consumption
Introducing the Luxury Cap Act
by Daniel Wortel-London
Private planes are one example of carbon-intensive luxury goods. (Hush Hush, Flickr)
Even as nearly a billion people go hungry every day, the wealthiest one percent of the world’s population is purchasing ever-more expensive toys. Yacht sales grew by an average of 22 percent per year between 2014 and 2022. Private jet sales have boomed since the start of the COVID pandemic. The global luxury jewelry market, already huge at $56.5 billion, is expected to grow 8.2 percent between 2023 and 2028. And the luxury car market is projected to double from $1.17 trillion to $2.55 trillion over the same period.
This kind of luxury consumption can be criticized not only on ethical grounds, but also on scientific ones. Luxury transportation contributes disproportionately to humanity’s carbon emissions. Jewels and furs produced for the wealthy lead to biodiversity loss and air and water pollution. Add the economic injustice and health damages faced by the millions of men, women, and children who work to produce these luxury “goods” and it’s clear that luxury consumption is a powerful driver of social and ecological “bads” across the world.
To help curb the excessive consumption of the uber-wealthy, CASSE proposes adoption of a Luxury Cap Act (LCA) by the U.S. Congress. It benefits from successful precedents. Canada, for example, passed a Luxury Tax applying to new cars, boats, and airplanes in 2023. Connecticut and other states levy sales taxes on luxury clothes and vehicles. Even the federal government passed an excise tax on boats, aircraft, jewelry, and furs in 1990, although these provisions were repealed during the Clinton administration.
As environmental damage and inequality mounts, conspicuous and wasteful consumption by the wealthy is a logical and defensible target for action.
The Full Cost of Luxury
What is the cost of luxury? Transportation offers instructive examples. For starters, aviation is responsible for around 3.5 percent of global warming, but more than half of that damage is caused by only one percent of the world’s population.
The wealthy’s outsize impact from flying results from several factors. First, they fly most frequently, with 70 percent of flights taken by just 15 percent of people. In addition, wealthy people often travel first class, leaving a carbon trail as much as seven times larger than the economy-class passenger’s. And of course many wealthy fliers have their own jets. These produce 5–14 times more pollution per passenger than commercial planes. In 2020, private flights in the USA pumped as many tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as all bus travel nationally.
Jewels arrive to market at great social and environmental cost. (International Gem and Jewelry Show, Flickr)
Meanwhile, luxury yachts emit up to 1,500 times as much carbon dioxide as a family car. In the words of the environmental news outlet EcoWatch, they are “by far the worst asset to own from an environmental standpoint.”
Luxury automobiles are similarly wasteful: Compared to standard vehicles, they emit more carbon and use uncommon materials like rare woods. One study found that luxury vehicles produce, on average, 50 percent more carbon emissions than their conventional counterparts.
Carbon pollution isn’t the only harm caused by luxury consumption. Take jewelry, for example. Silver and gold mines cause enormous damage to ecosystems. Nine percent of the Amazon forest was lost between 2005 and 2015 as land was cleared for mining operations. Mining of precious minerals also contributes to air pollution via emissions of atmospheric mercury. These mines also use toxic chemicals like cyanide and sulphuric acid to separate metals from ores. The social and ecological costs of these operations can be horrific. In Nigeria, 400 children were killed in 2011 due to polluted drinking water from mining operations.
Then there’s luxury fashion. A recent study of nine luxury brands—like shoe and bag vendor Prada and general luxury retailer LVMH—found that the companies emitted 13.5 million metric tons of C02 to create products in 2021—as much as the economy of Lithuania. Luxury brands are often worse than their mass-market competitors at addressing labor exploitation in their supply chains. And the chemicals used to process luxury furs such as mink and sable contribute to water and soil contamination. In fact, fur clothing has the highest environmental impact of any textile.
These are just a few of the ways that luxury consumption damages the environment. The list could easily extend to a broad range of luxury goods and services from elite resorts and spas to private helicopter and airline tours. None of these indulgences is necessary, and all are harmful. Of course, curbing luxury consumption won’t solve all our environmental problems. But reining in these excesses would be a good start toward creating a more sustainable and equitable world.
The Luxury Cap Act
The Luxury Cap Act (LCA) is meant to curtail the production and consumption of socially and ecologically harmful luxury goods and services. It will empower the Treasury Department to impose taxes on these goods and services, a tried and true method of lowering demand. The LCA is designed to be both a stand-alone bill and a component of the larger Steady State Economy Act.
Following a short title, findings of Congress, and definitions, Section 4 of the LCA targets frequent flyers. It imposes an escalating tax beginning with the passenger’s second flight and increasing with each flight thereafter in a calendar year. The Federal Aviation Administration will be responsible for creating the database to track flight frequency for implementing this section. Exceptions are made for flight crews, passengers and crew on emergency and public service flights, and similar persons who need to fly regularly. Section 4 serves as a complement to CASSE’s broader Forgoing Flights for America the Beautiful Act, which proposes a broader curb on flying and airport expansion more generally.
Yachts like these are symbols and drivers of our ecological overshoot. (Frans Berkelaar, Flickr)
Sections 5, 6, and 7 impose taxes on luxury aircraft, boats, and passenger vehicles. The tax will equal ten percent of the price of any vehicle listed at more than $557,000 (in the case of aircraft), $223,000 (boats), and $70,000 (passenger vehicles). Aircraft used for seeding, fertilizing, and training, and boats used for commercial activities, will not be subject to this tax.
Sections 8 and 9 address furs, clothing, jewelry, and accessories like handbags and watches. Both sections impose taxes equal to ten percent of retail price greater than $10,000. Section 10 provides for adjusting these taxes for inflation, and Section 11 clarifies the provisions governing taxation in cases when luxury goods are leased rather than sold. This section reflects congressional precedent: in 1990 Congress passed the Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990, which levied taxes on furs and luxury clothing, as well as on luxury yachts, cars, and planes. Most of those taxes were gradually eliminated by Congress, but the LCA re-instates them.
The Luxury Cap Act may be revised pursuant to reader responses and the input of CASSE allies.
The excesses of the one percent cannot be allowed to degrade our planet any further. Such excesses constitute a problem serious enough to warrant federal legislation. Thus the Luxury Cap Act. Those who are not limited in lobbying (like a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization) might consider bringing it to their representatives in Congress.
Daniel Wortel-London is a Policy Specialist at CASSE.
The post Introducing the Luxury Cap Act appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
How to Avoid the Scarcity Scare
by Gary Gardner
The thumbprint of materials excess. (Jahn Reihhard, CC-BY-2.0)
In congressional testimony last November, Isabel Munilla, an official from the Department of Energy, gave an alarming assessment of U.S. reliance on foreign minerals. For 31 of 50 critical minerals, she warned,”…the U.S. relies on other countries for more than 50 percent of our requirements…Our reliance on non-allied foreign sources for these materials is neither sustainable nor secure.” Munilla employed what we might call the “scarcity scare”—the panic that supplies of critical minerals may be insufficient for all nations to participate in the transition to clean, sustainable economies.
It is, indeed, a scary thought. Many governments, under pressure to meet the climate obligations agreed to in Paris in 2015, have made renewable energy, electric vehicles, and other low-carbon technologies central to the future of their economies. Leaving some countries out of the transition will be bad for them and bad for the planet.
It’s also worrisome if the hand-wringing around scarcity portends conflict among nations scrambling to secure supplies. Adjectives like “strategic” and indeed “critical” suggest that the minerals are worth fighting over. The Director of the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program observes that very quickly, “access to critical minerals has risen to a national security priority in the US.”
Seemingly overnight, technologies that analysts have long touted as great for greening the economy—renewable energy and pollution-free mobility—now cast an ominous shadow as sources of potential global conflict.
But are our choices so constrained? Is our future so binary: either an unstable climate because we lack the materials needed for clean technologies, or resource wars as nations fight for grams of samarium and molybdenum?
It seems to me short-sighted to insist that the glass is half empty. Sure, the situation is worrisome if we start by assuming a planet of ever-growing economies. But change the starting assumption to a global community committed to a steady state economy, and the picture brightens considerably.
The Scarcity Case
Supply concerns surrounding critical materials emerge for several reasons. First, critical minerals used in the clean energy transition are in greater demand than in economies built on fossil fuels. Consider that a typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car, and an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired plant, according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development.
Source: International Energy Agency
In all, the World Resources Institute reports that five critical minerals are needed for rechargeable batteries, five for electric vehicle motors, ten for wind turbines, and two for power lines. Their broad use is part of the reason they’re considered critical. The other reason, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, is that they have “a supply chain vulnerable to disruption.”
Supply vulnerability increases with growth in demand, which is what many analysts see ahead.
Supply disruption becomes still more plausible when we factor in the particular sources of supply, as critical minerals are often concentrated in a few countries. Indonesia, Chile, Peru, China, and the DRC, along with the Philippines, are the primary sources of critical materials, while processing activity is heavily concentrated in China. The concentrated nature of these supplies gives supplier nations leverage over the terms of trade.
Of course, recycling can help to augment supplies, but analysts are clear that recycling will be insufficient to meet demand. Even if we achieved 100% end-of-life recycling (which is thermodynamically impossible), recycled materials would meet only 60 percent of 2050 demand. Among the obstacles to the highest levels of recycling is the difficulty of recycling metals that are mixed with other materials. In addition, some recycling is labor-intensive and involves the use of hazardous chemicals and heat; work would likely be done in low-wage nations that may have insufficient worker safeguards.
The bottom line is that these minerals are often not abundant enough to preclude the punishing prices arising from the projected demand. The International Energy Agency estimates that supply from existing mines and those under construction could meet only half of projected lithium and cobalt requirements and 80% of copper needs by 2030. Other sources see rapidly accelerated demand for critical materials like graphite, lithium, and cobalt, ranging from a sixfold increase by 2050 (according to the World Bank) to a 20–40 times increase (International Energy Agency).
Governments React
The scarcity scare has governments on their toes. The USA, often described as resource-rich, lists 50 minerals as critical, at least ten of which are essential to the transition to a clean economy. For eight of those ten, the USA depends on imports for more than three quarters of its supply.
China is concerned, too, for similar reasons. Xi Jinping has promised to phase out production of internal combustion engines by 2035 and the Chinese government worries about the supply of key minerals like lithium, of which Australia is a major producer. In July 2023, China introduced export controls on two critical minerals, gallium and germanium, apparently to conserve its stocks. China supplies 54 percent of U.S. demand for these minerals.
Material
Major Suppliers
Supplier share of total global supply (%)
Cobalt
Democratic Republic of the Congo
70
Lithium
Australia, Chile, China
90
Graphite
Turkey, Brazil, China
Highly concentrated
Rare earths
China
60
Nickel
Indonesia, Russia, Philippines
55
Source: Edelman and World Resources Institute
Europe and the USA have also acted to secure supplies. The EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act, for example, streamlines the permitting process for mining, which has resulted in approval of Europe’s first lithium mine, in Portugal. In the US, the Inflation Reduction Act seeks to increase domestic sourcing of critical minerals for use in electric vehicles, batteries, and renewable power.
Meanwhile, supplier countries are gearing up to ensure that they get a fair share of the revenue they will earn in the scramble for critical minerals. The Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development (IGF), with more than 80 member countries, works to promote policies and regulations in the mining sector; for example, by ensuring that a larger share of mineral processing happens in the source country, and to promote international cooperation on taxation of the mining sector.
A Better Way Forward
Supply-side concerns could be significantly diminished with a reduction in demand. Yet this solution seldom comes up in discussions of the critical minerals challenge. (as googling will corroborate). Decreased demand for private electric vehicles and electricity would translate to less pressure on critical material supplies. The World Wildlife Fund suggests that a policy of curbing demand could reduce overall materials needs by more than 50% between now and 2050.
Reducing consumption begins not with sacrifice, but with eliminating redundancy in our consumption patterns. The World Economic Forum reports that 39 percent of workers globally have employer-provided mobile phones or laptops. It recommends that manufacturers configure devices to provide user profiles that sharply distinguish work and personal use. Voila! A substantial reduction in demand for phones and laptops, and the materials that power them.
Meanwhile, car-sharing advocates have long recognized that most cars spend 95 percent of their day parked, a highly inefficient use of the materials in them. In the case of electric cars (which constitute a rapidly growing share of the global fleet), these are often critical materials. Imagine every two-car household replacing one car with a combination of car-sharing, public transportation, biking, and walking. Analysts project that car-sharing alone will increase by more than 20 percent annually to 2032. Suppose this could reduce the global car vehicle fleet by 25 percent (not 50 percent, as many households have only one car). Such a shift would reduce substantially the demand for critical minerals for electric vehicles.
Is living with one car a sacrifice? Not in my case. Like many steady staters, I bike to work daily, reducing our family’s car needs to a single vehicle. Fresh air and beautiful scenery are welcome bookends to my workdays. My waistline is thinner, and my wallet fatter, because of our “sacrifice.” Would that all sacrifice were so enjoyable! Of course, occasionally my wife and I want our sole car at the same time. In those cases, we work it out, which is good for marital solidarity. In sum, I struggle to find the sacrifice in our experience.
Commuters, sans the demand for critical materials. (Kristoffer Trolle, Flickr)
Another way to reduce demand is to sign up for a subscription phone service, if you can find one. Fairphone in the Netherlands provides incentives for people to keep their phone in good condition over a long period. When it wears out, users send the phone back to Fairphone for repair, refurbishment, or materials recycling. The subscription model means Fairphone has a strong incentive to offer phones that they can easily disassemble and reuse over and over. If all phone companies (and other high-tech companies) were to use such a model, the need for minerals in electronics would surely plummet.
Finally, consider purchasing products designed for longevity. Smart phone makers today (among many other merchants) are shameless in incentivizing sales of new devices, even to owners holding a perfectly functional one (Upgrade today!). Best to help shape the market by shopping with companies that sell durable products instead. One such e-commerce site, Buy Me Once, features products that the company judges to be durable, including some electronics.
Sustainability has long held the quiet promise of yielding not only environmental and social benefits, but a precious dividend as well. It promises greater international collaboration toward a shared prosperity, and ultimately, the material foundation for a peaceful world. “Steady statesmanship in international diplomacy,” as Brian Czech called it in Supply Shock. Collaboration on building clean economies worldwide could be a robust step in that direction. But achieving this requires ending the scarcity scare, loosening our resource grip, sharing the abundance that surrounds us, and committing to the steady state economy.
Gary Gardner is CASSE’s Managing Editor.
The post How to Avoid the Scarcity Scare appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
It’s Time to Ban Earth-Damaging Ads
by Daniel Wortel-London
Cigarette ads are restricted in many countries. What about ads for other unhealthy products? (Clotho 98, Flickr)
Advertising works. A recent study by the Advertising Association finds that every dollar of ad spending drives up sales by $21. Ads get us to recognize brands and hum jingles even if we are annoyed by pop-ups. They are particularly effective in driving the kind of unsustainable consumption that is destroying our planet.
This begs a question: Should advertising be limited for the sake of the environment? Is there political demand for such restriction? Is it even legally possible? The answer depends on which ads are banned, in what places, and at what times. But there’s a growing movement to ban advertisements for the most egregiously wasteful products and services, from fossil fuels to air travel.
For example, ads for fossil fuels have been banned in France and in 33 cities around the world. Associations of physicians, students, and climate activists have taken part in the campaigns like the fossil fuel ban. These efforts merit being replicated and expanded to spread a broader message: There’s a limit to how much consumption our planet can tolerate.
Promoting Pollution
What are the societal costs of advertising? We can start with climate change, whose roots in fossil fuel use are well known. Fossil fuels account for more than 75 percent of all global greenhouses gases and 90 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions. Then there are the health problems caused by these gases: In the United States alone, 350,000 premature deaths are attributable to air pollution.
It gets worse. Ads not only drive planet-wasting consumption, they are designed to convince us that this waste isn’t happening. Ads for fossil fuel companies routinely boast of their commitments to “clean energy” even as they pour money into the most polluting energy technologies. A recent study found that 60 percent of the advertisements produced by the five biggest oil companies contain “green claims,” even though they spend only about 10 percent of their capital budgets each year on low-carbon investments. A 2022 investigation by the House Oversight and Reform Committee concluded that “fossil fuel companies have been misleading the public about their purported commitment to reduce emissions.”
What you won’t find in a typical fossil-fuel ad. (Arby Reid, Creative Commons 4.0)
There’s a name for this kind of deceit: greenwashing.
To a certain extent, public bodies have begun to crack down on greenwashing in advertisements. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has produced a new “green guide” that seeks to prevent companies from making deceptive environmental claims. The City of New York has filed a lawsuit against major oil companies for violating the city’s consumer protection law through “false advertising.” Actions like these are commendable.
But it isn’t enough to hide false claims. Promoting consumption of any kind, no matter how “green,” produces environmental impacts. To stay within the planet’s environmental boundaries we need to limit consumption. This means reducing advertisements that promote particularly wasteful products such as fossil fuels, and those directed toward people who consume the most, namely, the super-rich.
A Movement Grows
The good news is that there is a growing movement to ban such advertisements. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change identifies advertising regulation as a policy measure that can reduce carbon emissions significantly. A panel of 12 prominent scientists has advised the Dutch Minister of Climate and Energy Policy that “a ban on fossil ads is essential for the sustainable transition.”
And citizens are responding. Health professionals in Canada are launching a campaign to ban fossil fuel ads in their country. There are similar national campaigns in Australia, as well as local campaigns in Cape Town, Berlin, and Geneva. Such campaigns have been supported by groups including the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, the Green Student Movement, 350.org, Extinction Rebellion NL, and the Global Climate and Health Alliance.
There’s a growing movement to ban fossil-fuel advertisements around the world. (Matt Brown, Wikimedia)
They are getting results. In 2022 France passed a climate bill that banned advertising of all fossil fuels. Amsterdam, Sydney, and Liverpool have adopted similar bans in their jurisdictions. Thirty-three smaller cities in Australia, England, and the Netherlands have passed similar legislation.
That’s just the beginning of ad bans on environmentally problematic products. At least two cities in the Netherlands have banned industrially farmed meat and dairy products—industries with enormous environmental impacts—from public billboards. Other movements are pushing to extend the range of bans to cover products related to aviation, cruise ships, or automobiles. France now bans advertisements for gasoline-powered cars, and smaller cities have passed similar broadly impactful bans.
The USA Needs to Catch Up
Meanwhile, there isn’t a strong movement in the USA to ban wasteful advertising. We’ve seen ads banned on other grounds, of course. Cigarettes have been banned since the early 1970s, prompted by evidence linking smoking to low birth rates. Many states ban advertising that depicts minors gambling, and drives to further ban online advertisements for sportsbooks are in place at the federal and state level. But there isn’t a similarly strong drive to ban products because of their environmental impacts.
Many U.S. states have banned some advertising for gambling: Will they do the same for oil products? (Andie712b, Wikimedia)
This is in part because the issue of climate change and limiting consumption isn’t as broad a public concern in the USA as smoking was in the 1970s. In general, Americans seem less open to banning advertising than people in other countries are. A recent UK poll found that only 26 percent of respondents supported a ban on meat advertisements, as opposed to 45 percent who opposed. These numbers are likely to be even more lopsided in the USA. Without public support, federal agencies will have little cause to prohibit ad bans altogether. It will take evidence-backed, multi-level buy-in for federal departments to engage in such bans.
Then there’s the question of free speech. Since 1980, government bodies have been required to meet four criteria to regulate advertisements. They have to show how an advertising message is misleading; identify a legitimate public interest in curtailing the message; show that their regulation would advance that interest; and most importantly, apply a “least restrictive means” test showing that they are suppressing only as much speech as is proportional to their goal.
Prospects for Widening the Bans
Can a ban on fossil fuel advertisements or other ads that promote environmentally harmful products or activities pass these kinds of tests? They would very likely pass the first three criteria; the fourth might depend on the specific ban proposed. But merely attempting to pass such bans would constitute a win for the planet and its people. That’s because the point of these bills is not just to create new laws. It is also to raise awareness of the issue of over-consumption and the kind of advertisements driving it.
If we’re serious about conservation, ads for wasteful vehicles like SUVs must become history. (Zenel Cebeci, Creative Commons 2.0)
Advocates of advertising bans will need to be smart about their approach. They can make restrictions on advertising more palatable by starting on the local level and targeting a few high-impact product categories. And they can make sure that targeted products have an easily identifiable and limited demographic base.
Rather than starting with fossil fuels, for example, it might be smarter to focus first on fuel-inefficient vehicles. A recent study in the UK found that the richest fifth of households in England are 81 percent more likely to own a heavy-emitting car than those in other income bands. This ratio probably holds for many other product categories. Let’s target them.
Ultimately, a post-growth society will not spell the end of all advertising. In fact, we might see more advertising for things like regenerative enterprises, social non-profits, and other low-impact firms. But to reach that point, we need to shrink the most wasteful sectors of our economy and reduce aggregate production and consumption. Targeting advertisements is an excellent strategy for beginning this crucial work.
Daniel Wortel-London is a Policy Specialist at CASSE.
The post It’s Time to Ban Earth-Damaging Ads appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
Time to Make a Material Difference
by Gary Gardner
The close of COP28. Cause for celebration? (United Nations)
Well, COP 28 ended yesterday with (seeming) agreement to (sort of) walk down the fossil fuel ladder toward a (not for a while) sustainable future. Geez! It’s almost 2024, more than half a century since Limits to Growth was published, and the human family is in a pouting mood. Why is it like pulling teeth to do the right thing, sustainability-wise? Why are we sleepwalking toward a cliff?
There are many reasons, of course. But maybe one is that we don’t dare to think creatively, imaginatively, and, least of all, systemically. Too many of us seem to be governed by inertia and comfort and content with incremental change. We seem to miss the radical urgency of the moment.
What would it look like if we insisted on living like responsible humans, caring for each other—and for the planet that cares for us? What might it look like, for individuals, companies, and governments? My guess is that at each level, the principals would step back, look at the big picture, and work to respond to our crisis in as comprehensive and systemic a way as possible.
The Power of One
Each of us is an economic actor with a responsibility to shape a sustainable economy. “Consumer” is a title we should take seriously, given that consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of the U.S. economy, and it’s largely folks like you and me doing the shopping. If individuals drive the economy, it follows that we could play a major role in shrinking its size, one person at a time.
Many people already live simply and soberly, but the poster child for simplicity might be Lauren Singer, who gained prominence a decade ago when her YouTube video showed her entire waste load for a year. Odds and ends like clothing labels and fruit stickers that she’d been unable to offload constructively were squeezed into a single, 16-ounce Mason jar. On later videos Singer reported that the same jar held five years’ waste, suggesting that she had mastered an essentially zero-waste lifestyle.
Buying in bulk is part of a zero-waste lifestyle. (Laura Mitulla on Unsplash)
And that’s her systemic secret: commitment to a zero-waste lifestyle. It’s a comprehensive philosophy that extends well beyond curbside recycling to minimize her materials imprint on the planet. Singer recycles, composts, buys in bulk, and favors second-hand goods over new. She steers clear of plastic. She avoids packaging almost entirely, largely by making her own toothpaste, lotions, deodorant, and cleaning supplies, as her Trash is for Tossers blog describes.
Singer is an extreme example, to be sure, but her experience suggests what a systemic approach to consumption might look like. A zero-waste ambition looks and feels different from a promise to recycle aluminum cans, or to embrace meatless Mondays. Yet however marginal Singer’s experience, she asserts that it’s not difficult once you learn how to do it. She adds that her zero-waste lifestyle has left her richer, healthier, and happier—not a bad return at all, and benefits fully realized only because of her comprehensive systemic approach to it.
We consumers may not be ready to follow Singer’s example fully, but we have ample room to reduce our consumption and waste. In contrast to the nearly unappreciable contents of Lauren’s mason jar, the average American garbage can ferries nearly 1,800 pounds of waste to the curb each year. Each pound eliminated saves material, of course, but also energy, and it avoids changing the climate. Add these to richer, happier, and healthier, and you have an incentive package for the comprehensive approach to reducing one’s personal materials footprint.
Tapping Corporate Engines
Corporate PR departments work hard to display corporate efforts to green their operations. Just check out any of the annual corporate sustainability reports—80 percent of Fortune 500 and S&P 500 firms have one—that claim steady improvements in firms’ efficiency and waste reduction.
Yet corporate efforts to reduce materials use are often narrow in scope and ambition. Consider Delta Airlines, which is seeking to ditch the single-use plastic cups used in its in-flight beverage service. The company has designed and is now testing new paper cups made of materials that work well with hot, cold, and alcoholic beverages and are recyclable. If trials of the new cups are successful and the cups are adopted across the Delta network, they will eliminate nearly 7 million pounds of single-use plastics each year, the airline says.
Kudos to Delta for working to eliminate plastic cups. But couldn’t it have thought more creatively and systemically about its plastic cup problem, with greater benefit to itself, society, and the environment? Why not stop providing cups altogether and encourage passengers to bring their own reusable versions? Offer incentives, or maybe collaborate with designers of water bottles to build a cup into their design, once a feature of thermoses. Those bottles are already tucked into the side pouches of many a backpack carry-on!
Broader thinking like this could help create a societal commitment to re-usable products and reduced waste, a continent-sized version of Lauren Singer’s reuse habit. It would require a savvy PR campaign to prepare the flying public, but if successful, wouldn’t Delta’s enlightened practice spread quickly to other airlines? And from there to cafeterias, coffee shops, and virtually all take-out restaurants across the land.
Today’s ubiquitous water bottles could be designed for reuse and could replace disposables. (Jonathan Shembere, Pexels)
And not just cups: Why not replace disposable dinnerware generally with beautifully designed mess kits that are lightweight, durable, collapsible, and portable? In the process, businesses that rely on disposables could convert a cost center (the current disposables), into a money-maker (the reusable eating ware), sold at any food establishment and even on Delta flights!
Of course, any systemic critique of Delta would extend beyond its beverage service. The elephant on the plane is not in the cabin, but in the wings, in the form of jet fuel. One of the most difficult economic sectors to mitigate, aviation sports a large and growing carbon footprint because each flight uses tons (literally) of fossil fuel. Indeed, if global commercial aviation were a country, it would have been sixth among the world’s largest emitters of CO2 in 2019 (before flying took a dive during the COVID pandemic). Passenger air travel constituted the highest and fastest growth in individual emissions, even as the efficiency of aircraft and flight operations increased steadily.
Meanwhile, initiatives like “sustainable” aviation fuel, electric aircraft, and hydrogen aircraft all have serious drawbacks, leaving the industry still heavily dependent on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. More creative and systemic thinking will be needed, outside-the-box thinking similar to swapping out disposables for reusables. A start in this direction is the innovative partnering practice some airlines have with rail companies to eliminate short-haul flights in favor of train travel. At least that starts to approach the solution—ending the habit of fossil-fueled flying—needed to reform airlines.
So yes, Delta’s work to eliminate single-use plastic is good. But it’s hardly the system-level overhaul we need from corporations.
Changing the Rules
If many individuals are slow to challenge the consumerist mindset, and if corporate efforts are unambitious in their sustainability ambition, governments are well positioned to set the stage for comprehensive, systemic change to alter patterns of materials use. On this front, encouraging news was announced by the European Union last week. The European Parliament and Council agreed provisionally to legislation “to make sustainable products the norm,” an unprecedented intervention in product design on the continent. The ‘take-make-use-dispose’ economic model used in industrial economies for decades “can be avoided,” they announced.
The new Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) is one piece of the EU’s Green Deal, which seeks to put the entire EU economy on a sustainable footing. The ESPR will replace the EU’s 2009 Ecodesign Directive, which largely focused on energy efficiency. By contrast, ESPR covers a wide range of products and broadens the scope of requirements applied to each product, with the expected effect of decreasing the economy’s resource requirements and increasing their circularity.
Look at the adjectives describing the vision of the legislation; they are concepts that have excited sustainability researchers since the 1990s. Products should be durable, reusable, repairable, recyclable, and made of recycled materials. They should not contain “substances of concern” that reduce recyclability. Premature obsolescence—limiting a product’s lifetime via design features—will be prohibited. Destroying unsold products will be discouraged and in some cases, banned.
ESPR: Maybe we’ll value old and lasting over new and fleeting? (Wikimedia Commons)
The circularity and sustainability criteria should apply to a broad range of goods, including intermediate ones. So they will cover iron, steel, aluminum, chemicals, and textiles, as well as goods like, furniture, tires, detergents, paints, and lubricants,. And the law will apply to any product sold in the EU, including imported products.
The regulation also creates a “Digital Product Passport” to help consumers make more sustainable product choices. The ‘passport’ is essentially an eco-certification scheme that uses product tags to convey measures of the product’s sustainability.
Of course, the legislation could contain as many loopholes as it does inspiring passages of progressive law, so caution is in order. It’s not clear that it applies to online sales, for example, or to agricultural products, which have a huge environmental footprint. And it’s not clear if products will be evaluated using life-cycle analysis, to give the fullest understanding of their impacts, although some analyst believe it will. And it would be smart to expect industry blowback as the law is progressively applied.
The European Parliament and the Council must formally adopt the new regulation, which is expected in the first quarter of 2024. Within nine months after adoption, officials will unveil the first working plan, identifying the first products to be targeted. Product-specific requirements will be spelled out in further legislation. Each product will have its own transition period. If all goes well, the legislation’s impact could begin to be felt within a year or two.
Close, but no Cigar
Of course, none of the exemplary cases cited or suggested here would guarantee a steady state economy. They are about making resource use more efficient rather than capping or scaling back total materials use. But surely zero-waste lifestyles, redesigned travel, and rigorous rules for a materially simpler economy is more congruent with steady statesmanship than simply recycling, re-designing paper cups, or a focus on efficiency. A comprehensive, systemic approach could make all the difference.
Suppose, for example, that beyond a focus on minimizing waste, people worked to reduce their entire materials footprint. They’d be keen to reduce their carbon footprint, of course, and they’d likely find that the simplest and surest path is to greatly reduce the sheer volume of material in their lives.
Shopping for services rather than goods would likely help. Appreciating nature—at parks, on hiking trails, even on neighborhood walks—rather than seeking distraction at the mall or on TV would deliver meaning with a minimum of material. Pursuing friendships and community involvement is another materials-lite path (in principal, at least) to an enriched life. The guiding ethic: tread lightly on the earth.
The future of transatlantic travel? (For a few). (Dave Smith, Flickr)
Suppose, too, that corporate commitment extended beyond greening its margins to a wholesale rethinking of its very purpose. Airlines would have a particularly tough go of it, as there is no avoiding the reality that fossil-fueled flights would have to end, and alternative fuels and technologies are distant and in any case still materials-intensive. Airlines could think creatively and look to the long run, exploring investment in cleaner modes of transport such as airships and sailing ships. But the emissions and materials math would have to pencil out, and it’s hard to imagine that sustainable long-distance travel could survive at today’s scale. (Which points us back to the individual, who will have to lower expectations of the material base of their lifestyle.)
At the government level, suppose that the EU applied ESPR aggressively across all product categories, and that it continued to lower its population growth rate, which averaged less than 0.2% annually over the past decade. These developments would arguably constitute a credible down payment on a resource-use cap and a steady state economy. But it would require an unflinching commitment to radically reducing the material footprint of the EU economy.
Approached systemically and creatively, the timid signs of progress commonly cited today could be enlarged and multiplied, boosting our confidence that a steady state economy could be within reach. No more weasel words in final communiques of international sustainability conferences. It’s time to step up our game and insist on seeing a material difference.
Gary Gardner is CASSE’s Managing Editor.
The post Time to Make a Material Difference appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
Christ Didn’t Shop for Christmas Presents (Much Less Jets and Guns)
Editor’s note: This essay originally appeared December 23, 2020 and is slightly modified.
by Brian Czech
What happened to the little, sustainable Nativity set? (CC0, Source)
With Christmas two weeks out, folks are making tough decisions about Christmas presents. The public is rattled by inflation, credit card debt is through the roof, and gift-giving is a real strain for many. My advice for anyone stressing out over Christmas presents is simple: Take a break from the shopping!
It’s true that little kids galore are expecting presents from gramma, grampa, and Santa Claus. But is that a good thing to encourage? This year provides a chance for children to learn about the real meaning of Christmas. If you’re a Christian, the meaning should be simple enough to convey. Even if you’re not, Christmas 2023 is still an opportunity for teaching kids about material scarcity and the need to conserve. They’ll need such lessons for the 21st century!
With or without a current pandemic, isn’t it high time for a re-set on the material expectations of Christmas? Christmas lights, reindeer ornaments, inflatable Santas, larger-than-life snowmen, Big Dots of Happiness…and that’s before we even step inside! Then in the house we have Christmas trees (chopped down or plastic), another set of lights, presents under the tree, and basically the whole set of lawn ornaments in miniaturized form, on and about the tree. Half of this junk is thrown out and replaced the following year.
What happened to the little Nativity set, re-used for decades? It told the real story of Christmas, or Christ’s mass. Made out of wood, no electricity needed, and possibly even hand-carved, it also told a story of sustainable consumption. I like to believe there’s no coincidence here. I believe, in other words, that Christianity and sustainable consumption are supposed to go hand in hand.
Christ Wasn’t Much of a Consumer
I’m no theologian, but I was born and raised a Catholic. I read the Bible and learned the Catechism. All that teaching left me with plenty of uncertainty that plagues me to this day. Yet there’s one thing I’d bet the farm on: Christ was no conspicuous consumer.
Jesus wasn’t into shopping. (CC0, Source)
The New Testament—supplemented by biblical archeology—has a lot to say about Christ’s lifestyle, starting with food, clothing, and shelter. His diet was typically at the subsistence level, with plenty of fasting. He probably wore a mantle (a type of shawl), sandals, and a one-piece tunic; “extremely basic.” It’s unclear whether Christ ever owned a home. As a child, he lived in a house with Mary and Joseph. A passage in the Book of Mark suggests he might have had a house as an adult. Yet he spent much of his life on the road—on foot—teaching whoever would listen, giving little thought to living quarters.
If Christ had a house at all, I’m guessing it lacked a swimming pool, wine cellar, and gold-plated bedroom.
Let’s face it: Jesus wasn’t much of a shopper. The one time we find him interacting in the marketplace, he’s driving the moneylenders out! This we read in the Book of John:
“In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!’”
Of course, those were the days long before the study of “political economy” and debates over laissez-faire capitalism vs. socialism (democratic or authoritarian). It would be crazy to call Christ a Keynesian, a Georgist, or a Marxist. But he sure didn’t find much redemption in the peddling of goods. That’s enough to know with regard to Christmas shopping.
“Prosperity Gospel”— A Theological Oxymoron?
Despite all we read in the Bible about Christ living frugally, we have (primarily in the USA) televangelist pastors who preach a so-called “prosperity gospel,” the notion that Christian faith will lead to material wealth. So, when you give to the church (such as for building a bigger church), it’s sort of a financial investment mixed in with your witnessing for Christ. Theoretically, then, you’d have more money for Christmas presents later.
This prosperity gospel goes back to the late Oral Roberts, and disciples today include the likes of Joel Osteen, Kenneth Copeland, and the unbelievably named Creflo Dollar. Dollar owns two Rolls-Royces, a private jet, and multi-million dollar mansions. Another prosperity preacher is Jesse Duplantis, known for inspiring his followers to buy him private jets. Evidently he’s had four of them—“just burning them up for the Lord,” he says. His latest ride is the Falcon 7X. It flies near the speed of sound with noise-limiting acoustic technology, a Bluetooth-enabled entertainment center, and an in-flight shower.
Whatever happened to the teaching of Christ, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24)? Maybe with a jet, you can just blast your way on through there before anyone notices.
That reminds me of a little story. One time I was giving a talk to a small group of faith leaders in Washington, DC. They’d asked me to talk about limits to economic growth and provide a synopsis of the steady state economy. We then went around the group, maybe ten people in all, and discussed the issues. One minister stroked his chin for a moment and then, deep in thought, stated matter-of-factly, “The steady state economy; now that’s the Kingdom of God.”
As I recall, he was an Episcopalian pastor. While he didn’t elaborate with a theological argument, I think he was getting at the fact that Christians wouldn’t be conspicuous consumers. Instead, they would conserve, caring for creation and leaving room for future generations and non-human species. That resonated with me, and it seems consistent with the life of St. Francis and the teachings of Pope Francis, most notably in the Laudato si’, the Pope’s encyclical on “Care for Our Common Home.”
When it comes to consumption and consumerism, who should we put more stock in: Pope Francis or Creflo Dollar?
Which Collection of Semi-Automatic Rifles and Handguns—Plus Designer Ammo and Shooting Accessories—Would Jesus Haul Out with the Hummer to the Thousand-Acre Moving Target Range?
As you might guess from the heading, I’m going full-preacher mode here. Normally I’d have little standing for preaching purposes, but the notion of “God and Guns” is some of the lowest-hanging fruit I’ve ever seen for an ethical critique. It makes as much sense as “Broccoli and Buns.” It’s a pair that just doesn’t fit. That’s relevant here because guns and ammo—and copious paraphernalia—are increasingly common Christmas presents.
St. Francis of Assisi established a Catholic tradition of caring for creation, a tradition underpinning the theology and teachings of Pope Francis. (CC BY 2.0, Enrique López-Tamayo Biosca)
I could use any number of sectors or products to illustrate how ludicrous it is to think of conspicuous consumption as congruent with Christianity. Maseratis, mansions, McMansions, fancy furniture, thousand-dollar bottles of wine…let’s keep them all in mind. Yet something is particularly, exceptionally, ridiculously ludicrous in the case of guns, and more broadly the “shooting sports” sector.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not against guns per se—far from it. But here’s the thing: The NRA likes to point out that guns don’t shoot people: people do. Well, by that logic, I’d like to point out that guns didn’t coin the idiotic slogan “God and Guns,” either. Neither did God. Gun nuts did.
And of course, a lot depends on the type of gun. I’m not against mufflers either, but I don’t like those outlawed mufflers designed to make the most noise. Not many of us do; that’s why they were outlawed! Similarly, assault rifles with hundred-shot drum magazines are obnoxious as hell and let’s face it: they reek of evil.
I grew up in a hunting and fishing culture and I’ve always had a rifle or two (for deer hunting mostly) and a shotgun or two (for turkeys and such). One good firearm lasts a lifetime and more. I take a certain amount of pride, too, in the lost art of using a single rifle shell per year for venison (maybe two if the freezer is low) and maybe a handful of shotgun shells. I don’t mind hearing a few shots in the distance during deer season. In other words, I’m still not against inconspicuous consumption of guns and ammo. I also understand the country-boy resistance to Second Amendment infringement.
But we’re not talking about the Second Amendment here. We’re talking about a 21st century cultural phenomenon of conspicuous consumption in the shooting sector. It will play out over the holidays in counties across the country.
Most city dwellers are oblivious to this, but we have an entire subculture out in the countryside these days, including weekenders from the city, driving out with Hummers and SUVs, then jumping onto four-wheelers and spending countless hours pumping out rounds—hundreds per hour—from semi-automatic assault rifles, shooting targets spiked with Tannerite and leaving a nasty footprint specific to the shooting sports. It may not always be visually conspicuous, but if you’re within a mile, your ears will be polluted with the sound of wanton waste of time, energy, and lead.
When gun nuts get rambunctiously political, the visuals can be uglier still!
Results from a Google search on “armed protesters” (12/8/23).
I don’t know about you, but I can’t picture Jesus Christ with an AR-15. No way. Not for hunting, protesting, or anything at all. Branded as “America’s rifle,” this phenom of the market hits the bullseye only if you’re shooting for a noise-making, peace-wrecking, lead-polluting, obnoxia-producing Christmas present!
In the Name of God
If you’re a Christian—and maybe if you’re not—you have to be really careful with the name of God. That’s the Third Commandment! The “God and Guns” crowd might want to stand down and reload with new rhetoric. Or the God crowd, at least, might want to separate themselves from the gun nuts.
It’s one thing to pair, for example, “God and Guts” (for bravery) or “God and Grits” (for salt-of-the-earth sensibility). Or even something vaguely (very vaguely) geopolitical, like “God and the Grange.” But for God’s sake, “God and Guns?” That’s about as edifying as “God and Gambling” or maybe “God and Gossip.”
Just because you have a right to gamble, gossip, or bear arms doesn’t pair it with God. You have a right to shell peanuts in church, too, but that hardly makes it godly. In my opinion, when you start hearing “God and Guns” chatter, the country’s on the road to perdition.
Similarly, the “prosperity gospel” reeks of “green growth” deceit. It’s just an excuse for extravagant living and greed. I bet Christ would have nothing to do with it.
He wouldn’t be buying many Christmas presents, either. (He might donate to Smile Train, though.)
Brian Czech is CASSE’s Executive Director.
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