Close your eyes, for a heartbeat, and conceptualize 2021:
The planet teeters eight years away from an irreversibly altered climate, and in affluent colleges across the country, students adjust their Birkenstocks while scrolling through the depths of Amazon on glossy-screened MacBooks. Last July was the warmest month ever recorded. Reality morphs into a perverse form of dystopian fiction, but no — we’re not in the Matrix, we’re in America, where lavish spending comes at the expense of global ecological degradation, contributing to the UN’s recently declared ‘Code Red for Humanity.’
Open your eyes, blink once — twice. Make sure to keep them open.
In the present day, particularly in western society, material items equate to some perceived level of ‘success.’ What if we could shift societal emphasis from material acquisition to more sustainable pathways to fulfillment? The concept of economic degrowth promotes shrinking the economy while human progress continues, revising present day technologies to render them more efficient and impactful.
As water overtakes Bavaria, Germany, Nike touts the Air Zoom SuperRep 2 Nike Next Nature shoe. Apple boasts carbon neutrality while simultaneously goading customers to purchase a commodified version of their once-shiny iPhone 99x+™. Gaudy advertisements lead onlookers to believe that sustainability amounts to Teslas and $40 compost bins, a green drink slurped through a mason jar’s metallic straw. The way “eco-friendly” has become commodified by the money-hungry corporate Powers That Be, making the concept of ‘sustainability’ itself seem like an aesthetic rather than a set of values. Can ethical consumption under capitalism exist?
By drawing on the scholarship of ecological economist Georgios Kallis, I plan to critically examine the capitalist corruption rooted in westernized notions of success. I’ll outline the way corporations have profited off a culture of fear, presenting sustainability as a trendy way to accrue more internet followers. Recognizing that I’m a white, able-bodied environmental studies major, I’ll interrogate my own complicity in systems that wreak havoc on surrounding ecologies — How might my own lifestyle, values, and habits shift if I were to begin embracing economic degrowth? How do we engage in meaningful, ethically sound climate activism, fighting for a more sustainable future within the boundaries of present-day capitalism?
I’d like my capstone to culminate in an acknowledgement of the dangers of feel good environmentalism, or the misplaced notion that driving a Prius will meaningful ebb the (literally) rising tides of climate change. No, your shiny new Toyota won’t Save The Earth, and neither will occasionally turning out the lights. While acknowledging that the impetus of altering the deteriorating earth lies at the bureaucratic level, I hope to inspire readers to take a red pill, to realize their own cyborg-like subservience to larger corporate greed, embracing the possibility of economic degrowth as a means to combat rampant consumerist culture.