The ecological shadows of consumption are continually shifting—moving from place to place, advancing, and receding. A rising global population and rising rates of personal consumption are causing these shifts, as are the globalizing pressures of corporations, trade, and financing, the values of new generations of consumers, and the consequences of technological and scientific “advances.” What are the impacts of these shifting shadows on the global environment? Looking at the consumption of products like automobiles, refrigerators, and beef over several generations, we find that the global environmental impacts of these—and a wide range of other—consumer goods have intensified even as environmentalism has grown stronger, a finding that suggests an urgent need to reform political and personal decision making.
Why is this happening? This chapter argues that environmentalism has failed to slow the ways that producing, using, and replacing consumer goods deflect ecological costs into distant places and future generations. Consumption, interacting with political and economic structures, continues to deflect these costs into ecosystems with less capacity and onto people with less power to adapt to them, and it is doing so at a quickening pace. Moreover, even as the globalization of environmentalism reduces the per unit impacts of consumption and imposes global controls through international agreements, the economic forces of globalization are casting and lengthening ecological shadows. Economic globalization is also diminishing the capacity of activists and states to influence the direction, speed, and intensity of the environmental consequences of consumption—a key finding in the case of the harp seal—which helps explain why so many ecosystems continue to slide into crisis even as so many of us celebrate the progress of environmentalism. The nature of that progress has much to tell us about how environmentalism is altering the global political economy of consumption.
The Progress of Environmentalism
A strengthening of environmentalism over the last half century has done much to prod the global political economy in new directions.1 Hundreds of international agreements now aim to protect ecosystems from the consequences of rising consumption, with controls on trading in endangered species, dumping hazardous waste, and emitting pollutants. At the same time, governments everywhere are adjusting domestic policies to mitigate the environmental impacts of economic growth. Examples are easy to find. Rules for storing chemicals and disposing of waste are becoming more rigorous. Standards for auto emissions continue to tighten. Targets for energy efficiency are getting higher. Labeling programs to alert consumers of risks are becoming more common. And the rules for conserving parklands are becoming more exacting.
Governmental capacity in the developing world to implement environmental policies is strengthening as well. Donors like Japan are providing bilateral grants and technical support to assist with training staff. Lenders like the World Bank are giving funds and policy advice, and agencies, as in the case of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), are financing the additional costs of meeting global environmental commitments. Since its founding in 1991, and acting through the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, and the United Nations Environment Programme, the GEF has supported over 1,950 projects in 160 developing and transitional countries with more than $7 billion in grants and with another $28 billion in cofinancing.
Just about every multinational corporation is also pursuing a sustainability policy, commonly under the mantle of corporate social responsibility, with some now investing considerable sums in environmental research and technologies. Many are now following voluntary codes of conduct, such as the chemical industry’s “Responsible Care” code, and have joined voluntary labeling programs to inform consumers of “sustainable” products. A few, such as the Swedish firm Electrolux, are actively working with suppliers, producers, users, and recyclers in developing countries to help them improve their environmental performance. Increasing numbers of corporations are also joining initiatives like the UN’s Global Compact on human rights, labor standards, environment, and corruption.
The capacity of environmental activists continues to increase as well.2 Hundreds of thousands of diverse groups—large and small—have formed networks advocating for change, many repeating messages and images to embed new meanings and emotions into the public psyche, recasting for consumers, for example, the “hunting” or “harvesting” of seals as senseless slaughter. Such changes are not a matter of activists, however, simply “educating” passive consumers. Advertisers, scientists, government officials, and business leaders are all contesting this education, and the crisscrossing of truths, word maps, and stories creates various out-comes. In some cases, a word with a positive ecological meaning (wetland) has replaced one with a negative common meaning (swamp). In other cases, corporate phrases like “unleaded gasoline” have become part of the consumer vocabulary, leaving the impression that firms are doing consumers a favor. In still other cases, environmentalism has done little to influence the language—and thus also the understanding—of average consumers, as in the case of car “accidents.”
The interests and objectives of nongovernmental campaigners are far ranging, from villagers organizing to protect a patch of land in Nicaragua to celebrity advocates like Ralph Nader and Al Gore speaking to a national or global audience. Strategies vary considerably as well, from the “culture jamming” of Adbusters, which runs spoof and counter-ads to get people not to buy products, to the direct environmental action of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, which, under the leadership of Wangari Maathai (winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize) has planted millions of trees in Africa. In this throng of environmentalists, however, a few groups stand out as major multinational players. Thus Greenpeace International, with offices in dozens of countries, has millions of sup-porters worldwide. Friends of the Earth, with about 1.5 million members and supporters, has evolved into the world’s largest network of grass-roots organizations, with over 70 national groups and over 5,000 local ones. And the WWF (World Wildlife Fund/World Wide Fund for Nature), with close to 5 million regular supporters worldwide, operates in over 100 countries, employing nearly 4,000 people and funding more than 2,000 conservation projects.
Increasingly, organizations like the WWF are partnering with companies as well. A few examples show the diversity of these arrangements. WWF-Sweden is working with the multinational food firm Tetra Pak on responsible wood purchases and climate change policies, and WWF-India with the Austrian crystal firm Swarovski to establish a wet-lands visitor center in the Keoladeo National Park in northeastern India. The WWF is also working with the Finnish state forest company Metsähallitus to protect 55,000 hectares (136,000 acres) of old-growth forests in northern Finland. The WWF has Climate Saver deals with the Danish pharmaceutical firm Novo Nordisk and 10 other firms as well— including multinationals like IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Nike, and Polaroid. Together, these 11 firms hope to cut their carbon dioxide emissions 10 percent by 2010—or some 10 million metric tons per year, roughly equal to taking 2 million cars off the roads.3
Branches of many other activist groups—even the once confrontational Greenpeace—are now cooperating more with states and corporations. The labeling programs of nonprofit NGOs like the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) demonstrate some of the ways these activists are working to influence markets and consumption. The Forest Stewardship Council was founded in 1993 by various stakeholders, including NGOs like Greenpeace, the WWF, and Friends of the Earth, retailers like IKEA, as well as various forest firms and indigenous peoples. The council monitors and accredits organizations to certify wood that meets its principles and criteria for forest stewardship. The FSC logo—now the world’s most recognized in the field of sustainable forest management—provides a “credible guarantee” to the consumer “that the product comes from a well-managed forest.” Over the last decade alone, more than 50 million hectares (124 million acres) in over 60 countries met FSC standards, and businesses such as Home Depot—which now sells more FSC-certified wood than any other retailer in North America—now rely on the Forest Stewardship Council to assist with purchasing.4
The Marine Stewardship Council, like the FSC, uses its logo to influence markets, retailers, and consumers. Founded in 1996 by the WWF and the Unilever food conglomerate to promote responsible and sustainable fisheries, the MSC has since expanded its reach and impact, recently certifying, for example, a cod fishery in the North Pacific and mackerel icefish in Australia as “sustainable.” The potential of logos like the MSC’s to influence consumption patterns is much greater when retailers agree to carry only certified products. The pledge in 2006 by Wal-Mart—the world’s biggest retailer—to purchase wild seafood only from fisheries meeting MSC standards could well encourage other major retailers to follow suit (assuming the pledge is honored), with the potential for MSC seafood to gain a significant share of the global market.5
Corporate and consumer responses to the strengthening of environmentalism are opening and expanding many other markets as well. Thus organic agriculture has expanded to over 30 million hectares (74 million acres) of farmland, up from just 5 million hectares (12.4 million acres) in 2005. Thus, too, sales of more energy-efficient products have risen steadily over the last decade, a trend that may even accelerate as governments impose stricter environmental regulations, consumers put more value on conservation, and corporations compete for these markets. Eliminating even seemingly small inefficiencies, such as the electricity wasted by electronic appliances in standby mode, can save considerable resources. In the course of a day, for example, a typical microwave oven uses more energy to power its timer in standby mode than to heat or cook food. Indeed, standby mode now accounts for between 5 and 13 percent of energy consumption for an average household in the First World. More energy-efficient designs, some researchers now argue, could cut this waste by about three-quarters without any loss in performance or convenience.6 Seeing such waste, a few governments, such as California’s in 2006, are now beginning to impose mandatory limits on the amount of energy electronic goods can use during standby mode.
As part of this strengthening of environmentalism, consumers are shifting their choices and practices. Young travelers, for example, now set off to explore the world as ecotourists; some are even “WWOOFing,” volunteering to work abroad with World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. Others are planting urban gardens on rooftops, composting organic waste, and searching supermarkets for food grown locally. Still others are designing buildings to use more solar or wind energy. More people in more cities are participating in curbside recycling programs, rinsing and sorting glass jars, plastic jugs, and tin cans, as well as sifting through piles of cardboard, paper, and newsprint.
What, then, is the net result of the strengthening of environmentalism? Most notably, there have been significant gains in energy and resource efficiency across the globe. Loggers and fishers are striving to maintain consistent yields. Processors and manufacturers are upgrading to conserve energy. Truckers and shippers are packing to reduce waste. Super-markets and department stores are selling more with less shelf space. Consumers are turning off lights and unplugging appliances to lower electric bills. Recyclers are returning resources to the manufacturing cycle in increasing quantities and with increasing rates of efficiency. New product designs are making the recycling stage easier and cheaper. And waste management firms are doing a better job at treating, incinerating, and disposing of garbage.
This is creating a global economy able to produce more consumer goods with less energy and less waste per unit of output. At the same time, more people are purchasing “fair trade,” “organic,” and “sustainable” products; more are now recycling and conserving; and more are using products more efficiently. Indeed, it’s possible, as Bjørn Lomborg did in his bestseller The Skeptical Environmentalist , to fill a book with hundreds of pages and thousands of footnotes of good environmental news. Still, such good news does not mean all is well with the earth as a whole.7
The Failures of Incremental Environmentalism
Stepping back to look at our global environment reveals a disturbing picture. The rising tide of consumption worldwide is swamping many of the gains from stricter environmental laws, higher environmental standards, and the creative energy of environmental activists and philanthropists. It’s also swamping the emerging environmental markets and the lower per unit environmental impacts of manufacturing. Because total consumption never falls unless an economy plunges into a depression or a society implodes into civil war or anarchy, the resulting numbers are daunting. Billions of people are now consuming vast quantities of every-thing, and the totals keep rising. There are thousands of examples. Some, like the annual production of 5 trillion or so plastic bags, have so many different sources and uses it’s not even really possible to keep track.
This relentless rise in consumption in a globalizing political economy of rising trade and investment is casting ever longer and deeper ecological shadows alongside—or sometimes within —the progress of global environmentalism. The solutions to problems posed by consumer goods almost always involve producing more of other goods, as in the case of cars: more car seats, seat belts, air bags, roads, traffic lights, and parking spaces. The solutions seldom involve producing less of a good—as with CFC refrigerators or leaded gasoline—and, even then, replacing that good with another almost always leads to consuming more overall.
Here, as the cases in this book show, the pursuit of profits and economic growth tends to supersede calls for precaution, even in situations of high uncertainty and risk. As the globalization of trade and investment extends the distances between producers and consumers, the resulting process of change tends to displace consequences along ever longer trade and corporate chains connecting distant regions, from Africa to Asia to the Antarctic. Effects spill into the future as well, sometimes taking generations to appear. This obscuring and displacing of environmental costs makes it harder for consumers to perceive—and thus care about—the cumulative impact of seemingly inconsequential personal choices on the global environment. Moreover, producer and consumer prices of many traded products, such as timber and beef, do not reflect the full environmental or social costs of harvesting, processing, producing, transporting, marketing, or disposal. As such, they reduce revenues available for environmental management, a particular problem for regions that rely on natural resource exports to generate economic growth. The resulting low prices for consumer goods made from these resources then stimulate wasteful consumption and overconsumption in importing countries— which helps explain why, for example, supersizing is so profitable for fast-food chains and obesity is increasing worldwide.
Over time, as sovereign states and multinational firms pursue their interests and cost-effective solutions, and as international financing props up economies with foreign debt, a disproportionate share of the environmental costs of such consumption tends to be shifted onto poor people and into ecosystems at risk—from the slums of India to the rain-forests of Cambodia. Because such people and places tend to have less capacity to adapt to resulting changes, this further intensifies the consequences of consumption. As the history of leaded gasoline shows, a phasedown of a dangerous product in some jurisdictions can lead to its export with attendant environmental costs to other jurisdictions in distant lands.
The conclusion here is deeply troubling. Not only is environmentalism failing to produce sustainable patterns of global consumption, much of what policy makers in high-consuming economies are labeling as “environmental progress” is in reality little more than the wealthy world deflecting consequences and risks into ecosystems and onto people with less power—and thus less influence over global affairs.
This in part explains why support for more economic growth among the ruling elites remains rock-solid even with clear signs of an escalating global environmental crisis. Many assumptions buttress this. It’s an individual’s right to consume. It’s a corporation’s function to offer competitive choices. And it’s the duty of a community to ensure the (increasingly material) well-being of its members, of a government to ensure steady economic growth and job opportunities for its citizens, and of an international lending institution like the World Bank to stimulate global economic growth. A near consensus exists on the best path forward to enhance human welfare and promote a more sustainable form of development: more free trade, higher per capita incomes (in real terms), independent multinational companies, responsible global financing, competitive markets, and sound scientific research. The widely held belief is that trade and investment in competitive markets ensure the efficient allocation and use of resources. Financial assistance is necessary here to stimulate growth in less-developed economies, which in turn helps to keep the global order stable. At the same time, scientific research—seen as objective and rational—ensures both that technological progress will occur, thus improving consumer choices, and that the potential dangers of introducing new products will be accurately assessed.
One effect of this near consensus—or what some call “ideology”—is to empower industry scientists, thus enhancing the capacity of companies to obfuscate, placate, and generate uncertainty about the need to act (as well as to bolster fears about the economic consequences of “unnecessary regulations”). They did just that after independent scientists began to investigate the environmental presence and consequences of lead in the late 1960s and of chlorofluorocarbons in the 1970s. Despite much progress since then, today such corporate tactics continue to delay, block, and even gut many environmental regulations.
The technologies of globalization—planes, phones, computers—allow critics of the global order to communicate, and sometimes, as with anti-globalization activists, even organize vocal protests with worldwide media coverage. On the surface, this would seem to enhance the power of critics to induce global change. Yet the process of globalization is embedded in the world economic order—in the production and trade chains of the biggest corporations and most powerful states. For this reason, the net effect of globalization is to reinforce and expand the global culture of capitalism rather than to empower voices critical of consumerism.
Those in power tend to dismiss or ignore critics who argue that the structures of global interactions—free trade, multinational corporations, the United Nations system—give rise to unequal consumption, overconsumption, and wasteful consumption. The policy and corporate worlds label such critics “unrealistic,” “irresponsible,” and “hypocritical.” A few even label them “racist neocolonialists” for denying the poor of the developing world the right to consume. Thus calls to reverse economic globalization or to localize trade gain little traction even among non-profit environmental groups. The world community is gravitating instead toward environmental solutions that fit into—and reinforce—the neo-liberal economic order. Many of the buzz phrases of environmentalism embrace a corporate worldview: “business-NGO partnerships,” “eco-efficiency,” “corporate social responsibility,” “voluntary compliance,” “market mechanisms,” “technology transfers.” Even most nongovernmental organizations, in a compromise for relevancy and funding, are now focusing on small, achievable steps, on, for example, partnering with firms and states to improve the management of a particular ecosystem.
The partnering of some NGOs with governments and firms doesn’t mean activists are no longer challenging the established order. If any-thing, they’re doing so more than ever before, in part, because the Inter-net now provides them a global forum that is both cheap and easy to use. This can contribute to a greater diversity of input, including input from people far removed from the centers of power. Yet it can also produce a cacophony of critical voices over some issues—with the paradoxical result that none are “heard.” And the globalization of markets can make it hard for these groups to influence consumers, especially as more and more public relations wings of firms and governments counter environmental criticisms in the mainstream media. This is the case with the current campaign to end Canadian sealing. Although the Western media will still cover a Paul McCartney landing to protest the hunt, his message and those of other protestors have little influence on the major consuming markets of Russia or China. Even the North American campaign to boycott the Red Lobster restaurant chain has garnered little support—in part, because the Canadian government has become more adept at advertising its “side” of the “truth.”
To reiterate, small, achievable changes are helping to mitigate particular environmental impacts of particular forms of consumption. Yet changes to mitigate the impact of global consumption on the earth’s environment remain too slow and incremental to avoid irreparable damage. The evidence of ongoing—and increasing—harm to people, forests, deserts, freshwater, oceans, and the climate is overwhelming. The conclusion here is inescapable: despite much progress and prosperity over the last half century, if the world hopes to avoid an even greater crisis by the middle of this century, it must transform and accelerate the processes of environmentalism. This raises a final—and most difficult— question: How?