What's Wrong with Climate Politics and How to Fix It by Paul G. Harris

Author:Paul G. Harris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Polity Press

CHAPTER SEVEN

Consumption of Happiness: Sustainability and Wellbeing

Chapter 5 explored some approaches to treating what is wrong with climate politics at the international level, and chapter 6 introduced some potential responses to the you-go-first stalemate between the world’s largest national polluters. Those treatments have people and the protection of their rights and security as primary objects. Chapter 4 located the failures of climate politics in addictions of modernity, manifested in growing affluence and material overconsumption spreading from developed nations to the developing world. This chapter is concerned both with what individuals can do about this, why they ought to do it in their self-interest, and specifically how doing so will help to promote their happiness, health, and overall wellbeing while reducing their impact on the earth’s climate system. Contrary to popular belief, and especially diverging from what we hear and see in most media, affluence beyond a point of sufficiency does not bring overall happiness. In particular, increasing wealth and material overconsumption as practiced in the western world for generations generally does not increase people’s wellbeing. Societies with the highest levels of wealth and material consumption are not the happiest. This is because affluence is routinely manifested in consumption of “goods” that people do not need, rather than through consumption of experiences that make them happy.

Everyone should be free from poverty, and everyone needs and deserves material possessions to meet her or his needs and to bring some comfort. But, to be happy, each of us does not need to consume much beyond meeting our needs. Put another way, many of the activities that result in growing greenhouse gas emissions do not simultaneously increase human wellbeing or happiness. Indeed, excessive consumption can and does bring unhappiness and can reduce human health and wellbeing. In the process of damaging the earth’s climate system, we are routinely harming ourselves. It is extremely important to emphasize these points because some of the most fundamental questions about how to address climate change are about human actions: How do we persuade people that they are better off getting out of their cars, avoiding jetting off to far-away destinations, and not indulging in the temptations of material consumption that the modern world makes almost irresistible? Answering this sort of question and making the answers reality is very difficult; it would be fatuous to suggest otherwise. At the very least, this chapter will attempt to reiterate why not changing behavior is doing people more harm than good. Recognizing and accepting this reality is the first step to behavior change. Even that first step will be difficult.

In contrast to behavior as usual, happiness and wellbeing are increased by behaviors and practices that coincidentally are less harmful to the environment. Replacing unnecessary material consumption with consumption of additional time with family and friends, relaxing pastimes and community activities, among other behaviors that are increasingly neglected in the modern western way of life, is more likely to bring happiness.1 A life of sufficiency rather than excess can be not only environmentally

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