Advertising today encourages consumption, waste, and a throw-away mentality contributing to the destruction of the earth and its natural resources.

Outside critics -- from the scientific community, environmentalists, ecologists, and conservationists -- encourage us to counter-balance, to moderate our desires, to consume less, to waste less. Reduce, re-use, recycle.

"Green marketing" has thus become a very fashionable trend in advertising, making claims that their products are harmless to the environment. Recognize, however, that there's a lot of lip-service by advertisers which blur the issues here.

Major oil and chemical polluters, for example, will hire ad agencies and public relations firms to create ad campaigns to build a good public image by intensifying their (relatively minor) "good" and by downplaying their (relatively major) "bad." For example, in the late 1990s, the plastics industry funded a major campaign of "soft focus" ads to encourage TV viewers to feel good about petroleum-based plastics. Furthermore, as the New York Times reported, "It's Getting Crowded on the Environmental Bandwagon."

While all the favorable claims made may be "true," the whole issue can be manipulated by the degree and proportion of what is said, and what is omitted. At the same time as BP (British Petroleum) spent millions on its greenwash PR campaign ("Beyond Petroleum"), the management cost-cutting on safety and maintenance caused the 2005 Texas City refinery fire (15 dead) and the 2006 Alaskan Pipe Line oil spill. (Baker Report, Jan.17, 2007)

Consumers, too, can give lip-service to environmental issues, but exempt themselves: "I'm against pollution... as long as I can have my throw-away products, my convenience food, my soda-pop in cans, my disposable diapers...."

Advertising also encourages a whole culture of waste: elaborate packaging, throw-away products (paper and plastic), gadgets with very limited use.

Harmful effects (such as ocean pollution, ozone layer depletion) of such wasteful consumption are real. But, the exact sources or causes of some harmful effects are often difficult to observe and measure because so much is indirect and cumulative.

About 1990, worldwide television had become a reality. Billions of poor people now see glimpses of an affluent "American life style" in the background details of our movies, our TV shows, CNN news, MTV, and in ads. This is changing the aspirations of the whole world.

If the earth is under stress now, with less than 10% of the population consuming so much, what will happen when the world market (China, India, Africa, South America) is seen simply as new "consumers," as a new target audience?

For example, in India, when advertising targeted the growing affluence of an emerging middle-class, this created a demand for small refrigerators (a modest desire in a hot country); but, the nation's whole electrical generating capacity was soon overwhelmed (blackouts, brownouts) and now a hasty dam-building project is threatening the ecosystem of a sub-continent.

In 2004, Norman Myers (The New Consumers: The Influence of Affluence on the Environment) wrote that more than 1 billion people in 20 developing nations have recently become wealthy enough to begin consuming like Americans. Those consumers [esp. in China] will buy as many as 800 million cars by 2010 and use a quarter of all electricity in their respective countries. Nielsen reports (LA Times, 2/13/ 05) that the annual growth rate of the advertising market in China is 40% -- compared to 4% in the USA. An American advertising executive in Shanghai says that China, because of its lack of previous experience,"It's the 1950s, but in color"; and sees China, as "the last great virgin brand-building market."

By 2008, the demands on basic commodities (copper, lead, gold, silver, corn, wheat, soybeans) from new consumers, according to some experts, had changed the whole system: “It is absolutely a fundamental change in the global economic structure,” said Bart Melek, global commodities strategist for BMO Capital Markets, an investment firm based in Toronto. “Global commodities ranging from oil to base metals to grains are moving higher as billions of people in China and around the world get wealthier and are consuming more as they produce products for us, and increasingly for themselves.”

India, the world's second most populated country, is also undergoing a major transformation. In a series of New York Times reports in December, 2005 ("India Accelerating"), Amy Waldman noted:"So intense is the advertising onslaught, so giddy the media coverage of the new affluence, that it almost easy to forget that India remains home to the world's largest number of poor people, according to the World Bank. Still, India's middle class has grown to an estimated 250 million in the past decade.... America went through a similar evolution: the making of a postwar consumerist economy; the introduction of credit cards and growing comfort with, and dependence on debt; the rise of an advertising culture....This is a far bigger change for Indian society than it was for America, which in many ways was founded around the notion of the individual. Indian society has always been more about duty, or dharma, than drive, more about responsibility to others than the realization of individual desire."

In 2008 (Jan. 15, AP) India's Tata Motors introduced the world's cheapest car, the Nano. "For now, the car will be sold only in India, but Tata has said it eventually hopes to export it. The Nano could become the basis for other similar super-cheap models in developing markets around the world. As rising middle class incomes drive demand for cars in India, automakers expect the ranks of car owners in the country to expand dramatically in coming years. But for some, a huge influx of cars is a terrifying prospect of traffic jams at midnight, hours-long commutes and increasing pollution.

"If you're talking about urban environment, it will cause serious problems," said Jamie Leather, a transport specialist with the Asian Development Bank. "It's a major concern." In 2005, Indian vehicles released 219 million tons of carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas blamed for global warming. By 2035, that number is projected to increase to 1,467 million tons, due largely to the expanding middle-class and the expected rise of low-cost cars, according to the Asian Development Bank. "The cheaper and cheaper vehicles become, the quicker those pollution levels will increase," Leather said."

What happens when well-meaning advocates, seeking to raise the living standards of the poor, conflict with well-meaning advocates seeking to protect the environment? may be the critical issue in the future. This relates not only to automobiles, but also to many of the electrical appliances common to the middle class. For example, as the use of air-conditioning. with its ozone-depleting gasses, increases in the hot countries of Asia, the hole increases in the earth's ozone layer.

Africa also is changing rapidly. In 2005, a half million credit cards will be newly issued in Kenya alone, a dramatic increase, as banks and businesses there seek to encourage a new way of buying and selling to jump-start their economy. As CSM reports ("Africans' New Motto: 'Charge It'), the dangers are greater for the debtors because the lenders will be charging 36% to 50% interest (compared to American rates of 18%-22%).

In early 2008, population expert Jared Diamond (author of Guns, Germs and Steel), in "What's Your Consumption Factor?", points out the math factor of 32 when assessing population growth in the future: "The estimated one billion people who live in developed countries have a relative per capita consumption rate of 32." (The other 5.5 billion people of the world consume much less; people in America for example, consume 32 times more stuff than people in Kenya, with a per capita consumption rate of 1.) He writes: "People in the third world are aware of this difference.... When they believe their chances of catching up to be hopeless, they sometimes get frustrated and angry, and some become terrorists, or tolerate or support terrorists."

Benjamin Barber (author of Consumed), in his essay "Overselling Capitalism" admits the virtues of capitalism but points out serious flaws: "Capitalism's core virtue is that it marries altruism and self-interest. In producing goods and services that answer real consumer needs, it secures a profit for producers. Doing good for others turns out to entail doing well for yourself. Capitalism's success, however, has meant that core wants in the developed world are now mostly met and that too many goods are now chasing too few needs. Yet capitalism requires us to "need" all that it produces in order to survive. So it busies itself manufacturing needs for the wealthy while ignoring the wants of the truly needy. Global inequality means that while the wealthy have too few needs, the needy have too little wealth."

Professor Juliet Schor of Harvard University, author of The Overworked American and The Overspent American, wrote: "At the same time I was ruminating about these issues, I became convinced that America, as a country, had to free itself from work-and-spend. The ecological devastation created by the national lifestyle had become unacceptable."

Indians Find U.S. at Fault in Food Cost

By HEATHER TIMMONS | The New York Times | May 14, 2008

NEW DELHI — Instead of blaming India and other developing nations for the rise in food prices, Americans should rethink their energy policy — and go on a diet.

That has been the response, basically, of a growing number of politicians, economists and academics in this country, who are angry at statements by top United States officials that India’s rising prosperity is to blame for food inflation.

The debate has sometimes devolved into what sounded like petty playground taunts over who are the real gluttons devouring the world’s resources.

For instance, Pradeep S. Mehta, secretary general of the center for international trade, economics and the environment of CUTS International, an independent research institute based here, said that if Americans slimmed down to the weight of middle-class Indians, “many hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plates.”

He added, archly, that the money spent in the United States on liposuction to get rid of fat from excess consumption could be funneled to feed famine victims.

Mr. Mehta’s comments may sound like the macroeconomic equivalent of “so’s your old man,” but they reflect genuine outrage — and ballooning criticism — toward the United States in particular, over recent remarks by President Bush.

After a news conference in Missouri on May 2, he was quoted as saying of India’s burgeoning middle class, “When you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.”

The comments, widely reported in the developing world, followed a statement on the subject by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that had upset many Indians.

In response to the president’s remarks, a ranking official in the commerce ministry, Jairam Ramesh, told the Press Trust of India, “George Bush has never been known for his knowledge of economics,” and the remarks proved again how “comprehensively wrong” he is.

The Asian Age, a newspaper based here, argued in an editorial last week that Mr. Bush’s “ignorance on most matters is widely known and openly acknowledged by his own countrymen,” and that he must not be allowed to “get away” with an effort to “divert global attention from the truth by passing the buck on to India.”

The developing nations, and in particular China and India, are being blamed for global problems, including the rising cost of commodities and the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, because they are consuming more goods and fuel than ever before. But Indians from the prime minister’s office on down frequently point out that per capita, India uses far lower quantities of commodities and pollutes far less than nations in the West, particularly the United States.

Explaining the food price increases, Indian politicians and academics cite consumption in the United States; the West’s diversion of arable land into the production of ethanol and other biofuels; agricultural subsidies and trade barriers from Washington and the European Union; and finally the decline in the exchange rate of the dollar.

There may be some foundation to Indians’ accusations of hypocrisy by the West. The United States uses — or throws away — 3,770 calories a person each day, according to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization collected in 2001-3, compared with 2,440 calories per person in India. Americans are also the largest per capita consumers in any major economy of the most energy-intensive common food source, beef, the Agriculture Department says.

And the United States and Canada lead the world in oil consumption per person, according to the Energy Information Administration, an Energy Department agency.

When it comes to trade, Western farming subsidies undercut agricultural production in fertile areas of Africa, India’s commerce minister, Kamal Nath, said in a telephone interview, repeating the point that Americans waste more food than people in many other countries.

The United States is responsible “many times more” than India for the world food crisis, said Ramesh Chand, an economist with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, which advises the government on farm policy.

The Bush administration has called for a truce. President Bush is a “great friend and admirer” of India, the United States ambassador here, David C. Mulford, said last week. He added that “this is a time for increased cooperation among nations to solve this problem and that hostile political commentary is not productive.”

A White House spokesman, Scott Stanzel, said, “We think it is a good thing countries are developing, that more and more people have higher standards of living.”

Some economists argue that blaming India’s growth is not only unfair, but makes little sense.

Food prices have not been rising continually as developing nations grew, said Ramgopal Agarwala, a former World Bank economist and senior adviser at RIS, a research institute in New Delhi. “They were static until 2006, then in 2007 and 2008 there was a sudden spark,” he said. But India has been growing for the last decade. This is “not last year’s phenomena,” he said.

“I don’t know who advised the president” on his recent comments, Mr. Agarwala added, but his analysis is “subprime.”

Mr. Mehta of the research institute conceded that his remarks on liposuction were meant to be tongue in cheek, but that “politically incorrect” attitudes like President Bush’s and Ms. Rice’s needed to be challenged. Rather than blaming India, Mr. Mehta said, the West should be adjusting to a changing world.

“If the developing world is going to develop, demand is going to go up and there are going to be new political paradigms,” he said.

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Environmental issues are tightly related to issues of social justice. Most people on earth, legitimately, want the same kind of material goods we have. In comparison to our wants, the desires of these people -- standing in bread lines or empty stores -- are very modest.

Assume that the advertising blitz will continue, and increase.

In the future, ads will not be less sophisticated, nor less effective. Technology will continue to produce new consumer products, needed or not.

In one sense, the modern era has produced a great democratization of pleasure: luxuries are commonplace now. Entertainments, such as movies and music, which a king could not have commanded a century ago, can now be enjoyed by the average person. We can't ignore or deny these benefits, but we need not tolerate nor be content with the harms.

Ads will continue their messages for us to "want" and to "want more."

Changes are unlikely to take place "out there."

But, if you want, you can change your own life, your values, your choices, your attitudes, your behavior. You can make a choice to want less.

You may then understand that "wanting less" -- voluntary moderation -- may ease the pressure on yourself, on your family, and on the earth.

Seneca wrote: "Philosophy calls for simple living, not for doing penance, and the simple way of life need not be a crude one."

Such moderation need not even cause you pain and suffering. It may perhaps cause a little inconvenience at times, but you can compensate.

Instead of wanting more things, you can seek to learn how to do more things, to develop more skills and abilities: Do-ing instead of buy-ing.

Listen to some of the quieter voices of your parents and teachers, of those people who encourage you not to buy and consume, but to learn and to do. They may not have as glitzy a presentation as the professional advertisers, but it may well prove more beneficial to you... and to the earth we share.

If you want to start living more simply, it's really simple.