Consumerism,Materialism and effects on the Natural Environment

 "...sustainability issues are the historical result of the prevailing belief within Western Industrial societies that both firms and consumers are self-interested critics, with consumers maximizing utility through consumption and with firms maximizing profit through meeting the demand. The belief that the road to happiness is through consumption ignores the fact that the resources for consumption are limited and the consumption of the limited resources are not equal globally." 

The statement above is from the article "Sustainability and Consumption"within which authors Huang and Rust explore the ways in which aspects of sustainability should affect the overall consumption behavior of consumers, charitable aid to poorer countries, and responsible environmental practices by businesses. They create and present a model that enables them to provide what they feel implications would be for consumers, society and business.

One of the statistics in this article that shocked me:
"Consumers in the industrialized nations consume more than 80% of the limited natural resources."


The authors argue that as a result of this immense consumption, consumption inequity has become a significant source of global tension.

All this leads to their argument which outlines the sum of their whole article: that this consumption inequity gives rise to the advocacy of sustainable consumption whereby each person should consume only their "earth share"in order to make the consumption socially equitable and ecologically sustainable.

The authors lay out a model in this article, that shows how consumers, business and governments interrelate with respect to sustainability, and consumption, this model attempts to derive optimal behavior for consumers and business with respect to decisions about consumption environmental sacrifice, charitable aid and use of green technology.

I found this part of the article very interesting and useful. What they are expressing here the substance of their theory, which is that there is three main dimensions to sustainability, 1)consumer/societal happieness and standard of living, 2) corporate profit and pollution and 3) geological issues like global conflict. Their layout and description of each of these dimensions and the variables that link them were productive. BUT i found that their results section which should be the strongest part of their article somewhat lessened the credibility of their argument. The results that they stated seemed very obvious and the authors lost me at this point, although i can see the importance of how they got to these results and the importance of their discussion to the overall discourse surrounding sustainability consumerism and the natural environment.

"Shop 'til We Drop? Television, Materialism and Attitudes about the Natural Environment" really changed my view of how effective Television really is on general opinion and discourse surrounding many issues, but specifically environmental ones. The article emphasizes how important research is that speaks to how indivisuals form their sense of relationship with the natural environment, in the modern heavily mediated society. I would have never though that TV plays such an invasive role on attitude formation on environmental attitudes. Perhaps this is from my years of studying communication and being taught that consumers are much more conscious than often given credit for, and that we don't just consume messages and believe what we tell us. HOWEVER, this article sheds a new light on this issue, and points it in a different direction, one that views materialism as a mediating variable between television viewing and environmental attitudes.

Television is built on the premise of materialism, it exists overall to make a profit, as the article states :
"At a fundamental level, commercial television exists because of an arrangement between those who create television, those who wish to advertise on television, and those who view television. Television assembles audiences, and advertisers buy those audiences to sell goods and services." 

The article states how advertising is a major source of promoting materialism, and plays a huge part of creating a consumer culture. It also argues that not only advertising, but television more generally transmits information about materialism, and promotes positive images,narratives, and messages about materialism.

In this article: The argument thus is that television viewing is related to lower levels of concern about the natural environment, as television viewing is positively related to materialism,and environmental attitudes are negativley related to materialism. And the question asked is "Does materialism mediate the relationship between television and attitudes about the natural environment?"... both the argument and the research question find support and validation throughout the research presented.

This study provided a new type of outlook on the power of television, and the price society's interest and dependence on it has on the natural environment.

Finally, Salvador's deconstructs the problematic issues within the Green Consumerism movement, and highlights the fact that books such as "The Green Consumer" and many others within the movement, argue that environmental problems demand changes in the everyday practices of consumers. But on the other hand, it simultaneously advances the view that intrinsic and substantial changes to consumer habits are not needed. These types of arguments obscure the correlation between the dimensions of a problem and the effort needed to correct it. This article works to expose several contradictions manifest in the book "The Green Consumer" primary claims and asses the implications of such contradictions for the broader environmental movement. The article overall concludes that while Green consumerism offers a potentially valuable measure for immediate action, it at the same time severely risks limiting more substantial and long term reform in the relationship between consumer society and the environment.

Discussions regarding this article in class surrounded the fact that they could see the ways in which the Green movement is becoming so popular in pop culture and all different types of products that are being mass circulated, because it is asking us to do what we're best at, consume.

Consumerism and the Environment: Information is power