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Material Happiness Material happiness Uncoupling a meaningful life from the destruction of nature Copyright c 2018 Falko Buschke PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FREE STATE AND THE VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT BRUSSEL Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License (the “License”). You may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0. Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License. First printing, October 2018 Contents I Part One 1 An unprecedented problem ...................................7 1.1 If you care about nature, then why are you destroying it?7 1.2 The purpose of this document8 1.3 The state of nature8 1.3.1 The Living Planet Index............................................8 1.3.2 The Red List Index................................................9 1.3.3 Other studies................................................... 10 1.3.4 The sixth extinction?.............................................. 11 1.3.5 Planetary boundaries............................................ 12 1.4 Why should we care about the destruction of nature? 13 1.4.1 Economic reasons to avoid losing nature............................. 13 1.4.2 Ethical reasons to conserve nature.................................. 14 2 Why do we harm nature? ..................................... 17 2.1 The real reasons for harming nature 17 2.1.1 Information: do we know what we are doing to the environment?......... 17 2.1.2 Indifference: when we know that we are harming nature, but do we care?.. 18 2.1.3 Institutions: do we have the right incentives to change our behaviour?..... 19 2.1.4 Infrastructure: do we have the tools to act more sustainably?............. 20 II Part Two 3 Meaningful lives without harming nature ....................... 23 3.1 What is a meaningful life? 23 3.2 How is your life connected with nature? 25 3.3 What is your ecological footprint? 25 3.4 Bringing it all together 27 Bibliography ................................................. 28 Index ........................................................ 31 I Part One 1 An unprecedented problem ..........7 1.1 If you care about nature, then why are you destroy- ing it? 1.2 The purpose of this document 1.3 The state of nature 1.4 Why should we care about the destruction of na- ture? 2 Why do we harm nature? ............ 17 2.1 The real reasons for harming nature 1. An unprecedented problem 1.1 If you care about nature, then why are you destroying it? You care about nature, don’t you? If you didn’t, you probably wouldn’t be reading this. In fact, most people care about nature. Think about it, have you ever heard your friends and family say they preferred a damaged environ- ment? Do you know anyone who takes pleasure from pollution and is happy about of habitat loss? This seems unlikely. If most people care about nature, then why are we seeing the unprecedented destruction of ecosystems and species? Over the last few decades, humans have slashed, burned, ploughed and paved over natural habitats in a way that is driving species to extinction faster than ever before in human history [1, 2, 3]. If no one wants to destroy nature on purpose, but we are doing it anyway, then we need to ask ourselves if ecological destruction has become the default setting for modern society? Could it be that our everyday way of life inevitably destroys nature? Most of us today own more material goods than could be imagined just three generations ago. When our great-grandparents were as old as we are now, they didn’t have iPhones, laptops and designer jeans. But were their lives less meaningful than ours? We have access to these things because of a remarkable global system of extraction, manufacturing and distribution. This system has provided us with unprecedented material wealth. Unfortunately, we pay for this by trading in wilderness for farms, factories, roads and railways. Exercise 1.1 What is the oldest item of clothing you are wearing right now? Cast your mind back to when you first bought it. How much did you pay for it? Were you excited when you found it in the store? Did you feel that same sense of excitement this morning when you pulled it out of your wardrobe? A Norwegian study [4] indicated that, on average, clothes are disposed of after 5.4 years (although they are generally only worn for approximately 4 years). Is your item of clothing older than 5.4 years? The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is a multinational body established in 2012. Its purpose is to allow members from 8 Chapter 1. An unprecedented problem 128 countries to assess the current scientific consensus on biodiversity in order to develop evidence- based policies. A key theme throughout the work of IPBES is that a sustainable future will require that society radically changes the way in which we define quality of life and social status on the basis of material consumption. Material consumption is, of course, related to quality of life and social status. For example, the life of someone living in abject poverty will indeed be improved by a clean blanket and a warm meal. However, this is only true up to a point. Poverty is relative [5]. In a country like Vietnam, poverty would mean walking barefoot, but in China it would mean lacking a bicycle. Poverty in France would entail lacking a car and in the USA it could be that you only own an old car. In other words, there isn’t a simple equation that links how much stuff you have with how good your life is. 1.2 The purpose of this document The purpose of this booklet is twofold. First, it intends to explore reasons why society’s default behaviour is one of ecological destruction. Second, it hopes to demonstrate that happy and meaningful lives do not necessarily require increased material consumption. It is not the intention to make you feel guilty for your lifestyle, or to turn you into a soldier in a hippie-army. Instead, if you understand the obstacles to sustainable behaviour, then you can begin making informed decisions to overcome those obstacles. This booklet will help you answer the following questions: • How meaningful do you consider you own life? • Do you see yourself as separate from or a part of nature? • How much does your lifestyle impact on nature? By answering these three questions, you will develop a personal understanding of how living a good life relates to natural resource consumption. It is essential that you realise that there are no single right answers to any of these questions. We all differ as humans. That said, there is an answer that applies to you specifically. So, be sure to answer all these questions truthfully, because it is the only way you will uncover deeper insights into your own lifestyle. Before we get to this, it is necessary to first consider some data on the current state of the world’s plants and animals. Are things as bad as they sound, or are the tree-huggers just over-reacting? 1.3 The state of nature The planet is in a sorry state. But don’t take our word for it. We can look at the data from some of the most reputable organisations in the world. We’ll focus specifically on biodiversity because we believe that people understand the plight of plants and animals much more intuitively than other forms of environmental degradation (hands up if you know how much NO2 is currently in our atmosphere, for example). This does mean that we will skip mountains of information on climate change, water pollution and ocean acidification. These are all serious issues that deserve our attention, but we will put them aside for the time being. Unfortunately, the state of biodiversity is dismal enough on its own. 1.3.1 The Living Planet Index To many people, the black and white panda logo of the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) typifies conservation. When the WWF tells us that nature is being damaged, we should believe them. They have the data to back it up. Since 1970, the WWF has been monitoring the sizes of approximately 10 000 populations from more than 3000 carefully-selected fish, amphibian, reptile, bird and mammal 1.3 The state of nature 9 species. Trends for these populations are combined into the Living Planet Index, the results of which are summarised into their Living Planet Report [6]. The numbers from the Living Planet Report make for depressing reading: compared to a benchmark in 1970, the Living Planet Index shows an average 52% decrease in sizes of animal populations (Figure 1.1). Figure 1.1: A 52% global decline in the Living Planet Index between 1970 and 2012. While this alone makes for startling reading, the global trend only tells part of the nightmarish story: • Numbers of freshwater fish have declined by a staggering 76% over the last four decades, compared to 39% for marine fish and 39% for terrestrial species. • Temperate regions (e.g. North America and Europe) showed a 36% decline in the Living Planet Index compared to a 56% decline in tropical regions. This is significant because most developing countries occur in tropical regions (e.g. Africa, South America, south-east Asia). • The main threats to animal populations are direct exploitation and harvesting (37%), habitat degradation and transformation (31.4%) and habitat loss (13.4%).
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