate breakdown threat? Real progress on the environmental and every other major problematic front, the new Oxfam report sums up, “will require all countries—both in the Global North and Global South—to realize that they have a common interest in tackling extreme concentrations of wealth.”
“A more equitable international order,” as Oxfam’s latest research powerfully reminds us, “benefits everyone.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Fast Fashion Harms Workers and the Planet
To cheaply and quickly reproduce the latest styles, manufacturers contract to companies in some of the poorest countries in the world where wages are low and standards of protection for the workers and the environment are ignored.
May 17, 2023
We all like to get something new, be it clothes, a house, a car, or something for the home. It gives us a feeling of a new start. And with the many forms of shopping through commercial centers, stores, catalogs, and the internet, we have an enormous selection from which to choose. To make buying even easier, there are numerous ways to pay. We have credit cards, debit cards, and digital and telephone transfers so that we don’t have to worry about not having money. Our happiness is guaranteed.
The most common purchases are clothes, and now we have Fast Fashion, a system where we can be up to date on all the latest styles. What does this mean and how does it impact us and the rest of the world?
It’s natural for us, at any age, to want the “latest” model, a sign to others that we are modern, in-the-know, and prepared for the world of work, recreation, the beach, or the city. To that end textile manufacturers can rush into production the same styles worn by influencers and people of fashion in the most rapid way and keep the prices low so that you will be tempted to buy. Also supporting the Fast Fashion trend are the free trade treaties that reduce or eliminate tariffs, which also keep down prices. But in reality is Fast Fashion a benefit?
Fast Fashion may seem like a good thing in providing a constant supply of the newest designs, but it takes its toll on the environment, labor practices, and our own comfort.
A report in Treehugger, an environmental magazine, says that Americans buy an average of 70 items of clothing a year, and later much of it remains forgotten in the closet. A similar study by a German university estimated that 60% of clothing purchases are not necessary and are seldom worn. In rapid time the style passes and the garment loses it’s charm.
Fast Fashion may seem like a good thing in providing a constant supply of the newest designs, but it takes its toll on the environment, labor practices, and our own comfort. Fast Fashion means that manufacturers contract to companies in some of the poorest countries in the world—Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia, and others where wages are low and standards of protection for the workers and the environment are ignored—and they use the cheapest of synthetic materials. The waste products—the dyes and chemicals and byproducts—are often pitched into the environment, the waterways, and the air, causing health problems for the people and the environment of the area. Workers, mostly women, work long hours without benefits or safety measures.
Because the fabrics and the process of producing all these new clothes are of poor quality, they soon lose their “fresh look.” They stretch out of shape, and the colors deteriorate. Synthetic fabrics cause skin allergies for many wearers. The cloth traps heat inside, making the garments uncomfortable. Styles pass, the items are no longer worn. Low prices are offset by the product’s short life span.
Fast Fashion has also created an environmental hazzard. Tons of discarded, unwanted clothes have become a serious problem as the synthetic materials do not break down. Tons of used, unwanted apparel are shipped to poor countries to be distributed, but much is waste because of its poor condition. Areas in Kenya and Chile and other poor countries have become dumping grounds for those formerly high-fashion products.
How can we help create a more postive environment and still be “well dressed?” By being prudent when shopping, whether it’s for clothes or household products such as curtains or bedsheets. Ask yourself if the purchase is really necessary, or do you buy on impulse? Look for quality. Check labels for fabric content and where the garment was made. Is it an item that will last?
Buying in “used shops” can yield quality items at comfortable prices. It’s a form of recylcing. Buy clothing made of natural fibers, although cotton and denim also contaminate from their use of fertilizers and water in production. Parents can teach their children that they do not need to have the latest style all the time.
A good sign is that there is a growing consciousness among major stores and brands to check the abuses caused by Fast Fashion by carrying only products made under just and safe conditions for workers and the environment. Through the use of careful buying habits we can help improve conditions for workers and the environment.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular