Part Three – Why does the pursuit of materialism lead to unhappiness?

 As we become more materialistic, we are less likely to make healthy choices for the welfare of other people in the world.

 In 2002 there was a major independent review of aid called The Reality of Aid.  It  was subtitled ‘Never Richer, Never Meaner’ because it showed that while the  wealth per person in donor countries had doubled since 1961 (up to almost $30,000), the aid given per person was less than it was 40 years ago.

 Graham Tupper says these days that Australia gives 0.25% of G.N.P. in aid -       or the equivalent of a paltry $1.70 per person per week in humanitarian aid.

 Clive Hamilton asks ‘Why have levels of foreign aid sunk so low at a time of un-precedented wealth, if not for the fact that the more wealthy we are the more greedy we become? ’[1]

 The more greedy we become the more uncaring even the most caring among us  become. ‘Nel Noddings, author of a book called Caring – A Feminine Approach To Ethics And Moral Education) argues that we only have an obligation to care for our own. She states – We are “not obliged to care for starving children in Africa! ” [2]

 Pauline Hanson a contemporary Austrlain politician says we should put a stop to foreign aid altogether. And no doubt many Australians who are supporters of Hanson’s One Nation would agree with the infamous statement once made by a US Secretary for Agriculture who said ‘We are in the position of a family with a litter of puppies: we’ve got to decide which ones to drown. Some people are going to have to (die).’ That’s just the way it is.

 As we become more materialistic, we are also less likely to make healthy choices that are essential for the future of the planet itself.

 Clive Hamilton says ‘It is commonplace to observe that the current pattern of material consumption is environmentally unsustainable’.

 ‘Cities with millions of high-consumption residents act like huge vacuum cleaners, sucking in resources and then blowing out huge volumes of wastes that must be buried, dumped into the oceans, or vented into the atmosphere.’ 

 ‘It takes the biosphere at least a year and three months to renew what humanity uses in a single year, so humanity is now eating into earth’s natural capital.’

‘Each person in the US requires 10.3 hectares of land to meet their consumption needs and absorb their waste products. This compares with ”footprints” of 0.8 hectares in India and a (global) availability of land of 1.7 hectares per person.’

 ‘If everyone in the world were to consume as much as the average consumer in the rich countries we would require four planets the size of earth!’

When it comes to the issue of global warming ‘the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (predicts) that global warming could trigger “large, abrupt, and unwelcome regional and global climatic events”.

By the end of the century we could see Earth’s mean temperature rise by 6 degrees centigrade. (At the height of the last Ice Age, when New York was several metres under ice, Earth’s mean temperature was only 5 degrees cooler than it is now.)

Sea-level rise of nearly 1 metre by the end of the century would see (countries like) Bangladesh lose 14 per cent of its entire land area  (and a number of Pacific Island nation states like Kiribati drowned beneath the waters of the Pacific Ocean), causing a flood of environmental refugees. Tens of millions more people, mostly in poor countries, will be exposed to water borne diseases like malaria, and dengue fever.’

‘There is only one (solution) to the terrible problems that are expected to befall Earth if nothing is done: immediately begin reducing combustion of fossil fuels and keep reducing it until fossil fuels are largely phased out. In 1997, after ten years of hard fought negotiations, the rich countries of the world agreed to the Kyoto Protocol, which would see those countries reduce their emissions by around 5 per cent over ten to fifteen years. (But) soon after his election in 2001, President Bush repudiated the protocol completely. (And) Australia followed the US lead.’

‘There has been one, and only one, reason for the reluctance of the rich coun-tries of the world to reduce their emission and so help stave off environmental catastrophe – the perceived impact of reducing emissions on the rate of econ-omic growth and especially the growth of a handful of powerful industries.’

According to the models, if policies to reduce emissions as specified by the Kyoto Protocol were implemented, GNP growth would be 1 per cent lower in 2012 than it would otherwise have been. GNP would be 39 per cent in June 2012 rather than 40 per cent. People would need to wait till October 2012 before reaching the expected level of 40 per cent GNP growth. Which means, ‘confronted with a high probability of environmental catastrophe on Earth, the richest people on the planet are un-willing to wait an extra four months to increase their incomes by 40 per cent.’ 

 

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[1] p235 Clive Hamilton Growth Fetish                      

[2] p86 Nel Noddings Caring University of  California Press, Berkeley, 1986

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