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The Shadows of Consumption: Consequences for the Global Environment

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Consumer culture and environmentalism make strange bedfellows -- is it oxymoronic to simultaneously love shopping and love the planet? Must The West end its love affair with consumer culture -SUVs, KFC, and "I want my MTV"? Can `greening' corporations really help prevent environmental collapse? These were some of the many questions I had on my mind when I read Peter Dauvergne's "The Shadows Of Consumption: Consequences for the Global Environment."

General readers, political economists, and anyone looking for a fresh take on environmentalism will find Dauvergne's work clearly articulated, provocative, and non-preachy. He does an excellent job of providing investigative analysis linking consumption with the ensuing, and often unseen, global repercussions. This information was of great help to me. I often wonder how to make sense of international trade patterns, global warming, biodiversity and other complex environmental factors when faced with mundane decisions at the grocery store. The consequences of our purchases often seem foggy, distant, and difficult to grasp. In succinct chapters, Dauvergne makes these complex relationships concrete by bringing to light such factors as governance structures, political economy, geography, and corporate power. The author roots his argument about the hidden costs of consumption using five clear examples: cars, gasoline, refrigerators, beef, and seals.

The author succeeds in linking these five disparate cases in support of his overarching argument about the global shadows of consumption. I learned that rising consumption patterns are increasing everywhere, at the same time, the distance between producers and consumers is lengthening so that it's more difficult to comprehend negative spillover effects (Often to the detriment of the environment, poorer countries, and indigenous communities which end up bearing the costs.) This "shadow" concept allows the reader to move beyond individualized solutions to environmental problems to examine the roles of multinational corporations, trade, finance, globalization, and governing bodies.

Sweeping reforms will be needed to create balance. Understanding why ecological shadows form, how they drift, and occasionally, why they fade away will be key in crafting effective environmental strategies on a global context. I enjoyed the way the author seamlessly weaves together these multiple dimensions of trade, governance, health, and corporate power. This book made me think twice about the broader consequences of my purchasing power. The stomach-turning details about "advanced meat recovery systems" combined with the statistics about the rise of meat consumption, rapid loss of rainforests, and broader ecological effects made me vow to "vote with my fork" and cut beef out of my diet entirely. The other chapters are equally hard hitting.

Thanks to Dauvergne, I have a new appreciation for the urgency of drastic structural reforms on a global level including greener technologies, tougher environmental standards, and ways for products to reflect their true environmental costs. At the same time, I have a more realistic understanding of consequences. I understand environmental spillover and link my individualized consumption practices to collective shadows forming in distant communities. While I'm committed to curtailing consumption as a whole, and think others should do so too, I strongly recommend purchasing this book.

"The Shadows of Consumption" by Peter Dauvergne is a penetrating and far-reaching analysis of consumerism and the environment. Written in a highly accessible manner, the author presents a sobering assessment of our relationship with the planet, supporting his research with an impressive amount of references, data and statistics. The end result is a cogently argued and persuasive book that will prove useful to anyone seeking to transcend the limitations of environmentalism as it is currently understood; significantly, the book can also provide guidance as humanity seeks to achieve a brighter world that is characterized by an ethos of balanced, sustainable consumption.

Mr. Dauvergne studies five consumer products to help us understand their "shadow effects" on the environment, meaning how commodity extraction, production and consumption can result in damage to ecosystems that may be located far away from their actual points of consumption. The products include automobiles, leaded gasoline, refrigerators, beef and harp seals. Through a series of fascinating case studies, the reader gains familiarity with the controversies associated with these products. The stories are sometimes precautionary, where the consequences of introducing new technologies were later found to cause severe damage to the environment. Importantly, we also gain hope by learning how sustained social struggles have sometimes persuaded governments to rectify severe environmental problems, such as the international ban of CFCs which has proven effective in helping to protect the earth's ozone layer from further harm.

Of course, Mr. Dauvergne demonstrates that when profits are at stake, business often finds a way around its opposition - if only for a while. Corporations have become much more adept at public relations, using the media to blunt or counter criticism from environmental groups. For example, the Canadian government was urged by the business community to reinstate the seal hunt on the dubious assertion that fewer seals might help the cod population to rebuild. In another case, Mr. Dauvergne explains how industry delayed the phaseout of leaded gasoline by first challenging the scientific evidence and then relocating production and sale to the developing world.

Mr. Dauvergne credits the environmental movement for its victories in raising consumer awareness about the relationship between consumption and distant ecosystems, such as the Forest Stewardship Council's seal assuring that lumber sold by retailers has been harvested sustainably in the source country. However, Mr. Dauvergne stresses that these gains are being overwhelmed by growing demand of a global marketplace. For example, automobiles may be safer to drive and have better mileage than ever before, but an expected increase from 800 million to two billion automobiles by mid century will mean more hazard for humans due to accidents and pollution and will exert enormous pressure on the environment. Clearly, the evidence presented by Mr. Dauvergne proves that the actions of individual consumers and single-issue environmental campaigns, while helpful, are inadequate to the task of solving the problem of inexorably rising consumption on a global scale.

To that end, Mr. Dauvergne asserts that a systemic challenge to the status quo is necessary. The author makes a number of sound policy recommendations, including a commitment to the precautionary principle with respect to scientific discovery, restrictions on waste dumping, an end to corporate risk-shifting, and so on. Through Mr. Dauvergne's skillfull framing and discussion of the issues, the reader is thoroughly persuaded and inspired to support the author's commonsense solutions.

As someone who has only recently been giving personal thought to my role in the environmental crisis, this book helped move me from the sidelines to being more actively engaged in considering what I can do to help the environment. The author understands that trying to scare people into doing something different doesn't usually work and that good information is how to change people's interest in the issues.

Consumerism inflicts a tyranny of small decisions which are incrementally undermining the life support systems of the planet. This is the central message of Shadows of Consumption, authored by distinguished Canadian political scientist Peter Dauvergne. The book is deeply anchored in the dominant environmentalist narrative about excessive materialism and consumerism that appears to have trumped the Malthusian narrative of the sixties and seventies. Rather than berating the growth of population in developing countries, most environmentalists have shifted their ire to consumerism in affluent societies which they see as a more cogent and plausible policy target. No doubt consumerism is indeed linked closely to environmental degradation, quite often in developing countries. Yet, compelling as the appeal of anti-consumerism rhetoric may be, one is still left with a lingering question of how best to address global poverty and growing inequality?

The cover of the book is graced with Mexican artist Diego Rivera's painting La Orgia - La Noce de los ricos (Orgy - Night of the Rich). However, the author does not directly address the challenge of achieving development in places such as Mexico. What are the means by which wealth transfer might occur to reduce human suffering beyond the simplistic recommendation of reverting back to subsistence lifestyles which most of the world wants to escape or lavishing foreign aid which skews performance incentives? Furthermore, how do we also reconcile pluralism of human tastes for goods and services with the imperative to reduce consumption? Providing more efficient means of procuring and producing goods and services might be a win-win but the author dismisses that prospect since it may still spur latent demand (though he doesn't state it directly, this is the argument of the nineteenth century Jevons' paradox on efficiency). Furthermore, it is tempting to berate stigmatized corporate sectors such as tobacco but what about the other "finer" indulgences such as wine and the whole spectrum of alcoholic beverage manufacturers. The health burden that Dauvergne ascribes to car manufacturers in terms of accidental deaths should rather be blamed on this consumer sector instead. There is some cultural selectivity in all critiques of consumerism which comes through in this work as well.

The author provides case analyses of five products and their cascading impact on the environment: cars, leaded gasoline, refrigerators, beef and harp seals. This assortment may be a bit dizzying to doctoral students trying to ascertain the best comparative matrix for this choice but the goal of the selection is to be panoramic from the "core to the periphery" of consumerism. Out of these choices, the case for mechanized beef production as a highly damaging industry is most compelling. The overall impact of the beef industry in terms of bioethics, deforestation, and in reducing the amount of land for lower-impact food production deserves strong consideration by educators and policy-makers alike. Without stifling choice, it is possible to send market signals regarding the impact of beef production worldwide by appropriate fiscal policies.

At the end Dauvergne also criticizes modern environmentalism for being too "incremental" and being co-opted by business interests. Yet environmentalists started off from much more uncompromising positions on societal norms which Dauvergne is championing and there is a historical trajectory which needs to be appreciated regarding why they have moved towards pragmatic partnerships. They have perhaps come to the realization that societal choice and the yearning for some measure of material well-being cannot be stifled. Furthermore, incentive-drive development paths necessitate some measure of consumerism around luxury goods in developed countries. No doubt the outcome of such a path will be suboptimal from the perspective of purely environmental conservation. In a society that values some norms of human choice regarding well-being we will always contend with some win-lose propositions: what Amartya Sen admirably called "the impossibility of a Paretian Liberal." We can educate and regulate but must always be cautious about totalitarianism for that may stifle our ultimate salvation out of the environmental crisis - the capacity to innovate. While Shadows of Consumption bypasses these tough questions, there are some useful policy suggestions towards the end about "balance," in various domains of human endeavor from trade and financial flows to corporate engagement. The author is clearly a concerned citizen just as much as he is a credible academic and the book is certainly valuable as a study of how scholars are grappling with their own struggles around the conundrum of global consumption patterns.