ABSTRACT
We cannot debate the drivers and implications of growing resource demands and their relation to governance without attention to the massive and growing global demand for material resources driven by high consumption lifestyles, as well as the potential roles for policy making in reducing material throughput and increasing resource efficiency nationally, regionally and globally. The history, driving forces and myriad implications of high consumption – at the individual, societal, national and global scales – have provoked a massive scholarly and popular literature (Barber, 2007, Cohen, 2003, De Graaf et al., 2005, Farrelly, 2008, Miller, 2012, SERI et al., 2009, Speth, 2008, VanDeveer, 2015, Worldwatch Institute, 2004). In recent years, for example, Annie Leonard’s (2010) Story of Stuff – online and in book form – and Charles Fishman’s (2006) The Wal-Mart Effect, which catalogues the stunning global impacts of the world’s largest retailer, impacted debate among activists, students and politicians – and around kitchen tables. As Ellen Ruppel Shell’s (2009) Cheap demonstrates, the environment and the humans pay a very high price for discount goods and the culture that values them. What such diverse work has in common is a conviction that culture, politics and economics are deeply intertwined in contemporary consumerism and that ever-increasing material consumption is leading nations and communities down ecologically and socially devastating paths.
