ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some basic trends and challenges associated with consumption and consumerism before seeking to connect sustainable lifestyles and livelihoods to the resource nexus. It turns to discussions of lifestyle responsibility and the need for collective action if high consumption patterns and lifestyles are to change. The resource nexus approach makes clear that lifestyles and livelihoods, of the wealthiest societies on earth as well as the poorest, require substantial changes if either are to be made more sustainable. More sustainable livelihoods and substantially increased resource efficiency will be required if governance decisions and institutions are to better grapple with the resource nexus challenges. The empirical world includes a rich set of social movements and policy experiments. The experiments are underway, and people can begin to learn from them about changing high consumption lifestyles via collective action in society and government.
