(from another class, but it seems … pertinent)

Annie Leonard’s video, The Story of Stuff, often elicits a strong reaction from those who haven’t had occasion to reflect in depth about the consequences of mass production and consumption in industrialized, globalized societies. So here’s a little Q & A, that hopefully takes this out of the confines of the classroom, and into the real world and the complexity of our global systems of production and consumption.

How do people ‘pay’ when the costs of a good are ‘externalized?’

The idea she is getting at is that what we are paying for goods does not represent their true cost to a society, or to the environment (and indirectly, society). So if the costs of pollution or exposure to toxins or injuries on an unsafe jobsite, or below-poverty wages lead to costs, what are they? They could be increased use of health care services. Or higher incidence of cancer, respiratory disease, etc. Overprocessed food might create dietary problems that make obesity and diabetes more likely, and diagnosing and treating those costs money to the health care system, to families, and to the individuals affected, not to mention lost hours in the workplace. ‘Cheap’ gas means we will use more of it, and when we do, it emits hydrocarbons, which hold heat in the atmosphere, and ultimately could create costs for humanity in the trillions of dollars. 

This is what economists might call ‘monetizing’ of costs. If we depended on our daughters to clean our house, and they left home (an amicable departure, of course), and we valued that labor no longer being performed, we might have to pay someone to come in and houseclean, that is monetize the value of our daughter’s labor. Or the costs of high cancer rates to society, the health care system, etc. Or global warming because we likes our cheap gas and won’t elect politicians that don’t pledge to keep it that way. 

But … I don’t feel any of this, so why should it be a problem, or why should I put any thought or deeper reflection into it?

Well if you pay attention to media and news media in particular, you have some sense of the importance of advertising to commercial media and their business model. Identify an audience, target it with content (sprinkle in bait generously), and sell that audience’s numbers to advertisers. Who are not looking to sell less stuff, but more stuff. So if you’re expecting commercial news to cover these issues in any sort of depth, well . . . don’t hold your breath (more on that in week 8).

If I don’t ‘feel’ anything that suggests consumption patterns of Americans might have consequences for others, why should I care?

This is a tricky one. It goes back to how we are insulated through media–think about how media often make us feel good, inspire us to aspire to a certain, consumptive lifestyle. Everyone can afford to live in a midtown Manhattan flat on a part-time food service job, right?? Advertisers want us to identify with our consumption, feel good about it–think of those smiling people using smart phones or saving money. At the same time, they also know they can shame us or make us feel insecure about what we have. It’s not quite enough. But Product X, well, that will bring us closer to that lifestyle we covet. Look how happy all those people look! 

So it isn’t surprising at all that we haven’t thought much about our consumption and its consequences. But imagine. You leave for the weekend. You return home. The barbecue grill out back is gone. You notice one suspiciously similar in your neighbor’s yard. ‘Oh yeah, well, I needed it for a big party this weekend, I hope you don’t mind. It’s sort of broken though. You can have it back if you want, I guess’ (and in the ‘real world,’ if you threaten to sue them, they might invade your yard and put in a permanent outbuilding). Or that peach tree you were waiting to harvest, you wake up and all the peaches are gone, because someone came by, saw it, and harvested it while you were at work. Maybe someone chops down a tree and splits it for the winter’s wood stove supply. 

You can observe that kind of exploitation and theft, or at least its immediate aftermath (and your own deprivation). It’s harder to see it when your purchase of a genuine teakwood table from IKEA means someone’s tropical hardwood forest in Indonesia has been decimated. Or the oil in your snacks came from a palm plantation that replaced a rich and diverse tropical forest that locals had been using for generations to sustain their livelihoods. And they don’t see much beyond what happened, either–the government cutting a deal with a multinational timber company that might mean they have to migrate to an already-overcrowded city in search of work and housing and food.  Such are the long-tailed connections between our consumption and its consequences. 

I can’t afford to pay $75 dollars for a gallon of gas (and would never vote for a politician who suggested that was the more accurate price that ‘internalized’ the costs). 

Of course not. Or at least, you couldn’t drive very far if you did. But I promise you one thing–you would cherish that drive more than you do when you pay what seems outrageous, $4.50 or so. Wait. More like $5.50 as we near Halloween 2022. But maybe, just maybe, there aren’t enough resources in a world with more and more humans to just consume without understanding limits. And another thing is for sure–if we paid the price that would ‘internalize’ some of the costs of a global production system (for example), we would consume a lot less. And if the transportation costs were factored in, we would live a more local life, which would mean we wouldn’t have access to all the consumer products ‘out there’ 24/7. And the US economy, as most of us younger folk anyway have come to know it, might slow to a grinding, baleful squeal. Learn how to grow food and get a decent bicycle (he added, sheepishly)?

Do I have to feel bad about this? 

This isn’t a guilt trip. And people are free to ignore the long-tailed consequences of consumption (but that won’t make them vanish). I’m right in there with you. We have daughters in far-flung cities, and we like to visit. And I’m probably not as prudent with the speed limit and gas conservation as I should/could be. Before the pandemic, we were flying to Italy to visit family at least once a year. Listen, advertisers make us feel bad about not having the latest stuff. So in some ways this is a mirror image. Damned if you consume too little, damned if you consume too much. What’s a consumer to do?

But everything we can do to reduce, reuse, recycle, makes a difference. And all those differences of people being more mindful of their consumption, where stuff comes from, where it goes, which groups might be exploited in the process of getting it to us, how industries might be harmed if we switch to more local lives (think truckers, for instance–we’d need to help mitigate for lots livelihoods, that’s something governments and politicians could lead on), their effects are cumulative. Capitalism as an economic system produces a wide array of goods and services pretty efficiently. But a government could–if it were not ‘captured’ by powerful industry actors for instance– could change the rules, and instead of rewarding greed or limitless profits for a very privileged one or two percent of the population, reward companies for producing things that last, that are made from recyclable materials, that can be ‘upcycled’ or repurposed into something else of equal or greater value (the latter not an offer you’ll see at a store anytime soon …). 

It is difficult to take it out of the realm of our feelings, but if indeed humans are overshooting carrying capacity, if we are running out of resources, if it is negatively impacting the environment, it may not be a choice of protecting the environment or priming the economy. Without a healthy environment, what economy is there? Would humans survive and thrive in large numbers? 

This is college. We’re not here to affirm what people know, or to brainwash them, but to guide students through ideas and concepts and points of view that they may not have been exposed to previously. Sometimes learning hurts, to put it bluntly. Awareness of a hyperconsumptive lifestyle can cause some cognitive dissonance. It’s easier for sure if we don’t connect the dots between our consumption (and a throwaway economic model) and where the raw materials come from, and who plays some part in getting them to us. 

In the short run, anyway. You certainly don’t have to embrace any of this, and that’s not my point. I’m just trying to show how connected some of these problems are–global warming and climate change, politics, media, consumption, globalization, even wars fought over resources, internally and between countries (with interested profiteers and/or private militia standing by). Being mindful of our own consumption patterns doesn’t mean cave-dwelling and living off of tubers in the forest (which would quickly be exhausted if everyone did that, by the way). 

And none of this is particularly new. Karl Marx observed and wrote about ‘commodity fetishism’ as a distraction from the exploitation of the working class in the 19th century. Charles Dickens was his literary counterpart–how to distract the poor from reflecting on the nature and circumstances of their poverty? Why wouldn’t wage labor be enough to support a household?

My views on all of this? As a sociologist (and they, like you, are all entitled to their own), I have much hope in humanity, but much less in mass society. So much of this is because where things are consumed is separated from how those things are produced, sometimes by thousands of miles and vast oceans. Most of us no longer live in a society where we know all of our neighbors, maybe even know most of the people in nearby villages or towns, and might have kin ties there as well. And the ones that do still live that subsistence life? They don’t have much power to fend off global economic forces that see resources on or under the ground and dollar signs if they can access them, regardless of the costs to locals who–the audacity–see those resources as the basis of livelihoods to be pursued, and sustainably managed for generations to come.

But hope actually does spring eternal. We can consume less without descending into poverty. We can be mindful of our consumption and our carbon footprints. We can pay more attention to how the news and advertising might be manipulating us into consumption, or how the economic system sometimes seems based on the principle of converting wants into needs, aka ‘invention is the mother of necessity’ (rather than vice versa). We can recycle. Reuse. Demand goods that don’t produce harmful by-products that poison the air or water (in small amounts, yes, but as noted in class, if it’s anywhere, it’s everywhere, including human tissue).

And we will have to if we’re to survive on this planet with our numbers upwards of 8 billion and counting, our resource base shrinking, as is the ‘ghost acreage‘ that has subsidized this massive economic growth.

Yes, Annie Leonard may exaggerate or play loose with a few facts. But is she wrong when she says we have a linear production system, on a planet with finite resources?

Think of the planet like an island, a big one for sure. But nevertheless . . .

Change sometimes begins–for those confronted with new information and contemplating the pros and cons–with mindfulness (or as Tara Button writes, mindful curation). Mindfulness might lead us to treat each other with more forethought, but we have to be shown how consumption patterns might need to be re-thought for that to happen, how placing humans–most of whom we will never meet–above stuff, might have an upside. Those backwards, ‘undeveloped’ societies organized around principles like minimizing risk and reciprocity may have something to teach us after all. 

And by the way, this is not just an American phenomenon. It’s endemic to the industrialized societies of the Global North. Yet it is true that American consumption patterns–our per capita consumption levels–are almost twice those of Europeans, with very little difference in standards of living (and some of that owes to much higher rates of wealth and income inequality in the States). 

Food for thought?