I've sort of obsessively been paying attention to the dumping of used clothes in Accra Ghana. PBS News Hour has featured some great journalism in partnership with Undertold Stories. I had no idea that the Western thrift clothing "industry" works with middlemen to export unwanted clothes that end up being purchased in bulk by clothing sellers in Accra's markets. The quality of clothing is so poor that most of it gets burned or dumped in the water. Just highlighting the clothing industry as another place where conspicuous consumerism is pushing microplastics and pollution on to poorer countries... If we can curb consumerism here, we should be figuring out better recycling options. One social enterprise in Accra is making particle board for building materials out of the dumped clothing. But as much as they take off the beach, it shows up and more then next week.
Wow -- I had no idea about that! Shocking. There are so many examples of that sort of thing, like the fact much of what we 'recycle' gets shipped off to be buried elsewhere!
This was a very interesting topic to write about and no surprises about the wealthy being the biggest contributors to environmental pressures. The trick, as you say, is to get the wealthy on board with changing their behaviour and also contributing financially to projects that can reduce climate issues. Instead of Amazon donating $1.7million NZD to the Trump inauguration ceremony wouldn't it be better that the money was spent helping to reduce climate issues.
This is excellent. And hopeful. I have always thought that in a more equal world we would live more like me, at benefit level, which would work fine if it wasn’t for political and corporate greed.
This is really helpful data you've compiled. I've thought a lot about the hypocrisy of climate issues and the affluent this past week so I appreciate your synthesis here.
I tried to come up with figures myself by taking per capita GDP figures for all countries and plotting them against per capita CO2 output figures. I expected a higher correlation than I found. I'm still playing with the numbers.
Interesting. Anything I've done w/ global per-capita GDP has resulted in pretty weak correlations. Lots of other confounding variables and it's a pretty generalist proxy.
Thanks for the confirmation. I was trying to build a case that environmental impact is linear to your income, +/- a factor of 2 or so. Even if you save your money or it goes to a large mortgage, someone else is spending that money and having an impact, but maybe above a certain level, it's non-linear, e.g. is Musk's impact 10**5 more than mine?
Sounds reasonable to me. Luckily, one thing we can do is choose to invest money (e.g. if we get to choose who our superannuation money goes to) in sustainable businesses / green initiatives.
I'm all for initiatives like those, though I wonder if they are as virtuous as they seem, e.g. should I buy broccoli at $1/lb or organic broccoli at $2/lb? The latter needs more workers who drive more trucks and buy more goods, so I am exchanging a reduction in pesticides for more impacts elsewhere. I suspect the obvious benefits turn out to be less so in a number of cases, e.g. cloth vs disposable diapers.
It occurred to me that the failure of my case could be construed as good news: there are countries with high GDP and low CO2 emissions.
I hear you. But I think the more we support such initiatives, the more chance they have of increasing efficiencies. Of course, buying local is always a good motto. Re the latter, this may be of interest: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-71101-2
Ecological overshoot is obviously driven by overpopulation times overconsumption. We need to lower both.
You can’t even get people to agree with this, incl. environmentalists with their hearts in the right place.
You certainly can’t get people interested in making the necessary sacrifices.
You totally can’t get politicians that are both willing and able to implement obscenely unpopular sacrifices that get them laughed off the stage if they even hinted at them.
Our system is too strong and permanently entrenched. We have fallen into societal traps and the damage is already done & baked in.
And even if you disagree with all of the above and point to this, that and the other, eg. going all in on nuclear energy, or believing rhetoric green transition is happening , the emperical evidence speaks for itself. All you have to do is look and ask “Yeah? How’s that working out?”
Once you sit with all the issues for long enough, applying intellectual honesty and humility, you arrive at the same conclusion: modern industrial civilization is unsustainable, and we will descend/collapse in potentially horrifying ways.
It’s dark and it’s depression.
What to do? We’re in damage control.
Few people see this. Fewer still can handle it. Fewer still can fight it.
Thanks Jan! It's hard not to feel overwhelmed and horrified at times. But it's also inspiring to see all the good that's being done. Just have to keep our eyes on the prize and keep fighting for good causes. The control that the richest few are gaining is a major concern at the moment, but mass social movements for good can be powerful things. Keep spreading the word.
I am wondering what income qualifies to be in the global top 10% or top 20% . I could imagine that people from rich countries think they are a lot poorer than they are when compared to global income groups.
Good question. Wish I could share images here in replies. Not entirely sure without diving deep into my own analysis. But similar patterns emerged on a country-by-country basis. However, they have a figure in their supplementary that shows the geographical distribution of global top 1% and 20% affluent consumers. The US has 69% of top-1% consumers. By contrast for the top 20%: Eu = 33%; US = 19%; China = 17%; Asia-Pacific Developed = 15%. So much more even across the board.
I've sort of obsessively been paying attention to the dumping of used clothes in Accra Ghana. PBS News Hour has featured some great journalism in partnership with Undertold Stories. I had no idea that the Western thrift clothing "industry" works with middlemen to export unwanted clothes that end up being purchased in bulk by clothing sellers in Accra's markets. The quality of clothing is so poor that most of it gets burned or dumped in the water. Just highlighting the clothing industry as another place where conspicuous consumerism is pushing microplastics and pollution on to poorer countries... If we can curb consumerism here, we should be figuring out better recycling options. One social enterprise in Accra is making particle board for building materials out of the dumped clothing. But as much as they take off the beach, it shows up and more then next week.
Wow -- I had no idea about that! Shocking. There are so many examples of that sort of thing, like the fact much of what we 'recycle' gets shipped off to be buried elsewhere!
Definitely blew my mind. Here it is in case you want to know more. https://youtu.be/uou_223HFns?si=7kKVdmP1wS1yIeqM
This was a very interesting topic to write about and no surprises about the wealthy being the biggest contributors to environmental pressures. The trick, as you say, is to get the wealthy on board with changing their behaviour and also contributing financially to projects that can reduce climate issues. Instead of Amazon donating $1.7million NZD to the Trump inauguration ceremony wouldn't it be better that the money was spent helping to reduce climate issues.
100% Kim! Thanks
I hear you! It was really disappointing overall how climate change was really lacking in the campaign discussions.
Shocking really that it was so low on the priority list!
This is excellent. And hopeful. I have always thought that in a more equal world we would live more like me, at benefit level, which would work fine if it wasn’t for political and corporate greed.
Thanks Karen. Yes, most of our problems would be solved in the absence of political and corporate greed.
This is really helpful data you've compiled. I've thought a lot about the hypocrisy of climate issues and the affluent this past week so I appreciate your synthesis here.
Thanks Jesse!
I tried to come up with figures myself by taking per capita GDP figures for all countries and plotting them against per capita CO2 output figures. I expected a higher correlation than I found. I'm still playing with the numbers.
Interesting. Anything I've done w/ global per-capita GDP has resulted in pretty weak correlations. Lots of other confounding variables and it's a pretty generalist proxy.
Thanks for the confirmation. I was trying to build a case that environmental impact is linear to your income, +/- a factor of 2 or so. Even if you save your money or it goes to a large mortgage, someone else is spending that money and having an impact, but maybe above a certain level, it's non-linear, e.g. is Musk's impact 10**5 more than mine?
Sounds reasonable to me. Luckily, one thing we can do is choose to invest money (e.g. if we get to choose who our superannuation money goes to) in sustainable businesses / green initiatives.
I'm all for initiatives like those, though I wonder if they are as virtuous as they seem, e.g. should I buy broccoli at $1/lb or organic broccoli at $2/lb? The latter needs more workers who drive more trucks and buy more goods, so I am exchanging a reduction in pesticides for more impacts elsewhere. I suspect the obvious benefits turn out to be less so in a number of cases, e.g. cloth vs disposable diapers.
It occurred to me that the failure of my case could be construed as good news: there are countries with high GDP and low CO2 emissions.
I hear you. But I think the more we support such initiatives, the more chance they have of increasing efficiencies. Of course, buying local is always a good motto. Re the latter, this may be of interest: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-71101-2
Thank you. Very interesting paper. I am frequently humbled by how much further other people have taken the ideas that I have.
Ecological overshoot is obviously driven by overpopulation times overconsumption. We need to lower both.
You can’t even get people to agree with this, incl. environmentalists with their hearts in the right place.
You certainly can’t get people interested in making the necessary sacrifices.
You totally can’t get politicians that are both willing and able to implement obscenely unpopular sacrifices that get them laughed off the stage if they even hinted at them.
Our system is too strong and permanently entrenched. We have fallen into societal traps and the damage is already done & baked in.
And even if you disagree with all of the above and point to this, that and the other, eg. going all in on nuclear energy, or believing rhetoric green transition is happening , the emperical evidence speaks for itself. All you have to do is look and ask “Yeah? How’s that working out?”
Once you sit with all the issues for long enough, applying intellectual honesty and humility, you arrive at the same conclusion: modern industrial civilization is unsustainable, and we will descend/collapse in potentially horrifying ways.
It’s dark and it’s depression.
What to do? We’re in damage control.
Few people see this. Fewer still can handle it. Fewer still can fight it.
Good luck & may our Gods save us all.
Thanks Jan! It's hard not to feel overwhelmed and horrified at times. But it's also inspiring to see all the good that's being done. Just have to keep our eyes on the prize and keep fighting for good causes. The control that the richest few are gaining is a major concern at the moment, but mass social movements for good can be powerful things. Keep spreading the word.
It's scary to look at each country's overshoot day.
Countries that we think are doing great, climate wise, consume as much as the US.
Yes, some appear less bad outwardly but most developed countries are doing poorly.
I am wondering what income qualifies to be in the global top 10% or top 20% . I could imagine that people from rich countries think they are a lot poorer than they are when compared to global income groups.
Good question. Wish I could share images here in replies. Not entirely sure without diving deep into my own analysis. But similar patterns emerged on a country-by-country basis. However, they have a figure in their supplementary that shows the geographical distribution of global top 1% and 20% affluent consumers. The US has 69% of top-1% consumers. By contrast for the top 20%: Eu = 33%; US = 19%; China = 17%; Asia-Pacific Developed = 15%. So much more even across the board.