Kalle reflects on low consumption society

Since the dawn of the sustainability movement in the late 60s, activists have repeatedly called for people in the wealthy countries of the west to adopt more modest, low-consumption lifestyles and cultures. All to allow the developing world relatively more affluence. Modesty is a virtue. However, the appeals to reduce consumption at the individual level have, per se, relatively little promise as regards transitioning towards a sustainable future. That requires large scale changes at primarily systemic design levels of society[1], and a need for industrialized societies to cooperatively share such changes with the developing world. If we do this, modesty can serve individual development as well as an elegant packaging of what is important here. That’s it.

More in detail: Theoretically, futures that are modelled within boundary conditions for sustainable redesign will inevitably call for a more nuanced way of planning than reductions in general (dematerializations). Trans-materializations, that is a complete phase out of some materials, and heavy investments in expanding others, are even more important.

So, relevant questions for resource experts, engineers, businesspeople, and politicians are: “How much do some flows need to be dematerialized to stay within boundary conditions for sustainability e.g. flows of NOx? Which are the material flows of today that need to be phased out completely to stay within the boundary conditions e.g. flows of Plutonium or Uranium? Which are the ones that need to expand towards scalable models of attractive futures, modelled within the boundary conditions of sustainability e.g. rare metals in tight technical loops? Together, such subtleties cannot be covered by a general instruction to save resources in general. Would we try to use the “low consumption society” as a general and dominating way of sustainable development, that is, reducing the flows of today’s societal design while keeping it in principle, it would inevitably lead to starvation, mass death, loss of trust in our leadership and chaos.

So, none of the key elements of sustainable development has much to do with the mantra “consume less”. On the contrary, such appeals may seem to suggest that societies would already be rather well designed and organized, were it not for people in general, particlarly in the Western world, consuming and wasting too much. This, in turn, may even lead some business leaders and political elites to pursue “business as usual”, on the grounds that the real problem is the behaviour of “wasteful grassroots”. There are at least two major blind spots here. First, it obscures what really needs to be done in wealthy, developed countries, and second, it ignores the fact that people in developing countries rightfully aspire to more life quality rather than resource flows per se. To unite these two challenges into fruitful cooperative approaches, we in the industrialized Western world must commit to systemic changes in cooperation with developing countries.

Sector analyses, i.e., subjecting global life-sustaining sectors to the methods of Strategic Sustainable Development, help us see this. What we really need to do to save humanity, including us in the wealthy West, from mass-starvation, ever-larger numbers of eco-refugees, and worsening geopolitical unrest leading to resource wars, chaos and barbarism is to immediately engage the whole world in efforts to:

Expand primary energy sourcing of eternal flows, for example PV’s, wind power, hydro power, wave power, sea currents, geothermal (all are flows that are also free of charge as well as not associated with competition and a temptation to start resource wars – how would a war for more sunlight look like?).
Phase out nuclear power, fossil fuels, including natural gas, and biofuels, all of which are impossible to model within a sustainable ‘A’ in the ABCD process (see more about this in a specific reflection on Nuclear Power).
Expand investments in energy storage systems, electrification of traffic, intelligent grids and models of business/governence/economy to be of support to such .
Phase out fuel-based traffic of all kinds, including road traffic powered by biofuels and fuel cells, all of which are impossible to model within a sustainable ‘A’ in the ABCD process. Hydrogen as fuel for flights and shipping, with an infrastructure condensed around airports and harbours, is an exception to the rule. So are biofuels as intermediate solutions.
Expand restorative agriculture, forestry and fisheries.
Phase out today’s dominating types of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, all of which are impossible to model within a sustainable ‘A’ in the ABCD process.
Expand material flows that are inherently linked to the above, i.e., innovative kinds of chemicals, recycled materials, and products that can be repaired.
Phase out all flows of metals that are not contained in tight technical loops and phase out all flows of plutonium and uranium. In addition, phase out all flows of chemicals that are foreign to nature and persistent, unless they can be contained in tight technical loops. Which is impossible if part of their life cycles is in households.
Expand ABCD education, particularly for experts active in (i) spatial planning, (ii) engineering (iii) governance and (iv) leadership, to ensure that the actions listed above fit together within the boundary conditions of sustainability (A), and then cooperate on all scales to ensure that investment plans are aligned with elegant BCD transitions to futures that have the potential to be widely attractive.
Phase out sustainability education that is reductionist, that is disregarding the above and promoting investments that addresses piecemeal problems at the cost of others. An example is addressing climate change by switching to bioenergy as a large part of tomorrows energy mix, which must lead to worse problems in agriculture, forestry and social systems.
Reform national economies such that they are aligned with the above needs. Examples are to review how incomes from work and green investments can be restored in relation to that of incomes from capital per se. And it is about establishing new and more fruitfull cooperative economies between the industrialized and developing world. The repeated theme of all those sustainability summits, “who is to blame and who is to pay”, is an obscene example of flawed national economies. Who believes that this flaw will ever be corrected, unless the above challenge of restoring national economies into sharing and cooperation will be taken seriously?

Regardless how much money, power and influence people have, essential changes in personal lifestyle and organizational practice should primarily focus on three things: (i) learning the basics of strategic sustainable development, (ii) big increases in some investments, and (iii) zeroing other kinds of investments. More modest lifestyles might then develop consequently, as well as a decency/morality aspect of walking the talk to support the re-design of material flows.

So, to individuals, regardless of whether they are CEOs, owners of organizations that can turn over big money, politicians or grassroots:

Invest in the systemic changes listed above and phase out what needs to be phased out from organizational and private consumption.
In elections, vote for politicians who have begun to understand the above.
Support green movements working to shape public opinion.
It is welcomed when people adopt life-style changes to walk the talk outlined above, but don’t let this shift focus away from the need of large systemic changes of all life-sustaining systems. Doing so only leads to a relative decrease in the speed of our journey towards the abyss. We need to change direction, powerfully, more than just slowing down.
So, in conclusion: at workplaces of all kinds, promote strategic in-house movements in line with the above, e.g., introduce programs that teach about genuine cross-sector strategic sustainable development and the “ABCD in funnel” processes, including what conclusions this imply for the life-supportive systems that we all are dependent on. That is what the FSSD Global is all about.

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[1] See review article about the indisputable rational for gradually moving towards compliance with boundary conditions for sustainable (re-)design; A framework for strategic sustainable development Göran Ingvar Broman, Karl-Henrik Robert; Journal of Cleaner Production 140 (2017) 17-31