(Source: Dr Esteve Corbera's slides - see below)
I never got around to putting up the rest of the slides and papers from the climate change conference on the 18th November 2006 at Sussex University. So, for everyones benefit, here they are:
- Slides by Dr. Jim Watson (from SPRU - Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Sussex) on Micro-generation: generating energy in the home
- Slides by Dr. Esteve Corbera (from the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research) on Climate Change: A risk or an opportunity for sustainable development in poor countries?
I don't have accompanying notes to go with these slides, but they are pretty comprehensive, so you will hopefully get most of the meaning out of them.
Also, Professor Kate Soper (London Metropolitan University), who gave a talk on "Beyond Consumerism: self-interest, pleasure and sustainable consumption", sent me a couple of papers which were the basis of her speech. Here they are below:
- The Other Pleasures of post-consumerism : towards a new ‘political imaginary’
- Alternative Hedonism, Cultural Theory and the Role of Aesthetic Revisioning.
Both of these papers are really thought-provoking. The abstract of the first paper says it all:
"Responses to climate change and ecological attrition seldom say much about the downsides of the consumerist lifestyle nor promote the pleasures and fulfilments of a less work-driven and acquisitive life-style. This is hardly surprising given the dominance of global capitalism and the scale of its advertising budgets. But there are signs that the tensions between economic growth and human and environmental well-being will not be indefinitely contained. The negative impacts of affluence are a growing political concern and a source of disenchantment on the part of consumers themselves. In this context, the article seeks to counter the suppression of other visions of the good life and presents the attractions of a post-consumerist life-style as of critical importance in winning wider support for a sustainable future."
One of the most interesting ideas that she raises in the first paper is when she quotes Juliet Schor’s book on The Overworked American (1991):
"Since 1948, productivity has failed to rise in only five years. The level of productivity of the US worker has more than doubled. In other words, we could now produce our 1948 standard of living (measured in terms of marketed goods and services) in less than half the time it took in that year. We actually could have chosen the four hour day. Or a working year of six months. Or, every worker in the United States could now be taking every other year off from work – with pay. Incredible as it may sound, this is just the simple arithmetic of productivity growth in operation." (p.2)
She then goes on to comment:
"In fact, what happened in the US, where, as elsewhere, any political ‘choice’ in the matter was ruled out by the dictates of the economy, was that free time fell by nearly 40 % since 1973 so although the average American by 1990 owned and consumed more than twice as much as he or she did in 1948, they also had considerably less leisure. Similar trends are signalled in the UK, where a steady decline in work hours since the mid-nineteenth century was halted in the 1990s, and where two-fifths of the workforce are now working harder than in the 1980s."
Society has made endless technological revolutions yet the promise of being able to work less has never materialised. In fact, in our modern society people often complain about working too much, not having enough time or generally being exhausted. Why do we do have to do this to ourselves? Why should we have to work long hours so that a large proportion of our total production goes to a small minority of the population, many of whom do little or no work at all (such as landlords)?
Kate Soper tries to answer some of these questions, however, for more on this subject, I'd also recommend reading George Bernard Shaw's excellent essay In Praise of Idleness. Or, for something shorter, you can also check out Tom Chance writing on The Pusuit of Passivity. All three are brilliant.
Posted in Environment | Politics ed's blog | 528 reads
Submitted by ed on Wed, 2007-01-31 20:32.
