The Greening of Gavin

Hurry – Last Days!

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If I told you that this blog was closing down in a few days, what you be your reaction? Would it be to read more of it, or urge me to continue writing? Or would it be to wonder about my motivation?

Well, rest assured dear reader.  This blog is not closing down; I just wanted to prove a point.  This is just another of my observational consumerism posts.

So did you experience an emotional reaction? I know I did by just typing the words!

Let me share a little secret with you. This method of provoking an emotional reaction is a very basic marketing ploy that urges you to buy stuff when you don’t really need it. Others statements similar to this are “xx% off everything”, or “Sale – Limited Time Only”, or even “Closing Down Sale”. From my experience, these are usually false promises, and the mark down in price is not real, neither is the closing down sale. Sales are rarely for a limited time, and most stores have a ‘Sale’ sign in the window all year round.

These false promises are a tool to instil a sense of urgency, or a feeling of missing out on something. The problem is that this tool works on most people and not always in the consumers favour. They walk into the store, and buy a sale item, thinking that they got a bargain when they really have not. Anyone who has worked in the retail sector would have seen this time and time again.

So what was my motivation to write this? Well, my lunchtime walk today was to a Direct Factory Outlet mall, which was anything but. It was designed to appear to be a factory outlet with a polished concrete floor, Spartan fittings, and sale signs everywhere, even a few signs like the title of this blog post. It was just another piece of the marketing con job.

People were obviously engaged with their surroundings, because the dollars were flowing. I spent half an hour browsing a $5 discount bookstore, which had some titles I was interested in, but upon closer inspection, the non-fiction books I looked at were dated and new information had been published. Not worth the paper they were printed on. Others however were buying like there was no tomorrow.

So, to sum it up, the only sale item you really get value for money from is the one you choose not to buy, especially when you didn’t really need it in the first place! If you really are shopping for something that is a need as opposed to want, and looking for the best price, it is probably best to do some on-line research first. Only with prior planning, will you find a truly cost effective item.

If a sale that sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

Why We Need Degrowth

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Let me introduce you to a concept that some may not have heard about.  It is the concept of  degrowth.  
Wikipedia lists the following about degrowth:

“Degrowth (in French: décroissance, in Spanish: decrecimiento, in Italian: decrescita) is a political, economic, and social movement based on Ecological economics, anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideas. Degrowth thinkers and activists advocate for the downscaling of production and consumption—the contraction of economies—as overconsumption lies at the root of long term environmental issues and social inequalities. Key to the concept of degrowth is that reducing consumption does not require individual martyring and a decrease in well-being. Rather, ‘degrowthists’ aim to maximize happiness and well-being through non-consumptive means—sharing work, consuming less, while devoting more time to art, music, family, culture and community.”

Sound familiar?  It is comparable to Simple Living, Voluntary Simplicity, Downshifting, Sustainable Living or even the Transition Town movements.

What ever name we give it, why do I think we need these movements?  Well, quite simply, because we live on a finite world that has limits and boundaries, therefore continues growth is not feasible.  Ergo our western lifestyle is unsustainable.   

The planet can regenerate about 2.1 global hectares per person per year on a sustainable basis.  The average Australian has an ecological footprint of 6.6 global hectares per person which is 2.8 times the average global footprint of 2.7 global hectares.  If everyone lived like this we would need four planets to sustain our lifestyle.  As there are no new planets to plunder except the one we have, we better get used to living within our means or suffer the consequences.

This means that a possible solution could be degrowth, or put in my language, to consciously reduce our  consumption.

It would be nice if ‘Buy Nothing Day’ was everyday, and we just reused and produced stuff we grew or made ourselves.  Great stuff in theory, but it would kill our current economic model.  However if you look at it closely, our current economic model is killing itself pretty much on its own because of the finite limits of our world.  

So, the more we walk away from the current economic system, the quicker it fails, which would not be good for anyone.  How do we aim for a gentle landing and not end up in a continuous downward recession/depression cycle when our economic system does fail?  This is not a rhetorical question.  I just don’t know the answer.

However, I do know that we have three possible paths that we can take from this time on.  Woody Allen once said “We have arrived at a decisive fork in the road. One path leads us to the extinction of our species and the other leads to despair.  I hope we will be able to make the right choice… “
So far, as I see it we are on the first path, taking down many other species with it.  Second path is one of negative growth history has shown to generate famine, wars, pandemics and can lead to a society controlled by fascism or totalitarian power.  No thank you very much!  I am a bit more optimistic and believe we can turn it around.
I believe there is a third path.  It one of degrowth by choosing sobriety and taking stock of our current reality.  We need to break our addiction to things.  Somehow we need to be able to change our economic system in such a way that reduced consumerism is seen as goodness and a better way of living, giving us more spare time, and wanting for less, therefore softening the impact.  We need to live within the global limits and on or below those 2.1 global hectares we each have been granted by Gaia.  It may seem very neo-hippy of me, but there has to be a better path than we one we are current embarked upon.  
I for one have chosen not to be on this train wreck any more.  Have you?  
Do you have any thoughts on possible solutions to the end of growth?

The Diderot Effect

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Over at the Simple Green Frugal Co-op, I have written a new and original essay about a psychological effect that I stumbled upon, called the “Diderot Effect”.  It is one of those things that advertisers try to tap into to trick us into becoming rampant consumers.  It tricks us into buying crap we don’t really need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t particularly like.

If you would like to learn a bit more about the “Diderot Effect”, then pop on over to the co-op for a read of my post titled “Treasure What You Have“.