AllConsuming.org.uk

The solution to the world recession, of climate change, growing inequality, the social recession and the death of politics – is to get Chinese shoppers to buy more.  At least that is the recommendation of Gordon Brown to the G20. We can’t, it seems, any longer rely on the US consumer to get the world economy going again, now we need the Chinese. It raises a number of interesting questions:

1. Is the model of turbo-consumption the one we want to export?
2. Indeed do we even want it for ourselves?
3. Just because we’ve ‘enjoyed’ growth – is there a moral duty to encourage others to also ‘enjoy’ it?
4. Or is this just about UK exports?
5. Can the plant take it?
6. Is it inevitable that we all end up on the treadmill or more?
7. Why couldn’t Brown follow the argument of Sarkozy for well-being to replace GDP as the measure of national success?

Pessimism or optimism; what’s your bag? At times it feels like a terrible world. The planet burns and the poor get poorer and nothing it seems can be done. The frustration is in the gap between what is needed and could be done and what actually is done. Change is needed, desperately; lots of people want change but our political class have become too timid. Too many people still want to shop.

But then things happen, they always do. The first black man get elected in the USA, a political revolution takes place in Japan, the Chair of the Financial Services Authority calls for a tax on the speculative activity in the City,  the moderate Labour backbencher Paddy Tipping calls for a maximum wage and President Sarkozy calls for a general well being index to replace GDP as the indicator of governmental success. The last three ideas have been knocking around the fringes of politics for years. All of a sudden they are ideas that are in or near the mainstream.  What was impossible suddenly seems at least possible.

That is the problem with the possible, it’s just round the corner and we can see it until its there. That’s why we have to keep looking, pushing and struggling for a better world. It’s nearer than we think.

I was walking along my road on Saturday morning to get the paper (the Guardian of course).  Two things happened. First a motor bike courier pulled up in the front of a female cyclist.  I was expecting some terrible row about dangerous cycling or driving and was starting to think about whether and how to intervene if there was trouble.  The courier pulled off his helmet and the cyclist looked quizzically and then burst into a huge smile. The two then embraced – long lost friends had bumped into each other.  The pleasure was palpable. Walking back, with my paper they were still busy catching up. The joy seemed exquisite.

On a bit from our two friends re-united in a row of houses one stuck out – for the very good reason that it was already plastered in Christmas lights.  My heart sunk. The season to splurge has begun, as it always does ridiculously early. Its a social act to decorate ones house with lights but its also an act of consumption and a symbol of the shopping frenzy to come.

There in a few steps the contrast between what really makes us happy and what keep us on the treadmill.

Here is a link to an interesting little talk from a guy at Nesta called Roland Harwood.  He talks about forms of consumption that aren’t about production.  It’s true that if we live on thin air then we might not use up resources. But mobile and broadband IT are used to sell us more and use more, more of the time. I don’t know if IT lessens or increases carbon emission.  Do we buy more although the transactions are weightless? As ever the issue is not just the quantity of carbon emissions but the quality of our lives. Weightless consumption is better than heavyweight shopping but we still don’t break the addiction.

As a side issue Roland talks about his Dads record collection (didn’t his Mum listen to music) starting in 1965 and ending in 1972.  My parents were the same – just a bit earlier.  Lots of Frank Sinatra and Burt Bacharach and then nothing.  Its like the disappearance of the Dinosaurs. Im 46 and have two grown up boys and I  still buy CDs and download files. But then I live in a turbo-consuming world and they didn’t.

The Sunday Times Homes section carried a piece with this title.  City bonuses are again driving the housing market.  Ripples from London will – well ripple out I guess.  Hurrah I here you shout. We can talk about house prices again round the dinner table. We will console ourselves that everything is ok once more. We have the comfort of rising prices.  But the reality is that higher prices are only of paper value. Unless you trade down they are meaningless. Kids wont be able to get onto the housing ladder and the gap between rich and poor will grow.  Of course re-mortgaging means a consumer splurge can start again and we can go back to being turbo-consumers. So what was all the fuss about? The boys and they are almost exclusively boys in the City can take home squillions and bring the whole economy down again in a few years.  Meanwhile our politicians look on and say nothing can be done. Oh dear!

The big initiative of the week is 10:10, the star led campaign to get us to cut our carbon footprint by 10% next year (20:10, get it?). I think this is great example of civil activism and I applaud Franny Armstrong for getting it going. Of course some pipe up and say it’s not good enough and they are right but give it a bit of a rest and don’t use the need for state action as a cop out. These people are probably only going green with envy that someone else is getting some credit for doing something. In fact I think they get cross because they don’t want pressure to act themselves and Franny is taking the excuses away. As is the way they transfer the anger from themselves, because there can’t be anything wrong with them, to Franny. They create a lot of hot air and we know what that does.

Stopping climate change like every other big challenge will need both personal commitment and state intervention.  And the two are reinforcing. Pressure from below encourages and compels politicians to do more or face the consequence at the ballot box.  And it is empowering. There is nothing worse than waiting for someone else to save you. Save yourself and by doing it save others.

Of course it means we have to consume less; less air miles, less food, less, less, less. But remember ‘less is more’.  Franny says in an article in today’s Guardian that her MTV generation “were told by a million advertisements that the point of our existence was to shop more”. I’ve never watched MTV so I don’t suppose I can be part of that generation.  She goes on to say she feels inspired to have something more important to do.  The Magic Roundabout generation (mine), the Round the Horn generation (my parents) and the Arctic Monkeys generation (Gordon Brown) better join her.