Danny ChenChristmas and New Year is coming. Followed by the traditional festivals, businesses will offer various discounts and festival special pricing to encourage consumption. As a climate stakeholder, we should not encourage consumption, right?
Shopping is a tricky problem when supporting the climate movement. We will need to learn the capital market mechanism to answer this question. Our current capital market is an imperfect solution with 3 benefits:
1. Focus on Humans: The capital market is designed by humans to solve human problems.
2. Encourage Meritocracy: Competition is encouraged to allocate resources efficiently and effectively.
3. Advocate Democracy: A transaction is made with freedom of choice that both parties agree.
Shopping is a transaction process that supports people reach their end goal more effectively through competition in the capital market, compared to the bartering. It is designed by human to solve the human problems. Stopping people from Consumption without giving alternative solutions to achieve their goals does not solve the problem.
So why do people advocate reducing Consumption?
The core reason is that we would love to minimize the negative external impacts of the products and services we purchase. Most of our current products and services do not consider the external impact(ex, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity dependencies and impacts, plastic pollution, water usage, etc). As our global population grows toward 10 billion, if we continue to support these businesses to continue the negative external impacts with our purchase, our Earth ecosystem will not be able to support our current needs in the foreseeable future.
A better climate movement is to actively support eco-friendly products and services with positive external impacts. Oftentimes, these products/services are new and expensive. In a traditional capital market, where external negative costs do not reflect directly on our financial burden, people will choose the most effective solution, which often is the cheapest option (assuming all functions are similar).
Some people might argue that overconsumption is a problem in our society. However, if all the overconsumption is from the products and services that made from the agricultural/industrial wastes that clean up our land and ocean with solar and wind energy usage, seldom people will fight against with. Same concepts applies to the top 1% wealthiest.
For the top 1% wealthiest, taking private jet for their daily commuting is not a problem, if every single components of the private jet and the fuel used mitigates the negative external impacts to our environment. To transit into a sustainable future under the capital market, eco-businesses need the market demands from the consumers, whether their consumers is top 1% or the bottom 1%. They need the revenue to survive and thrive.
Although living consciously with less materialistic lifestyle is encouraged, we should know that:
Overconsumption is a more subjective judgement with incomplete information such as different preferences, limitations, and scenarios. It is easy to judge or criticize others for overconsumption , but it is hard to know their actual situation. Instead of advocating consumption reduction, inviting stakeholders to practice responsible Consumption is a more practical way.
