Consumer Indigestion
13 Jun 2008
With the ‘credit-crunch’ in full swing, the daily media churning out predictions of inflation, recession, housing market collapse, food cost increases, oil price expectations of $250 a barrel, the consumer apocalypse seems nigh.
We’ve binged on cheap energy, and cheap credit, yet I don’t think this will be a long term collapse, more like indigestion after the 10 year bender we have been on.
So we’ll get over this, make some changes, the markets will move on to new areas, and we’ll remember this as the ‘energy/credit crises’ of 2008.
But it’s going to come back again and again. I’ve been using this time to take a long look at my connection to spending, what I think I need for a ‘good life’, and wondering how much I contribute to this round of indigestion.
The Story of Stuff, remains for me the most compelling video that raises to consciousness and understanding, why we are in this situation, and how it just can’t carry on.
Tagged: Consumerism, Resources
7 comments
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Comment by fernando
10.42 am on 13 Jun 2008
I need to see that documentary.
Whilst our current economic malaise is tied directly to consumption, it is in very interesting ways also tied directly to core aspects of the contemporary lifestyle. Transport, housing and food are the most elemental and basic aspects of any economy and it is crazy habits in each of these that are the reason for this current recession.
Comment by Laura Anne
12.17 am on 14 Jun 2008
Someone told me today about how they were reading in a Christian magazine that the credit crunch may actually have some good come out of it…in terms of stopping people from getting into debt, being forced to spend less and questioning their values in material possessions and money.
Comment by Jason
8.22 am on 14 Jun 2008
We might hope so.
Comment by Paul
9.12 am on 14 Jun 2008
what troubles me is that the neutral sounding “market re-adjustment” has a lot more pain than indigestion for a lot of people. Only some of it is self inflicted…
Comment by Simon S
9.43 am on 14 Jun 2008
The whole of the western economic system and people’s perceptions are based on economic growth and an general improvement in living standards over time – ie we become richer (however that might be defined)
I predict that the 21st century will be a time when people will become poorer. The credit crunch and oil price increase is symptomatic of the beginning of the downturn of increasing wealth in the west.
The earth is a closed system, which means that resources are finite. As a type 0.7 civilization (ie we use approximately 70% of the earth’s energy resources), oil, gas and coal are finite and are running out. We do not have the technology to move into space and harness our sun’s energy more effectively at the moment
Our civilization is based on 1) availability of electricity and 2) availability of highly concentrated chemical energy (that’s petrol and gas)
Without 1) there are no computers, banking system, lighting
without 2) there are no aeroplanes or cars or plastics or cheap food
As oil and gas become even more expensive living standards will reduce as components necessary for our civilization become more expensive. My own family’s annual energy costs have gone up by $1000 a year in just 3 months.
Peter Hamilton (Sci-Fi author) posits a device called a ‘gigaconductor’ which stores vast quantities of electrical energy sufficient to power vehicles up to and including earth to space transports, a nice concept but unfortunately not available yet.
In the absence of such a device or nuclear fusion (for the last 60 years the technology has always been 50 years away), it is important to maximize the energy resources we have.
1) stop burning coal gas and oil to produce electricity, use wind, solar, wave and nuclear fission energy to produce electricity.
2) Use oil for powering devices that cannot be driven any other way – e.g. aeroplanes, otherwise use oil for plastics
This does mean thinking big – e.g. covering the sahara desert with solar collectors to provide power for Europe and Africa.
An initial step is the Severn tidal barrage in the UK, which would provide 10% of the UK’s energy needs and would cut the UK’s carbon demand by 5% at a stroke (once construction was finished) The green lobby are not happy with such measures but even they need to feed their families. As Berthold Brecht said “Grub first, then ethics”
Comment by Caroline Too
10.39 am on 16 Jun 2008
I’m not sure, Jason, you might be right. most predictions of the ‘end of life as we know it’ don’t seem to be fulfilled
but there are some things on the horizon that worry me
Simon’s thoughts on energy basis of our lifestyle are relevant here
but for UK, in particular, our whole economy is based on the circular flow of money around our society. We don’t tend to make things nowadays but we are very good at whizzing money around banks, pockets, services, pockets, more services, pockets and so on…
the trouble with the credit crunch is that it slows or stops that circular flow of money.. and that could be a systemic tipping point from which it is hard to recover…
additionally, for the first time in the last 100 years the complacent abuse of resources by the tiny-minority north-west of our world is going to be challenged by China, India and Brazil wanting more of the energy ‘cake’. There aint enough energy to satisfy us all…
at the moment we’re dealing with this in market terms and the speculators are doing well and the rest of us are paying
but in a few years (5?) what will happen when the exponential growth of energy demand in emerging countries meets the resolutely greedy consumption of the north-west?….
In the past this sort of impasse has been sorted out by a little bit of trade-warring… that isn’t a pretty thought in the 21st century.. no, we might slip past this ’bout of indigestion’ but I’m not so sure…
Comment by James Prescott
9.06 pm on 17 Jun 2008
Now is the time we begin to see the difference between what we really need and consumer products we have thought we ‘must’ have which really aren’t that important.
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