Canada and the World
Current Events with a Canadian Perspective
Last update
19 November 2010
High Consumption
Society is Unsustainable
Bargain-
As a society we are no longer satisfied with enough, we have to have more. 
The 1,500
square foot (139 square metres) bungalow our grandparents raised their bigger families
in has given way to 2,500 square foot (232 square metres) homes. The bigger, the
better, and we can’t seem to have too many bathrooms.
The family sedan has been super-
People no longer mend shoes, they throw them out and buy new ones; same with socks, small appliances, and a host of other consumables.
World Consumption Figures
The United Nations and World Watch both have some interesting figures on world consumption:
- Twenty percent of the world’s people living in rich countries account for 86 percent of total global consumer spending. Meanwhile, the poorest 20 percent account for just 1.3%. (The poorest 10 percent accounted for just 0.5% and the wealthiest 10 percent accounted for 59 percent of all the consumption.);
- The U.S. and Canada, with just over five percent of the world’s population, are responsible for 31.5% of consumption. South Asia, with 22.4% of the population, is responsible for two percent of consumption;
- The average African household today consumes 25 percent less than 25 years ago; and,
- In 2005, China used 26 percent of the world’s steel, 32 percent of its rice, and
47 percent of its cement. Though their per-
capita resource consumption is low, with their large populations China and India look set soon to join the U.S. and Europe as superpowers of consumption.
The Ideology of Pleasure
Given a choice, everyone would like to live comfortably but our greed is destroying the environment, and widening the gap between rich and poor. For many in the Western world, luxuries have become necessities. How did it all happen?
According to author Richard Robbins our buying habits were transformed through marketing and advertising: we were persuaded that possessing stuff would make everything better, including us. Products didn’t just meet needs, they defined us. And, they would make us feel good.
In his 1999 book, Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, Mr. Robbins explains that the “consumer revolution of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was caused in large part by a crisis in production; new technologies had resulted in production of more goods, but there were not enough people to buy them.”
Advertising and marketing systems were developed to create a “new ideology of pleasure.” Consumers were created. However, the downside was that this growing consumption put a strain on the environment by swallowing up resources for production and generating waste.
Advertising Boom
The United Nations 1998 Human Development Report points out the astronomical increase
in the amount of money spent to alter our spending habits. “In 1880, only $30 million
was invested in advertising in the United States; by 1910, new businesses, such as
oil, food, electricity, and rubber, were spending $600 million, or four percent of
the national income, on advertising. (By the mid-
The report adds that “World consumption has expanded at an unprecedented pace over
the 20th century, with private and public consumption expenditures reaching $24 trillion
in 1998, twice the level of 1975 and six times that of 1950. In 1900 real consumption
expenditure was barely $1.5 trillion.”
Statistics compiled by the New Road Map Foundation suggest that all the mind bending has made some dramatic changes in our thinking. The Foundation found that the percentage of college freshmen who reported thinking it is essential to be well off financially was 76 percent in 1987, compared with 44 percent 20 years earlier.
On the other hand, the percentage of college freshmen who thought it was essential to develop a philosophy of life dropped to 39 percent in 1987, compared with 83 percent in 1967.
One of the top ten trends of 1994, according to the Trends Research Institute was voluntary simplicity. But, this idea didn’t seem to catch on: a 2007 Globe and Mail article reported that in 2006 Canadians spent almost $10 billion on furniture, $4 billion on major household appliances, and about $5 billion on television and audio equipment.
Erin Anderssen writes, “Because the average size of our homes has doubled in the past 50 years, we have twice as much space to fill: 27 percent of families, for instance, now own three or more televisions…(and) Canadians spent $700 million on outdoor power equipment, from lawn tractors to leaf blowers.” That’s nearly double the amount spent in 1999.
Image credits
Daryl Mitchell
Colin Smith
© Canada and the World, January 2009
All rights reserved
The United Nations Development Program
Canadian Centre for Pollution Prevention: Sustainable Consumption Youth
Industry Canada: Sustainable Consumption
It seems to be human nature to want to improve our lives. Fire and tools certainly
made us more comfortable in our cave-
- How are the products and resources we consume actually made?
- What are the impacts of that process of production on the environment, society, on individuals?
- What are the impacts of certain forms of consumption on the environment, on society, on individuals?
- What is a necessity and what is a luxury?
- How do consumption habits change as societies change?
- Businesses and advertising are major engines in promoting the consumption of products so that they may survive. How much of what we consume is influenced by their needs versus our needs?
- How do material values influence our relationships with other people?
- What impact does that have on our personal values?
WANTING MORE
“I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Rich is better.” That’s one comment attributed
to the late actress May West, noted for her witty remarks and down-
And, it’s true, to some extent. But, once most of us have the necessities of life, more money and stuff doesn’t make us happier. In fact, wanting more can have the reverse effect.
Psychologists have found that wanting to have more makes us less happy and leaves
us in a never-
The experts say people who spend their time and money on experiences and relationships are generally happier than those who spend on possessions. So, wealth might have its pleasant side, and possessions may give us a temporary lift, but we shouldn’t count on them to make us happy.
As U.S. philosopher Eric Hoffer put it, “You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.”
The happiest people surround themselves with family and friends, don’t care about keeping up with their neighbours, lose themselves in daily activities, become involved in things they’re good at, and they forgive easily. As one report advised, one of the keys to happiness is to have more fun and less stuff.
The U.S. introduced the world’s first credit card in the 1950s with dramatic success, allowing people to buy things that could not have been imagined before for some people.
WORDS OF THE WISE
“There are two ways to get enough: one is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.”
G.K. Chesterton (1874-
“This drive to always want more is based on the misconceptions that having more will make me more happy, more important, and more secure, but all three ideas are untrue. Possessions only provide temporary happiness. Because things do not change, we eventually become bored with them and then want newer, bigger, better versions.”
Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life, 2002
“Lives based on having less are freer than lives based either on doing or on being.”
William James (1842-
“Remember how many closets you have. They are for storing things you aren’t using. In my house, we have six closets, and we’d like to add a coat closet. In addition to our six closets, we also have a basement. And a shed. And a pantry. All pretty full. What is your attitude toward possessions if your closets are bursting with things you don’t use while kids starve by the thousands?”
John Alexander, Your Money or Your Life, 1986
“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.”
Will Rogers (1879-