The Shadows of Consumption: Consequences for the Global Environment (MIT Press)
Peter Dauvergne
Language: English
Pages: 336
ISBN: 0262514923
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The Shadows of Consumption gives a hard-hitting diagnosis: many of the earth's ecosystems and billions of its people are at risk from the consequences of rising consumption. Products ranging from cars to hamburgers offer conveniences and pleasures; but, as Peter Dauvergne makes clear, global political and economic processes displace the real costs of consumer goods into distant ecosystems, communities, and timelines, tipping into crisis people and places without the power to resist. In The Shadows of Consumption, Peter Dauvergne maps the costs of consumption that remain hidden in the shadows cast by globalized corporations, trade, and finance. Dauvergne traces the environmental consequences of five commodities: automobiles, gasoline, refrigerators, beef, and harp seals. In these fascinating histories we learn, for example, that American officials ignored warnings about the dangers of lead in gasoline in the 1920s; why China is now a leading producer of CFC-free refrigerators; and how activists were able to stop Canada's commercial seal hunt in the 1980s (but are unable to do so now). Dauvergne's innovative analysis allows us to see why so many efforts to manage the global environment are failing even as environmentalism is slowly strengthening. He proposes a guiding principle of "balanced consumption" for both consumers and corporations. We know that we can make things better by driving a high-mileage car, eating locally grown food, and buying energy-efficient appliances; but these improvements are incremental, local, and insufficient. More crucial than our individual efforts to reuse and recycle will be reforms in the global political economy to reduce the inequalities of consumption and correct the imbalance between growing economies and environmental sustainability.
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1960s as well. Such progress shows how domestic legislation and corporate advances can combine to improve the environmental performance of consumer goods and how trade and investment can then transfer these improved products into jurisdictions with lower environmental regulations. That said, such progress has not, as chapter 5 will argue, kept the ecological shadow of automobiles as a whole from intensifying and shifting into ecosystems and onto people less able to resist or adapt. Regulating
BSH publishes annual sustainability reports. “Responsibility for the environment and society is for us an ethical obligation,” one report begins, “and at the same time an essential prerequisite for sustainable business success.”12 BSH aims to set the environmental “benchmark” for home appliances. As a member of the European Committee of Manufacturers of Domestic Equipment (CECED), the company played a leading role in developing CECED’s 2005 voluntary code of conduct for corporate social
States, with less than 5 percent of the world population, accounted for 24 percent of global emissions by the end of this period. On the other hand, the amount of carbon dioxide from China went up 35 percent over this time. By 2001, China, with around 20 percent of the global population, was the second largest emitter (accounting for 12.7 percent). That year, however, China was still far behind the United States in carbon dioxide emissions. Yet, in 2006, just five years later, China passed the
ingredients and no sulfites. And, finally, for a product made with less than 70 percent organic ingredients, retailers may use the term “organic” when listing ingredients. Only products that are “100 percent organic” or “organic” are allowed, however, to display the USDA “organic” seal. The rules for organic meat, along with higher prices, have kept the market small in the United States: the Organic Trade Association estimates that organic meat accounts for only 0.22 percent of total meat sales.5
during the steamer period (1929–39): 156,000. To maintain such large catches, sealers in the post–World War II era were hunting more mature seals. Not bound by Canadian regulations, the Norwegians continued to hunt after the official end of the Canadian season, a date designed to protect adult breeder seals during their northern migration in May (and thus ensure a healthy whitecoat population for the next season). Before World War II, whitecoats had accounted for about 90 percent of the harp seal
