Conspicuous Consumption and the Environmental Movement

Comments welcome (and appreciated!)

Working outline

- Accepting that Veblen's tehsis is correct, ow can the environmental movement survive in a world of conspicuous consumption

History of the Environmental Movement

- Gained mainstreem awareness with Silent Spring

- Remained mostly a fringe movement for the next 40 years

- Now, is cool to be eco-friendly (proliferation of eco-friendly household products, cars, organic foods, etc)

The Taste of Eco-Friendliness

- Eco-friendly products are less of an example of a movement, and more an example of upper-middle class taste. Has all of the trappings of what Veblen discussed in his section on taste

- Makes items more expensive w/o becoming more useful (Veblen 50)

- Showing one's values through consumption habits (not a new practice) (Veblen 51)

- Perfect example of what Veblen meant when he discussed the love of hand-crafted items. Now is a sign of not just beauty, but political awareness. Link: Pottery Barn tables (Veblen 55-6)

Failings of Eco-Friendly Products

- Environmental problems aren't just caused by consumption of the wrong things, they're caused by consumption in the first place

- Many enviro-friendly products are still worse for the earth than no product at all

--> Eco-friendly cleaners are still a waste of plastic, and not really that necessary to begin with

--> Organic tables still hurt the environment if they wind up in a landfill after 10 years

Harnessing Conspicuous Consumption

- How do you get people to consume less if conspicuous consumption is really what makes the world go 'round?

--> It's much easier to change people's taste than to make more fundamental changes (Veblen 88)

- Still, environmental movement may be able to channel the forces Veblen describes to its own ends

--> Institutions change in reaction to external stimuli (Veblen 83, 84)

--> That change is usually in response to a stimulus that is economic in nature (Veblen 85, 86)

- Cost of gas is rising

- When the water tables dry up water will become expensive

- Heating costs will rise

- People will decry any shift in behavior that is too alien to them (Veblen 89)

- So let people have their conspicuous waste, but emphasize wastes of TIME, not of goods -- try to shift back to conspicuous leisure

- We've already seen conspicuous leisure. It's not too foreign, and retrogression is easier to achieve than progression (Veblen 86)

- Can help the environment by attempting to get people to stay away from buying products they don't need

- Can also channel wastes of time to environmental ends: Community gardens, washing clothes by hand, etc. See: No Impact Man

This Time Magazine article, "The Clean Energy Scam," is somewhat tangential, but it reminded me of your paper topic. The demand for farm-grown fuels, it seems, is beginning to have negative environmental impacts.

-- JuliaS - 31 Mar 2008