What the world needs more urgently than yet another climate summit is a symposium on consumerism. Simply establishing reduction targets would be a hollow outcome without recognizing the moral crisis behind this climate emergency. The planet is a mess because the developed world has been seduced by a consumer mentality that craves wealth, travel, fashion, technology and all manner of creature comforts. People are addicted to lifestyles that a wheezing planet simply can’t sustain.
Governments have never had a problem signing climate-reduction treaties. But these treaties fail because short-sighted politicians cynically set ambitious targets while ignoring the root moral cause of the problem. Instead of principled and frank discussions about a runaway consumerism that pushes Western society to live beyond its ecological means, politicians constantly promise an ever-more sumptuous lifestyle for the upper and middle classes. They do so often at the expense of the poor and because proposing anything but Shrangri-La is considered political suicide.
“Governments are reluctant to upset the public with measures which could affect the level of consumption or create risks for foreign investment,” wrote Pope Francis last June in Laudato Si’.
The Pope’s encyclical on the environment should be read by every attendee in Paris. It bluntly explains how our ecological dilemma is the result of a wide abandonment of religious principles in favour of lifestyles that embrace individualism, consumerism and hedonism. The natural environment and human environment are deteriorating together, he said. Fixing one requires fixing the other.
The problem is that political and business leaders, fearful of losing votes or sales, shrink from that discussion. They are seldom inclined to elevate the long-term common good of society above short-term self interest. That’s why attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions repeatedly fail. The moral case for change, for simpler lifestyles, gets trampled by political and financial interests.
But the politicians and financiers are not solely to blame. A consumer culture sorely in need of a spiritual and ethical enlightenment must share the responsibility. Ultimately, the planet is choking due to rampant human consumption. Until people awaken to a moral imperative to live more simply and in respect for God’s creation, genuine environmental cleanup will remain an unanswered prayer.
If the Paris conference can begin that transformation, it will be a watershed event. If not, it could be just more hot air.