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WILL CONSUMER SOCIETY EXHAUST ITS OPTIONS?

CIWEM Executive Director, Nick Reeves, asks for how much longer can we sustain our ‘me, me’ culture before we harm the planet irrevocably?

April 2007 was the warmest and driest on record and all the talk was of predictions of a long hot summer and of water restrictions to come. The arrival of the warmer days and lighter evenings of spring (which is now the new summer) is, traditionally, a time for reflection and renewal and for creating the new you. Amid all the calls to eat healthier, exercise more, to be better turned-out and to travel to exotic places, there was a subtle undertone. You want to refresh your looks? Try a coffee break laser. It, they say, evens your skin tone in just seven minutes, and someone will trouser £350 of your hard-earned cash for the privilege. Buy this brand of goods or clothes and magically you can be like the celebrity of your choice and become much more attractive to the gender of your choice. Dress this way or that and you'll get that dream job. In fact just buy more and more of everything and feel all the better for it. This is the age of 'me, me' and you can have whatever you want and not give a fig for the consequences.

Be warned, there is a price to pay that is greater than the overdraft charges or the credit card bill. This is consumerism that has not only eclipsed communism, fascism, democracy and religion as the dominant idea on the planet but is rapidly exhausting resources and breaching the capacity of the Earth to support us.  And it's barmy. While this may not be a new idea or argument, it is very hard to knock the analysis, especially in the UK where we throw away a third of all the food we buy and consign to landfill 100 million tonnes of waste each year.

'Affluenza' is the modern day virus that goes hand-in-hand with shopaholism. It places high value on money, possessions, appearances and celebrity. Recent studies have shown that people affected with the virus are significantly more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, addictions and personality disorders. They are also prone to dismiss the environment as a legitimate area of concern, especially when the green agenda appears to place limits on consumer choice or alter personal behaviour. While we shop at almost any price for things we crave rather than need those who promote innovations in sustainable design for sustainable living will find it hard to find a market for their ideas and their products.

Business and industry will argue until the cows come home for people's freedom of choice to spend as they like and insist that neither planners nor environmentalists should have any say in the matter. But if we are consuming the Earth's finite resources to feed a harmful habit, what happens when the choices eventually run out? If we are already in ecological overdraft, isn't it time to call in the loan? If we are serious about action on climate change isn't it time to do the right thing, re-think the way we live and put in place a regulatory system for ensuring that everything we need for healthy living meets the test of sustainability? With the science we have at hand we can plan, adapt and mitigate to avoid the very worst effects of a changing climate and the extreme conditions it will bring. We can, and must, design a sustainable future.

The UK Government's target of a 60 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 commits to a very dangerous level of climate change. On the basis of the projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Stern's advice we need a target much closer to a 90 percent reduction in emissions by 2030. If we, and the wider international community, do not adopt tougher targets millions of people will die and millions more will become displaced, causing social and economic catastrophe and global security problems so bad that we haven't imagined them yet.

We have to stop treating climate change as an urgent issue and treat it as an international emergency. We must negotiate with China, which threatens to become the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases by the end of 2007, mainly because it produces the products we buy and use. We must figure out how much it would cost to decarbonise its growing economy, and help to pay. We also need a major diplomatic offensive to persuade the USA to do what it did in 1941, and turn the economy around on a dime. But above all, we need to show that we are serious about fighting climate change. We must set the targets that science demands, design a sustainable future and we must end the deceit of 'shop till you drop'.