this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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Living more simply sounds good when you're a American in your suburban house with giant car you think about how your quality of life could be just as good in a small apartment in a walkable city.
Living more simply is not as appealing if you're in a slum in India or Indonesia or a farmer in rural China and you barely have enough to eat as it is.
We who have rich lives should consume less, just as a moral obligation. But it's not feasible to tell the whole world to consume less, because the vast majority of the world consumes far less per capita than the developed West, and their standard of living sucks, and they want more stuff. And quite honestly they deserve it.
On an individual level I understand the appeal of simplification and using less. But it's not an effective solution to global climate change. India and China and Nigeria and Indonesia and so on will not accept degrowth. Their choices are between sustainable development and unsustainable development. And so that's the choice the world faces.
Yes, but over consumption really is a first world problem, isn't it? If we ended consumerism as a norm more than 95% of the problem would disappear.