Conspicuous Consumption and the Environmental Movement

Comments welcome (and appreciated!) -- please poke as many holes in my argument as you can find; I'd like to know where the weaknesses are.

First Draft

Premise: if we accept, for argument’s sake, that Veblen’s thesis in The Theory of the Leisure Class is correct, how can the environmental movement hope to survive in a world of conspicuous consumption?

History of the Environmental Movement

Although the environmental movement has existed in one form or another for the past 150 years, it, for the most part, remained a fringe movement. While at times certain issues would capture popular attention, those issues inevitably faded from public consciousness.

In the last few years, however, the environmental movement has seemed to have been thrust into the forefront of national attention. Al Gore's environmentalist PowerPoint? presentation, An Inconvenient Truth, was (for a documentary) a huge commercial and critical success. Sales of Toyota’s “green” car Prius have stayed high, despite a slow auto market overall. The sales of organic goods, such as organic coffee, steadily continued to rise. Even Wal*Mart now offers “earth friendly shopping."

The Taste of Eco-Friendliness

The increased prominence of environmentally-friendly products may at first seem to signal a new way of living, but in actuality “green consumerism” can be likened more readily to a change in taste than a change in lifestyle.

In his chapter on “Pecuniary Canons of Taste,” Veblen notes that the most "tasteful" objects are those that have added expense, but no added usefulness (50). That description fits many eco-friendly products perfectly. Organic towels , for example, cost more than five times as much as non-organic towels, but they don’t soak up water any better.

Eco-friendly products are a popular taste not merely because they are more costly, but also because they are a way of signaling one’s superior values, another element of a successful consumption habit (51). By owning organic towels you’re not only signaling that you have the money to spend on a $30 dollar towel, but also that have the knowledge and savvy to buy such a politically-correct item.

Failings of Eco-Friendly Products

While green consumerism has made “environmentally-friendly” a trendy catchphrase, it is up for debate whether it is actually that, well, environmentally friendly. Part of the problem is that the earth isn’t just harmed by certain kinds of consumption, it is harmed by high levels of consumption of any product. While environmentally-friendly products may well be better for the environment than their alternative, they’re still much worse for the environment than buying no product at all. It’s all well and good to get an energy-saving television, for example, but even the most energy-efficient appliances use some energy (even when turned off). Moreover, in a culture of conspicuous consumption, old “green” products must continuously be thrown out so that new ones can be consumed. The earth is helped very little by a landfill that’s filled with organic products, instead of non-organic ones.

Harnessing Conspicuous Consumption

So whatever is the environmental movement to do? If green consumerism is not enough to stop global warming, what can be done in a world so fixated on conspicuous consumption? In fact, it may be possible for the environmental movement to yet channel the forces Veblen describes to its own ends.

Veblen notes that, while institutions are loath to change, they sometimes must in response to external circumstances (83, 84). Usually, that change is in response to an economic stimulus (85, 86). Such an economic stimulus is on the horizon, if it is not here already. With a rise in the cost of natural gas, it is become increasingly expensive to heat one’s home. The world’s water supply is shrinking, which will cause increased food and water costs. The cost of gas has risen dramatically in the last few years, and there is little indication that prices will go back down. While Americans have seen some of these costs before, the costs have always been temporary. This time it seems that the high prices may be here to stay. The time is right for the environmental movement to bring about institutional change.

Of course, people will shrink from any scheme of life that is alien to them (89). Thus, any change will need to seem as familiar as possible in order to find acceptance. The environmental movement will be most successful if it attempts to reinstate conspicuous consumption of time: that is, try to re-emphasize conspicuous leisure.

Conspicuous leisure has all of the elements to be just as successful as conspicuous consumption. People are able to display their wealth through how much time they can afford to waste, instead of how many useless items they can afford to buy. Community gardening, washing dishes by hand, and ironing shirts (instead of dry cleaning them) all take time, and are not particularly productive (as evidenced by the fact that there is a less time-consuming alternative to all three activities).

Conspicuous leisure also allows for hierarchies of taste, since how you spend your time is as much of a marker of your wealth as the fact that you spent it at all. Just as it is a marker of class to buy organic sheets, so, too, can it be a marker of class to wash those sheets by hand.

Conspicuous leisure is a plausible alternative not just because it allows for a way to appeal to people mired in a culture of conspicuous waste. It also is familiar: people have been practicing conspicuous leisure for centuries. The need is not to create a new form of conspicuous waste out of whole cloth, but to put increasing focus on an already-existing form of conspicuous waste. Veblen notes that retrogression is easier to achieve than progression (86). Since conspicuous leisure is already familiar to most people, it won’t be difficult for them to revert back to it.

Changing the focus from conspicuous consumption of goods to conspicuous consumption of time may not seem like a large change, but even seemingly small changes in the structure can have far-reaching effects (88). And, granted, hordes of people working in community gardens likely won't eliminate global warming any more than hordes of people buying organic produce. But the change in behavior away from consumptions of goods will be a hugely beneficial one. At the very least, it’s a pretty good start.