The beginnings
Why we started this publication
“The climate crisis is closely linked to excessive consumption of the wealthy lifestyle.”
— Agrees 11.000 scientists. (1) That is a lot of scientists folks, they might be onto something.
They are indeed, but if you are sceptical, I would like to demonstrate the validity of this statement with a simple logic puzzle. I’ll give you three statements, and you have to make the conclusion using plain logic. No pen or calculator needed. Here we go:
STATEMENTS
- The biggest contributor to climate change is the increased CO2 and other greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide.
- These gases are released when consumer goods (like cars, t-shirts and packaged food) are produced and used.
- Consumers buy and use these products.
CONCLUSION: Now it’s your turn.
It’s ugly, but we must face it: YES, indeed, what we buy and how much we buy contributes to the deteriorating state of the environment and the climate. Especially when we are buying so much more than we need.
This is, of course, an overly simplistic explanation for a complex problem. Us consumers are far from being the only reason for increased CO2 level, and increased CO2 level is far from being the only consequence of excessive consumption. If we want to understand the big picture, the whys, the hows and the impacts of overconsumption, we have to look at history, economics, social sciences and more. That is exactly what we are going to do in this article series.
My brother and I have been passionate about sustainability for a while but it was only a few weeks ago when we got to talk about the wasteful consumption habits we see daily in our close circles. During our heated conversation we discovered how angry and frustrated we are about these wasteful practices and that we are also full of ambition to spark meaningful change.
Both of us having design backgrounds, we know that understanding the problem is the foundation of an effective solution. That is why we went into research mode before brainstorming solutions, but we quickly had to realize that this topic is vast and there is much to learn.
So here we are, two passionate sustainability nerds learning our way into building solutions for the problem of overconsumption, the root cause of global warming (as we think about it today). We will use this platform to share our findings to raise awareness, educate, and inspire action against excessive consumption.
Join us along this exciting and thought provoking journey.
Sources:
(1) William J Ripple, Christopher Wolf, Thomas M Newsome, Phoebe Barnard, William R Moomaw, World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency, BioScience, Volume 70, Issue 1, January 2020, Pages 8–12, https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/70/1/8/5610806
Wiedmann, Thomas & Lenzen, Manfred & Keyßer, Lorenz & Steinberger, Julia. (2020). Scientists’ warning on affluence. Nature Communications. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342311078_Scientists%27_warning_on_affluence
