Outside In | The world is speeding to hell in a shopping cart
- We need to move away from consumerism and find better measures of economic progress – if we want to avoid a climate catastrophe
This suggests we need 1.75 earths to supply the world’s 8.2 billion consumers and their indulgences.
My concern is not simply that these indicators point in a very bad direction, but that they do so unnoticed. I think I am part of the majority who read nothing in the news about the worryingly earlier passage of Overshoot Day this year.
Similarly, did anyone read about the International Degrowth Conference in Pontevedra, Spain, in mid-June? Not even the official website reported on the conference outcomes. My quick search for press coverage came up blank. For a global movement aimed at shifting us away from unsustainable consumerism and getting governments to reconsider their blind pursuit of gross domestic product growth, the silence speaks volumes.