2.

A Good Dose of Materialism Helps a Bad Case of Affluenza

Affluenza has not just changed the world, it has also changed the way we see the world. Short of money? Borrow some. Caught in the rain? Buy an umbrella. Thirsty? Buy a bottle of water then throw the bottle away. Our embrace of ‘convenience’ and our acceptance of our inability to plan ahead is an entirely new way of thinking, and over the past seventy years we have built a new and different economic system to accommodate it.

There is nothing inevitable about this current way of thinking, consuming and producing. On the contrary, the vast majority of humans who have ever lived (and the majority of humans alive today) would find the idea of using our scarce resources to produce things that are designed to be thrown away absolutely mad. But the fact that our consumer culture is a recent innovation does not mean it will be easy to change. Indeed, the last few decades have shown how contagious affluenza can be. But we have not always lived this way, which proves that we don’t have to persist with it. We can change – if we want to.

For millennia, the ability of humans to survive and thrive was based on our ability to think very differently from the way the average consumer in a modern shopping centre thinks. Affluenza is so entangled with our modern culture that its impact on our words and our thinking can be hard to spot, but think for a moment about the term shopping centre. You go to a food market to buy food, and a fitness centre to get fit, so we must go to a shopping centre to get some shopping done, right? We have been acculturated to enjoy the process, not the product.

The ability to plan ahead – to make sacrifices today that deliver benefits tomorrow – is one of the defining characteristics of intelligence, and one of the main traits of maturity. But that isn’t what ‘recreational shopping’ is about.

A famous experiment involves leaving a young child alone in a room with a marshmallow, with the promise that, if the treat is still there when the experimenter returns to the room, the child will be given two more marshmallows. Kids under three typically eat the marshmallow as soon as the experimenter leaves the room, gaining immediate satisfaction but costing themselves two extra marshmallows. The ability to resist temptation is seen as a developmental milestone, a step along the path to maturity.

Like a kid in a room with a marshmallow, people who rely on borrowed money to buy trinkets today are ‘deciding’ to buy fewer things tomorrow. A lot fewer. Imagine you cleared $50,000 last year after tax, and spent an extra $10,000 on a credit card, for a total of $60,000 spent over the year. If you keep earning $50,000 the following year, to get back to square one you need to spend around $39,000 – that’s $21,000 less than you spent the previous year. That’s a cut in spending of more than 30 per cent!

Why is the difference so big? Well, first, you can’t keep spending $10,000 more than you earn each year, so you need to cut your spending from $60,000 to $50,000. And then you have to repay the $10,000 credit card balance, which means you only have $40,000 to spend this year. And then you have to pay the credit card interest. Let’s be optimistic and assume you only had to pay 10 per cent interest on your $10,000 loan, so that’s another $1000 you owe. So after spending $60,000 in the first year, you will only have around $39,000 to spend in the second, or else you will go deeper into debt. That’s a $21,000 hit to your lifestyle from one year to the next. That’s a lot fewer marshmallows.

You can see why people who accumulate credit card debt often struggle to repay it, especially when they think they need to spend money in order to fit in with friends and colleagues. But that’s the plan: the banks and stores offering interest-free periods, loyalty cards and frequent-flyer points are simply giving people a rational-sounding excuse to commit an irrational act. The stores and the banks know that most people won’t repay their loans quickly. The banks don’t make any money from people who use ‘interest-free periods’ in the way they are advertised.

We humans didn’t just evolve to become more rational and mature as we get older; we also evolved an impulse to adapt to complex social settings. The desire to fit in with our peers is not a weakness but a strength. Those who think only about the costs and benefits of an action to them, and who care nothing about the impact on those around them, often end up working as economists. Everyone wants their kids to fit in and have good social relationships, but, as marketing and political strategists know all too well, the desire to fit in can easily be used against people.

If everyone on your street and in your workplace can afford a new car, why shouldn’t you get one too? And if the parents of all your kids’ friends can afford to go overseas for a holiday, how come you can’t? If everyone else is funding their consumption with borrowed money, they can’t all be mad, can they? Culture plays a major role in shaping the choices individuals make. Why else would men wear neckties? Why else would we worry about sending our children to school in outfits that set them apart from kids from all the other schools?

It is no accident that the post–World War II culture of consumerism coincided with the rise of consumer finance; the two phenomena are linked as inextricably as politics and lobbying. The availability of consumer credit helps solve the salesperson’s greatest challenge: turning an impulse into an action. Every salesperson knows that closing a sale is much easier when people don’t need to walk all the way to the bank and withdraw some cash.

Whether it is the smell of fried food pumped out into the street, the books on display on the footpath out the front of the bookstore, or the colour, lights and sound of the slot machines at a casino, closing the sale for any impulse purchase is much easier when people always have the capacity to pay, regardless of their current bank balance.

CONSUMERISM IS THE OPPOSITE OF MATERIALISM

I define consumerism as the love of buying things. For some, that means the thrill of hunting for a bargain. For others, it is the quest for the new or the unique. And for others still it is that moment when the shop assistant hands them their new purchase, beautifully wrapped, with a bow, just as though it’s a present.

But the love of buying things can, by definition, provide only a transient sense of satisfaction. The feeling can be lengthened by the ‘thrill of the chase’, and may include an afterglow that includes walking down the street with a new purchase in a branded carry bag. It might even extend to the moment when you get to show your purchase to your friends and family. But the benefits of consumerism are inevitably short-lived as they are linked to the process of the purchase, not the use of the product. So while consumerism is the love of buying things, materialism is the love of the things themselves – and that’s an important distinction.

Salespeople and psychologists are well aware of this phenomenon. The term buyer’s remorse refers to the comedown that follows the thrill of buying something new. For many, the cold hard light of day takes the gloss off their new gadget, their new shoes or their new car. For some, this can be so overwhelming that they return the item. For a minority, the thrill of buying new things is so great, and the disappointment of owning new things so strong, that they make a habit of buying things they know they will return.

For those interested in the impact of consumption on the natural environment it is crucial to make a clear distinction between the love of buying things and the love of owning things. While consumerism and materialism are often used interchangeably, taken literally they are polar opposites. If you really loved your car, the thought of replacing it with a new one would be painful. Similarly, if you really loved your kitchen, your belt or your couch, then your materialism would prevent you rushing out and buying a new one.

But we have been trained to love the thrill of buying new stuff. We love things not for their material function, but for the symbolic act of acquiring and possessing them – the buzz of anticipating a new thing, of being handed it by a smiling shop assistant, of pulling up at the golf club in an expensive new car. For many, if not most, ‘consumers’, it is the symbolism of a new handbag or new car, its expensive logo proudly displayed, that delivers happiness, rather than twenty years of using a material object.

It makes no sense to conflate materialism and consumerism. Indeed, our willingness to dispose of perfectly functional material goods and gadgets is the very antithesis of a love of things. The process of buying new things and displaying new symbols might confer status or other psychological benefits, but the pursuit of such symbolic objectives is largely unrelated to the material characteristics of the products being purchased and disposed of.

Symbols matter, and psychological benefits matter. The fact that people are willing to spend their own time and money to show they fit in or to make sure they stand out should be of little or no concern to others. But for those who are concerned with the impact of 7.5 billion humans’ consumption decisions on the natural environment, the choice of such symbols matters enormously. Whether people choose to signal their wealth by spending money on huge cars or antique paintings is arbitrary, but that does not mean the environmental consequences aren’t highly significant.

Put simply, if we want to reduce the impact on the natural environment of all of the stuff we buy, then we have to hang on to our stuff for a lot longer. We have to maintain it, repair it when it breaks, and find a new home for it when we don’t need it any longer. If we want to cure affluenza, we have to get more satisfaction from the things we already own, more satisfaction from services, more satisfaction from leisure time and less satisfaction from the process of buying new things.

Such a cultural change – from the love of buying to the love of owning – would radically reshape the economy. It would reduce the profits of those who sell us stuff for largely symbolic purposes. Such a cultural change will be hard to achieve, but surely it can’t be as hard as convincing people that commuting to work in cars is convenient, or that ‘recycling’ a plastic water bottle after just one use is sustainable?

WE NEED TO STOP SACRIFICING MATERIAL THINGS FOR SYMBOLIC PURPOSES

Throughout recorded history, making sacrifices has been important in human culture. Whether it was virgins, slaves, goats or grain, the idea was pretty much the same: offering up something valuable to a deity now would deliver greater benefits in the future.

In rich countries today, billions of tonnes of scarce natural resources and billions of hours of human effort are sacrificed in the apparent hope that if we produce and dispose of enough things, we can ‘make the economy strong’.

The idea that the more a society wastes, the wealthier it becomes, is patently absurd. But those who challenge this belief sometimes make the case for change by saying that we need to lower our standard of living, or rein in our lifestyles. That is, those who encourage people to consume, borrow and dispose at a greater rate are promising to make the economy strong, while those encouraging thrift and conservation freely admit that, if their advice is followed, things will get worse! It’s not much of a sales pitch.

It would be better to argue that the fewer resources we waste on things we don’t really need, the more resources we will have to produce the things we really want. Just as it is absurd to bake a tray of muffins purely to consume the crunchy muffin tops, it is bizarre to spend billions of dollars buying consumer goods we don’t need in order to generate a small slice of company-tax revenue, which we can then spend on health and education.

Around the world, opinion polls show that people in rich countries can see the problems with the cycle of work, buy, consume, die. Just as the link between slaying a goat and next year’s rainfall must have appeared tenuous to the average Mayan farmer, the link between wasting lots of stuff and solving poverty appears weak to the average Western consumer, despite all the talk of making the economy strong.

Similarly, repeated surveys across many countries suggest that most people would be happy to have more leisure time and less money, if they could do so without risking their job.

Yet despite these widespread concerns about affluenza, and despite widespread support for the view that cultural change might be desirable, those promoting change often accept – or even celebrate – the argument that reducing our wasteful consumption and increasing our leisure time must result in a worse quality of life. If we are to cure affluenza, we must convince people that they can actually have a much higher material standard of living, and a much less stressful personal life, if they eschew the pursuit of symbolic consumerism and embrace materialism instead.

THE MAIN PURPOSE OF MATERIAL GOODS IS OFTEN SYMBOLIC

In addition to taking pleasure from the act of buying something new (consumerism), a major reason that people throw away perfectly functional things is because they have ceased to perform their symbolic function. That is to say, the things we buy – such as a car, a pair of running shoes or a handbag – can in most cases be seen as performing two entirely separate functions, a material one and a symbolic one.

As every dealer knows, a new car is not just a means of getting from A to B. Even people who buy the cheapest new car they can find know that they could have paid even less if they bought a second-hand car. As well as buying a form of transport, they are simultaneously buying something intangible: status, identity or peace of mind.

For some, the symbolic value of having the latest-model car, the running shoes that the best-paid sportspeople are wearing or the handbag that the most famous celebrity is carrying far outweighs the material purpose served by a car, running shoes or a handbag. In such cases, when a perfectly functional possession ceases to perform its symbolic function well, or at all, it must be replaced. Going out of your way to throw a functional object into the recycling bin is often the last symbolic act for that particular material thing.

The cultural rules that shape such decisions are as complicated as they are contradictory. For example, a man can wear the same dinner suit to countless balls and parties, while a woman who wears the same dress twice feels (often rightly) that she will be criticised.

While wearing antique jewellery might be considered prestigious, ‘re-gifting’ an unused and unwanted Christmas present is often thought to be stingy. Similarly, while a much-loved leather jacket might be appropriate in many settings, suit pants with holes in the knees most likely are not. A pair of ripped denim jeans, on the other hand, can sell at a premium. Symbolism is a complicated but profitable business.

The watch industry has developed a creative response to the apparent dilemma it faces. The sales pitch for a $10,000 watch is that it is a ‘timeless’ masterpiece that can be handed on to one’s children, yet it is hard to sell a lot of watches if customers keep them for decades and hand them on to their children. The solution? Suggest that watch connoisseurs collect a whole array of watches that will last a lifetime.

A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

Imagine a society in which consumers wore their status on their chests and shoulders in the way that soldiers wear medals and epaulettes. Imagine if we could spend our own money (or borrow other people’s) to purchase, quite literally, status symbols. That is, rather than indirectly signal our willingness to spend large amounts of money on clothes, shoes or sports cars in order to send a signal about our income, what if we could simply buy badges with the price we paid for them printed in clear type?

Could it ever happen? Well, car companies make billions of dollars selling near identical cars at quite different prices after they bolt on different badges or other bits of plastic to signify how ‘luxurious’, ‘prestigious’ or ‘sporty’ a particular model is. (Bizarrely, plastic spoilers and other elements of most ‘sports’ packages have actually been shown to slow vehicles down.)

Some suppliers of electrical appliances sell identical products under different brands, allowing consumers to decide how much status they would like to have on display in their lounge rooms. Distributors of milk, too, sell identical milk in differently branded bottles at vastly different prices. Factories that produce brand-name shoes one day often churn out cheap shoes the next; literally the only difference is the symbol glued onto the side. If people knew they were sometimes buying products that were actually identical under the logos, it would be a different story.

The purveyors of luxury goods are often in dispute with their Chinese manufacturing plants. The factories often produce much larger quantities of the product than requested, and then sell the surplus as pirated goods at low prices. The only thing that is fake about them is that they do not have permission to attach a particular symbol (a symbol that says ‘luxury’).

HOW DOES CULTURE CHANGE?

While the term culture war is often thrown around in public debate, it is rare to find people who admit to being actively engaged in it. In Western democracies people often believe that culture is innate, and that its evolution (to the extent that it does evolve) is driven by the economy or technology.

Of course the purpose of nearly every advertisement on television is to change our culture. The aim of individual advertisements is to make people feel insecure about something they were once relaxed about – Do visitors think your bathroom smells? Are your armpits as smooth as your face? – or to make them attach status to something they were previously unconcerned about – Did you know that your choice of flooring says a lot about you?

Over decades, countless advertisements have normalised the idea that we should always be on the lookout for new products to solve new problems. There are no advertisements that remind you that your friends visit you for the pleasure of your company, not for the forest smell in your bathroom; no one would make money from that ad. Similarly, there are no ads reminding you to pay off the debts you have already accumulated before thinking about what else you might buy. Most countries have some form of ‘truth in advertising’ laws, but such laws only prevent small lies about product attributes. There are no laws to prevent advertisers suggesting that a new car, a new soft drink or a new credit card will make you relaxed, popular or sexy.

Advertising is the most visible and most expensive form of cultural influence in Western countries. Of course, the hundreds of billions of dollars spent telling us how cheap or essential products are must, by definition, drive up the cost of those products. Bizarrely, if the products really were essential, the expensive ads would be a waste of money and we wouldn’t need to be encouraged to buy them. Again, it’s okay for ads to tell big lies.

But it’s not just the ads – the products themselves also shape our culture. Smartphones have transformed the way we communicate, navigate and shop, but they have also transformed our attitude to expensive consumer goods. The high visibility of our mobile phones, compared to our dishwasher or desktop computer, means that their symbolic value is far higher than that of other electronic goods. In turn, the invention and popularity of smartphones is accelerating our cultural willingness to dispose of perfectly functional material goods well before they have ceased to be functional. The fact that so many old mobile phones remain hidden in household cupboards probably reflects the fact that we know phones are too valuable to throw out, but that doesn’t stop us from replacing them.

Planned obsolescence – achieved by producing regular ‘upgrades’ that quickly render a functional product out of date, or by deliberate design that fails quickly and cannot be repaired – also plays a major role in shaping our culture. After decades of products that break easily or don’t last, people adapt by lowering their expectations. Similarly, the more that producers offer only short warranties, refuse to manufacture spare parts and make it difficult to open, let alone repair, an expensive device, the easier it is for them to sell you a new model.

Whether firms are punished for producing low-quality goods that don’t last long, or rewarded by consumers looking for the latest opportunity to demonstrate how fashionable they are, is entirely a matter of culture. Similarly, cultural choices determine whether scientists and engineers design products that are more durable or harder to repair. If large numbers of middle-class consumers refused to purchase products that were expensive or impossible to repair, or that soon became obsolete, then some profit-seeking companies would respond by trying to give the public what it wanted.

Of course, it is not just advertising and products that shape culture. Politicians, media proprietors, artists, authors, comedians, architects and community groups all do so too. No one doubts that Hitler shaped German culture, and no one doubts that Gandhi shaped Indian, and English, culture. Policy, too, shapes culture. A national decision to provide universal childcare, universal health care or give women the vote reflects a social preference, and the operation of such a policy will likely reshape the culture even further. As I discuss in later chapters, the role of policy in shaping and reshaping culture is easily underestimated.

It’s hard to see where culture comes from. Does wearing your grandfather’s watch or buying a brand-new one give you higher status? Economists can no more contribute to this question than they can help us decide whether we should buy Coke, Pepsi or no-name cola. But the fact that economists have little to add to our understanding of culture doesn’t mean that cultural change does not have significant economic consequences.

The private sector has become expert in selling status at a time when the public sector has largely vacated the terrain. Once upon a time, teaching, nursing and policing were highly admired professions. The pay was never the best, but the community supplemented the modest income with a generous helping of status. But sustained attacks on public education have led to professions such as teaching slipping down the ranks of the most respected professions. A UK survey compared the career goals of school kids in 2009 with those twenty-five years earlier. While the top three professions in 1984 were Teacher, Banker and Medicine, by 2009 they had morphed into Sports Star, Pop Star and Actor/Actress.¹

WON’T TECHNOLOGY SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS FOR US?

It is pretty strange to think that the solution to the problem of how to dispose of billions of plastic bottles each year – bottles that could carry water for centuries – is to find a way to make them break down faster. It’s even stranger to think that the solution to the obesity epidemic is to spend billions of dollars developing weight-loss drugs.

There’s no doubt that the profit motive has given rise to the single-use water bottle. And developing the scientific knowhow to make a perfectly clear plastic bottle that is strong enough to store water for years but weak enough not to last for centuries would be impressive. But we must note that the search for such a ‘perfect plastic bottle’ is underpinned by our cultural wish to use plastic bottles in a very strange way. While science and economics play a supporting role, the key driver is our willingness to spend more per litre on bottled water than we spend on petrol – and then, having done so, to throw away today’s bottle and pay for a new one tomorrow.

When we understand the centrality of culture to so much of our economic activity, it becomes clear why the debate about technological change – is it the cause of the world’s problems or the solution? – is as heated as it is unhelpful. Like debates about what is ‘fair’, what is ‘sustainable’ and whether or not football should be called soccer, there is no meaningful answer to the question of whether technological developments are good or bad. Nuclear medicine has saved many, many lives, but nuclear accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima have killed thousands of people, devastated the lives of millions, cost billions and will harm the natural environment and human health for millennia. To be clear, no technology is good or bad, although the uses to which it is put can be.

Technology will not determine the fashionable length of skirts next year or the fashionable width of neckties, nor will it decide whether in ten years’ time we will still use billions of disposable pens each year, or whether we will aspire to own just one high-quality refillable pen for our entire life. Indeed, technology won’t determine whether we need pens at all, or whether our fingertips and screens will replace paper and ink.

Just as a culture of vegetarianism is a far better predictor of a country’s demand for beef than the price of meat, the presence of a wasteful culture is a far better predictor of the demand for paper plates than the price of the plates. A growing number of US households now regularly eat dinner from paper plates to avoid the need for washing up. Whether this trend takes off in other countries will be affected more by culture than by regulation or so-called market forces.

The decision to build the Fukushima nuclear power plant near the sea in a region in which earthquakes and tsunamis are common was not the fault of the scientists and engineers who pioneered nuclear science. Nor was the decision to build a large number of nuclear power stations before any long-term sites for the safe storage of nuclear waste. The decision in some countries to let people drive without seatbelts or own automatic guns reflects a cultural view of risk, as do decisions about nuclear power, climate change, air pollution and genetic modification. Science will always create new possibilities for causing harm or rendering help. Culture dictates which choices we make.

Culture determines how much meat we eat. It also determines whether we are likely to eat dog, horse, pig or cow meat. It determines whether we buy our pets special beds or let them sleep on old blankets. It determines whether we are likely to buy alcohol and tobacco, and whether we go out for coffee, make it ourselves or abstain from wicked stimulants. Culture determines whether we are likely to work on Sundays or shop on Sundays, and how likely we are to buy lots of things that our loved ones don’t need in late December. Culture drives the shape and the size of our economies, and economists typically assume – as we have seen, with ‘all else remaining equal’ – that culture is fixed and unchanging. It’s not.

IBM executives once believed that the world demand for computers might be in the dozens, not the billions, but they weren’t alone in their inability to predict the future. Culture will determine whether it is fashionable to have a big, fast car that you can drive yourself or whether it is more prestigious to be picked up by a small, autonomous electric car that allows you to work and play as you move around your city. Culture will determine whether genetic modification of human embryos is seen as playing God, or as giving your kids their best chance in life. Culture will determine whether working long hours is a sign of status and importance, or evidence of poor time management.

Technology can broaden the range of possible options, and change the relative cost of different products. But culture determines which options are desirable – and once we decide something is desirable, we don’t care much about its price. That’s why we happily pay so much for bottled water and complain about the price of petrol. Culture shapes the economy, and affluenza has shaped our culture.

BUT DON’T MARKETS DRIVE CHANGE?

The idea that ‘market forces’, like some sort of gravitational pull, are somehow beyond the influence of mere mortals is as widely held as it is debilitating for those who want to change the world.

Markets don’t force us to do anything. Indeed, markets don’t want anything, need anything or demand anything. Markets are simply a place where buyers and sellers come together. Whether a market is a physical place, like a fish market, or a virtual space, like eBay or a stock market, it is the motivations, desires and relative power of individual buyers and sellers that shape outcomes, not some external ‘force’.

When a plane crashes and hundreds of passengers die, we inevitably inquire into the cause of the accident. You could argue that all plane crashes are caused by the same thing: gravity. But such an explanation would be meaningless. The existence of gravity is taken for granted; what matters is who did what, and when. Did the pilot make an error? Did a maintenance worker make an error? Was a key part of the plane faulty when it left the factory? When hundreds of people lose their lives, the community demands answers.

But when a financial market collapses and millions of people lose their life savings, you’ll often hear people dismissively blame ‘market forces’. Doing this is a great way of ensuring that individuals duck responsibility, and of convincing the millions of people who elect democratic governments that some reforms are impossible because ‘the market would react angrily’. What that really means is ‘rich people who own a lot of shares would react angrily’.

The market didn’t open our cities up to cars, communities did. They did so by making it legal to drive cars in cities, by funding the building of sealed roads, by appropriating the land the roads need. And, in many cities, by ripping up the tramlines that provided cheap and convenient competition for cars.

Those who claim that ‘you can’t stand in the way of the market’ are often the same people who claim that we must win ‘the war on drugs’, and that to legalise the sale of marijuana, for example, would be to give in to drug dealers. They are also often the same people who oppose the legalisation of abortion and the legalisation of prostitution. The line between culture and economics is far blurrier than many in power would like to admit, but for those interested in driving change it is critical to understand the distinction between the two, and how they interact.

MATERIALISM AS A DRIVER OF ECONOMIC CHANGE

If people loved their things, cared for them, maintained and repaired them and then handed them on to others who did likewise, the global economy would be transformed, as would the impact of human activity on the natural environment.

But if people continue to embrace the benefits of ‘convenience’ and pursue the symbolic appeal of novelty, then, as billions more people emulate the consumption patterns of today’s middle-class culture, the impact on the natural environment will be devastating.

It is physically impossible for the production of stuff to grow exponentially for another thousand years. It’s probably impossible for it to grow exponentially for another hundred. And if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change, the trajectory of human consumption will need to change radically in the coming decade. It’s not complicated. Everyone knows that we need to change direction; the debate is about the timing.

Consider the following. Billions of tonnes of food are thrown away each year because fruit has spots on it, because leafy vegetables show signs of snails, or because producers put misleading ‘best before’ dates on their packaging. Millions of tonnes of oil are transformed into plastic bottles, which, while lasting for thousands of years, are intended to be used once and then thrown away.

In 2015 American consumers spent over US$14 billion buying over 40 billion litres of bottled water. Bottled water consumption has been growing steadily for the past decade, except in 2008 and 2009, during the global financial crisis. Despite its decline in those years, no deaths through dehydration due to a shortage of bottled water were reported.

The bottled water industry is preparing for continued growth. Indeed, according to the international bottled water association: ‘Bottled water’s versatility makes it suitable for consumption at any time of day and in just about any setting or situation.’² The association also states: ‘Consumers’ interest in beverages that deliver benefit above and beyond simple refreshment also contributes to the quintessential hydrating beverage’s ascension in the beverage rankings.’³

Whether consumers around the world choose to double their spending on bottled water in the coming decade or decide to carry their own water will not be determined by the relative cost of bottled water and the cost of a thermos. It will be determined by culture.

Whether people see access to consumer credit as a source of convenience or as a cost to their lifetime spending will be determined by culture.

Whether they see brown spots on a banana as a signal to eat it straightaway or a signal to throw it away will be determined by culture.

And whether buying goods that need to be disposed of each year is seen as a source of status or a source of shame will be determined by culture.

While no one is in charge of culture, there is no doubt that some people, companies and countries put far more effort into shaping it than others.

The following chapters argue that those who want to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, reduce deforestation or increase the ability of people to spend quality time with their friends, families and communities will need to spend as much time thinking about the cultural drivers of the problems they seek to solve as developing ‘policy solutions’ to them.

The best cure for environmental problems is prevention. And the best way to prevent human consumption patterns from doing enormous environmental harm is to cure our culture of the disease of affluenza.

Craig Bennett

It’s very curious what politicians, the media and the public get excited about, and what they choose not to get quite so excited about.

Take, for example, air pollution. Government scientists estimate that air pollution is contributing to the premature deaths of around 40,000 people in Britain every single year. The total cost to public health is estimated to be around £20 billion, approximately 16 per cent of the annual budget of the National Health Service.

And yet, the response of most British politicians to this crisis has been to do the bare minimum, and even then to dither and delay as much as is bureaucratically possible (which is quite a lot). The UK government has, after all, lost a series of court cases because it is failing to meet basic European Union air quality standards.

Just imagine, for a moment, that it wasn’t our petrol and diesel cars, buses and trucks causing 40,000 premature deaths every year, but – oh, I don’t know – a Middle Eastern dictator spraying chemical weapons over the population. How would we, the public, respond? How would we expect our politicians to act?

Would we be happy if the government were to publish a plan with the resolute aim of resolving the problem more than twenty years hence? No, we most certainly would not. We would expect an immediate end to the threat, within days, and wouldn’t tolerate government focus on anything else until it had been dealt with.

How would newspapers respond to proposals to consider only ‘targeted’ measures in some of the most heavily affected areas? They would call for the government to be ousted and for Churchill to be brought back from the grave.

The deadly problem with air pollution is that, first, we’ve all become used to it, and second, it’s caused by our own actions. For these simple, arbitrary reasons, we place much less importance on ending it than if it were being inflicted on us by a hostile foreign power.

And yet, the very fact that it is caused by our own actions means the solutions are so much easier to deliver, and come with a much higher probability of success than, for example, military action aimed at stopping an aggressor. We could solve the scandal of air pollution very quickly, if we wanted to. But in most cities, most of the time, we choose not to.

Craig Bennett is the CEO of Friends of the Earth (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) and honorary professor of Sustainability and Innovation at the Alliance Manchester Business School.