Consumerism Will Kill the Earth

Even Extinction Rebellion is conveniently neglecting an inconvenient truth.

We cannot have rampant consumerism driven by limitless economic growth AND save the earth.

They can stop as much traffic as they like, causing as many additional fumes as they like in the gridlock. Here is what ER are NOT campaigning against:

• The betrayal of the Green Belt
• All new buildings (predicted only to last 50 years which doesn't even outlive their carbon construction footprint)
• The demolition of heritage buildings rather than their refurbishment and retro-greening.
• The failure to tackle empty buildings, brownfield sites and non-dom home ownership.
• Air conditioning
• Unnecessary travel, particularly flights
• Multiple holidays per year
• Single season fashions
• Moulded shoes which cannot be repaired
• Food miles
• Food waste
• Computers, tablets and phones having to be regularly disposed of and replaced when their software is 'no longer supported' by manufacturer.
• Smart meters NOT saving either money or the environment and costing energy to run
• The scrapping of all old but reliable energy meters in 'smart meter' favour. Plus the scrapping of smart meters when switching suppliers.
• The 'smarting' of all analogue systems, which then require disposal of analogue systems and have a lot more to go wrong with them thus contributing to their short lives.
• Hot tubs
• Jacuzzi's
• Personal swimming pools
• Banks of lights in every property and premises.
• Built-in obsolescence in manufacturing
• Vehicles written off which are perfectly repairable after accidents but deemed 'economically unrepairable' by insurers who do not wish to pay out for repairs
• Cars which require front moulded units to be replaced every time a headlight needs to be replaced
• Non recyclable 'energy saving' bulbs
• Single use plastics, among other single-use items
• Unnecessary fireworks (ie when it isn't New Year or Bonfire Night)
• Chinese lanterns
• The fall of the school bus and rise of individual journeys to drop children to/from their schools
• Unnecessary commuting to work
• Multiple vehicle ownership per household
• Building new estates where there is no existing infrastructure
• Charges on rubbish dumps, encouraging fly tipping
• Barbecues
• Unnecessary gadgets and other goods.
• Overpopulation
• Lack of cheap, reliable and plentiful public transport.
• 'The Internet of Things' which will encourage unprecedented consumption in getting people to link their every gadget to the internet!

Finally, while there is much each consumer, sorry, individual, can do, it is OUR governments who permit all of the above to be produced and sold and do nothing to discourage overpopulation.

We also need to remember that most people only modify their behaviour when they have to.

Poor people are generally automatically careful in their consumption. Wealthy people have no fear of the bills and will probably carry on wasting as many resources as they can without a second thought.

Limitless economic growth is not sustainable. On any level. Fairer wealth distribution and sensible reproductive levels are what is needed. Along with economic stability worldwide. We give ourselves the right to control animal populations when we deem them to be overbreeding (and by and large animals are far more sensible than we are and will only breed according to what the land can support) but fail to control our own numbers, and at the morally appropriate juncture, creation.

Reprogramming the Poverty Consciousness

I have been reading a lot of motivational books and books about setting up businesses lately with an eye to the future.

It seems completely obvious if you think about it but one particular book has hit me straight between the eyes with the truth that schools and universities are and always have been intended to prepare children to become employees, not bosses. There is also a social conditioning to fear money so that if you are poor, you fear you'll never have any money and if you somehow become comfortably middle class or even rich, you fear losing it. Money often controls its users, not the other way round as it should be with what is essentially just a tool to facilitate, not an end in itself. This is because there is no financial education to help youngsters overcome this fear and maybe societally, that suits.

Perhaps this explains why 70% of successful entrepreneurs have apparently not been to university. They've been prepared to take chances that more educated people might not.

However the traditional (and still standard) parental advice; 'Study hard, get good grades and you'll get a good job' is undoubtedly somewhat simplistic or even outmoded in today's society where there is no longer job security or company loyalty in the vast majority of jobs, so people may as well take their chances via other routes.

The book is called 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' and features the advice a young boy received from the two 'dads' in his life, his natural father who studied hard, got good grades and became a teacher, but never a well-off one as he paid so many taxes and the man who became a second father to him, his best mate's dad who taught him how to think differently if he wanted to be truly successful and rich just like him and how he followed that advice and found it worked.

Certainly my grandfather's world where his company looked after him and his family for over 30 years and even had its own theatre and sports centre are long gone for most people, though perhaps the loyalty of yesteryear just made employees less dissatisfied wage slaves than they are now, rather than happy per se, as the engineering work my grandfather did was undoubtedly boring and monotonous, but there was no expectation then that a job should do much more than put food on the table and pay the bills, never mind provide any kind of happiness or spiritual fulfilment. My grandad's generation were just grateful to have survived WWII.

To get back to the book, another eye-opener was the contrast of how an individual is taxed on everything before they know what they have left and then continues to be taxed on spendings,  savings, private pensions and even after death via death duties and benefactors through inheritance tax, whereas a corporation spends everything it wants as well as needs to, and then only pays tax on the rest!

In view of this, I think I'll register myself 'Laura King inc' at Companies House pronto!

I went to a school where there was an unspoken understanding that we were a school of shop assistants and farmer's wives, with perhaps a smattering of teachers. It took me a long time  as an adult to believe I could achieve so much more for myself, other than being able to write and facilitate. On the plus side, I haven't been over-educated, which I have observed in some, can be just as much of a handicap to realising one's true and full potential when it can also lead to false beliefs about oneself plus overconfidence in one's abilities and intellectual inflexibility.