The Role of Consumption and Lifestyle in the Transition to Sustainability

As we make the long transition to a sustainable and renewable economy and culture, a key question is centered on individual responsibility and personal lifestyle. In the end, our individual behavior as consumers has created the sustainability crisis, but the causes of this crisis are far from simple. First, there are many people in dire poverty who would love to have the problem of overconsumption. Second, there are a number of choices that may seem individual, but in fact are highly constrained by the production and infrastructure systems available to us. For most of us, getting back to the land and living at one with nature is not a realistic option. Our livelihoods and lifestyles are found in cities. Nevertheless, we will need to become the change we wish to see, to paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi. Individual choice will influence political, institutional, and economic systems, and those systems in turn will influence individual choices and behavior. Sustainability requires individual- and system-level change, and both are highly interdependent. So, how do we stimulate this change?

The leading edge of the dialogue about the global sustainability crisis is climate policy. In U.S. politics, concern about global warming has become a political fault line. Polling indicates that independent voters understand the reality of climate science, but climate science deniers dominate the right-wing base that controls many Republican primary races. Those that do not see a climate crisis tend to also disbelieve the global sustainability crisis.

On the environmental side of the divide, we see a diverse coalition, but a common thread in the discussion is that problems can only be solved when we put ourselves on a consumption diet and stop our super-sized, resource-intensive lifestyles. A second but related thread views the problem of extreme poverty in the world as a direct result of overconsumption in the developed world. We should therefore feel guilty when we consume, and if we would only consume less, the world's poor would get to consume more and the sustainability crisis would go away.

For some environmentalists, the sustainability crisis is a moral issue, particularly when it is combined with the growing degree of income inequality here in the U.S. This is not an argument for an era of superficial, unexamined, conspicuous-consumption lifestyles of the rich and famous glamorized by reality TV. We are asking only that people take a hard look at the interconnection between the economic, political, energy, and environmental systems that we depend on. Put simply, while today's version of economic development damages the environment, when economic growth ends, the working poor are the first to lose their jobs and their families are the first to suffer. Rich people have plenty to buffer them from the impacts of economic contraction but those without wealth have no margin for error. Our economic and political systems are dependent on economic growth. But economic growth can be decoupled from environmental destruction. The answer is not to reduce consumption, but to change it. On an individual level, sustainability relies on different patterns of consumption, not reduced consumption.

Some consumption requires material goods—particularly food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. The production, consumption, and disposal of those material goods are based on a series of unsustainable processes:

• One-time use of natural resources such as fossil fuels.
• Planned obsolescence of cars, electronics, and clothing.
• The use of toxic substances in production.
• Thoughtless, destructive waste management.
• Polluting production processes.

At the same time, an increasing number of jobs and a greater proportion of wealth are now generated in less resource-intensive occupations: web design, communications, finance, education, research, health care, hospitality, events management, social service delivery, and so on. Fewer of us work at factories and farms making things. Some of these production functions have been exported to the developing world, but many more of them have been automated and require less human labor than they once needed. Farming, construction, manufacturing, and even shipping and distribution are increasingly automated. This automation requires energy, but if energy could be renewable, and production and consumption could be less destructive, it is possible to imagine a larger economy with a smaller impact on the planet's interconnected ecosystems.

While we can imagine it, that doesn't mean we know how to do it. The emerging field of sustainability management is at the center of an effort to learn how to add the physical dimensions of sustainability to routine organizational management. The objectives of sustainability management are a response to today's unsustainable economy. These goals include:

• Reduced use of nonrenewable energy and materials in production.
• Efforts to reuse and recycle the materials that are used in production.
• Reductions in the volume and toxicity of waste from production and consumption.

The key question is how do we get from here to there? How do we make the transition to a renewable, sustainable economy? In our view, trying to make people feel guilty for their consumption is a losing strategy. No one wants to sit hungry and bored in a cold, dark place. A positive vision of a sustainable lifestyle includes entertainment, education, creativity, exciting ideas, stimulating social interactions, healthy and flavorful food and drink, exploration, and fun. While we need to pay attention to the environmental impact of our lifestyle, we need to understand that it will take a long time to develop sustainable consumption and economic growth.

We do not yet understand the planet's physical and natural systems enough to understand all of the impacts we have on them. We can't develop truly sustainable lifestyles until we develop a better understanding of the planet.

As we gain the knowledge needed to assess the environmental impacts of our economic life, and develop the technologies needed for renewable production, we must also develop the public policies and organizational management practices needed to put this knowledge to work. Our government, nonprofit, and for-profit organizations need to learn how to incorporate sustainability factors into routine and strategic decisions and actions. This will be a long and painstaking process. Similar to the change from an agricultural economy to an industrial one, the sustainability economy will be the end result of the post-industrial era that is now underway. Left on its own, this process will develop slowly and we will continue to damage ecosystems and change our climate. That is why we need to do all we can to accelerate the rate of change.

While technology and organizations must evolve, so must culture, social norms, and values. At the foundation of the transition we will need the idea of a sustainable lifestyle to be one that is not built on an artificial and irrelevant sense of moral superiority, but on the exciting and rewarding benefits it brings. We don't pretend to know what shape that might take, but we think it will involve active, engaged social interaction, experiential and virtual learning, and reduced emphasis on conspicuous consumption. Today, the popular media often defines the good life as having many homes, fancy cars, lavish parties, and wealth without work. The appeal of that lifestyle will probably never disappear, but it can be made to look ridiculous and out of step.

One should not understate the impact of social change, and evolving social norms. Racial equality, gender equality, gay rights, and global multiculturalism are growing forces in American life. A rich, but less resource-intensive lifestyle could follow a similar path. The way people live can change quickly in response to new technologies, ideas, and even images.

While fear will always be a great motivator—as will its close relation, guilt—in a crowded, complex, and interconnected global society, it can also be dangerous and destabilizing. Fear that our children will inherit a dying planet is inescapable, but in our view, positivity about a renewable economy is a more sound political strategy than promoting fear about our current path. A sustainable, urban lifestyle may well be emerging with smaller personal spaces, more frequent use of public spaces, bikes, parks, high tech media, and constant attention to one's environmental footprint. We don't know if it can compete with the dream of a 4,000-square-foot climate-controlled suburban home, SUVs, speedboats, and a lifestyle of relentless luxury.

Government and the leadership of elected officials are needed to paint this positive image of a sustainable lifestyle. We see American federalism already beginning this process. A number of mayors have begun this process. Sustainability planning has become an integral element of urban economic development around the world.

The Political Change Process that Brings Us to Sustainability

Rich people, poor people, Tea Partiers, Republicans, Democrats, old people, young people, Americans, people from other countries—we all are united in the biological necessities of being human. We all need food, air, and water that are not contaminated with toxic substances. The political support for environmental protection is derived from this fundamental fact, along with the equally fundamental awareness that all of these resources are at risk on a crowded and increasingly interconnected planet.

In a piece analyzing Gallup's polling on America's attitudes toward the environment, Cohen observed that:

Those under 30 favor environmental protection over economic growth by 60% to 30%. In contrast, those over 65 years old favor economic growth over environmental protection by 50% to 39%. Since there is no evidence that someone ages out of environmentalism, it is likely that environmentalism will become a stronger force in American politics in the next several decades (2014).

While there are aspects of Gallup's approach to measuring environmental attitudes that need improvement, they remain one of the best sources of longitudinal (comparing today to the past) data on American attitudes. With the exception of during the Great Recession, Americans have consistently valued environmental protection over economic growth. Even during the Great Recession, young people continued to support environmental protection over economic growth.

Nevertheless, Gallup's data is countered by more in-depth academic research that indicates that growing materialism and faith in technology has resulted in declining environmentalism among young Americans. Laura Wray-Lake, Constance A. Flanagan, and D. Wayne Osgood published a superb study in 2010 of the environmental attitudes of young people. The very careful and rigorous surveys that this article is based on were focused on measuring specific attitudes and behaviors over time, and indicate that young people do not act the way that scholars think environmentalists should behave. They don't conserve energy or express pro-environmental views as much as they might. We do not doubt their research or question Gallup's seemingly contradictory findings because a close look at the data indicates that the surveys are measuring different things. However, all of these data support our view that today's young people are more aware of sustainability than young people were 50 years ago, and these issues help frame their view of how the world works. Their views of the environment may be inconsistent and difficult to explain, but young people are deeply aware of the issue.

The authors of this book come from two different generations. As a millennial, Alison Miller understands the complicated awareness and choices she and her peers face when considering the environment. The most striking characteristic of millennials, for Bill Eimicke and Steve Cohen, who grew up in the 1970s is how well formulated and complex their views are. Americans born after 1970 have grown up in the environmental era. They have been witnesses to an effort to protect the planet against the assaults of modern economic development. They've heard their parents and grandparents describe the development of open spaces in their hometowns and in places they've visited. Congested roads, environmentally induced illness, and images of endangered species have always been part of the world they understand. Our growing awareness of nutrition, health, and exercise is part of a wider understanding of the interconnection between the environment and individual wellness, and these perceptions have created a change in our culture.

Environmentalism is less a political perspective than a way of understanding how the world works. One can compare it to the changing views of gender, race, homosexuality, and what we have come to term parenting. When Eimicke and Cohen were growing up, being a parent described a stage of one's life cycle. It was a status. Today parenting is a verb describing the actions involved in raising your children. While racism, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia remain strong forces in American society, they are less tolerated than they once were. Social and cultural changes during the last half-century have created a profound change in how we live and how we interact with each other. This, in turn, has had a deep impact on politics and public policy. The drive for a renewable economy housed on a sustainable and not-deteriorating planet is a key part of the cultural shift we are describing.

In our view, these social changes create a nearly irresistible force for political change. It may take decades to manifest itself, and the forces opposing these views can often remain in power through the use of economic and military power, but the current of history and social change are difficult to overcome. That is because these social trends are based on technological changes that have transformed our lives and are incredibly seductive.

The technology of transportation, information, and communication has helped create a global, interconnected economy. The way many people in the developed world live today would have seemed dream-like to people a century ago. Americans born in 1900 lived through changes that resulted in a world they could barely imagine at the start of the 20th century. Ideas, images, goods, services, and everything humans can imagine are transmitted and shipped throughout the world. These technologies bring enormous benefits, but also carry significant costs. Traditional community life is endangered, as is a sense of place, replaced by a homogeneous world culture. And of course, the natural resource base of the world economy is also threatened by the wanton destruction of relentless, non-renewable material production.

While few people think about the transformation underway, it forms the backdrop for our worldview. For young Americans, the influence of these new facts is greater, since it is all they have ever known. All have been exposed to the view of a single fragile earth photographed from outer space. Most were not exposed to the casual, unthinking racial and social biases America began to confront in the second half of the 20th century. Today everyone knows people from different places with different lifestyles. One needs to willfully go off the grid and disconnect from the Internet to grow up isolated and parochial—although we recognize that the web also empowers fact-free, delusional discussion. Nevertheless, TV images of family life have changed from The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet to The Cosby Show to Modern Family. This is happening at the same time when distinct identities and communities are struggling to survive and absorb the unifying but sometimes empty values created by the global economy.

These technological, social, and economic changes influence politics and public policy. While there are many feedback loops and interactive effects, the basic chain of causality is this: Technological change results in economic change that, in turn, causes social change. Social change forms the boundaries for political legitimacy and the political agenda and creates the context for political change.

In the final analysis, people in the developed world like their lifestyles and do not want to lose them. The notion of progress and improvement is being replaced by the more conservative sentiment to retain or sustain what we have. If we achieve some success in transitioning to a renewable economy, we may see a return to the ideology of improvement. The politics of sustainability will have an ideological component—no different from other political dialogues—but the facts of global interconnectivity are increasingly hardwired into our culture and values. The importance of environmental quality and sustainability is an inescapable part of our shared understanding of how the world works. The political manifestation of that understanding has begun, even though its specific trajectory is difficult to predict.

We do know that people like to breathe, drink water, and eat. Preserving the resources needed to ensure sustenance is a requirement of all political processes and governing regimes. You can't have a tea party without clean water to brew tea.

This volume provides clear evidence that the technological, social, cultural, economic, and political transition to a sustainable economy has begun. We hope that we have provided some ideas of the role that government can play in facilitating and speeding up that transition. In our view, sustainability is not a question of if, but when. In our view, the transition process can be gentle and gradual or brutal and abrupt. We vote for gentle.