LAHORE - As indicated by Brookings, around 4 billion individuals have a place in the worldwide customer class (2021).
The essential principle of consumer culture depends on the option to free personal choices. Living in a reasonably market-based worldwide economy proclaims that most commodities are purposed to pander to human longings and wishes. Various items are fed into individuals’ psyches to buy somehow.
One of the most horrific results of this accepted norm is environmental degradation. There is no denying that extreme consumption among individuals has unfavourably adjusted the entire direction of the Earth’s physical structure. There are a few ways to illustrate how consumer culture affects the climate and contributes to environmental change universally. This article will also be drawing attention to Pakistan, where alternate points of view of this issue will be referenced.
The worldwide worry of ecological corruption is because of various reasons that work overall altogether. Alongside other reasons, customer culture is the premise of many causes that add to environmental change including deforestation, carbon dioxide emissions, and changing ocean flows. The inquiry is limited to the grounds of consumerism; what are the explanations behind this excessive production and utilisation resulting in the environmental change? I have decided to discuss two parts of this issue: socio-economic statuses and planned obsolescence, due to their direct relationship between consumers and producers in the economic world.
Socio-economic status is the social standing or class of an individual, estimated through their schooling, occupation, and pay. With these different class frameworks, the world falls into steady financial tensions at all times. Everybody wants to redesign their situation and notoriety in the public eye with objects like vehicles, cell phones, and marked apparel things. Despite earnings, individuals long for gratification that drives them to be survivors of conspicuous consumption. It is the act of buying products to freely show them as a piece of overhauling their societal position. This is not restricted to only one social class but can be visible in all lower, middle, and high classes. Individuals stay anxious to parade their assets through virtual entertainment or compare themselves with each other. Brought about by renowned financial expert Thorstein Veblen, his philosophy discusses how certain items satisfy no need but are considered a mark of prestige.
A noticeable example of this could be the rising demand for Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs) in the vehicle industry throughout the long term. As per The Guardian, a recent examination shows that SUVs multiplied their worldwide percentage from 17% to 39% over the years. “Around 40% of annual car sales today are SUVs, compared with less than 20% a decade ago”, says International Energy Agency in 2019. The insights could vary after 2-3 years, generally due to the worldwide Covid pandemic. However, it does not stop the possibility of the radical expansion of SUVs worldwide. “I always wanted one.” speaks a newspaper article writer’s neighbour, discussing her Jeep Wrangler. This shows how individuals buy vehicles and other extravagant things to be satisfied and to update their status. Concerning the environmental perspective, the worldwide interest in SUVs ended up being the second-biggest contributor of fossil fuel byproducts from 2010 to 2018. The yearly emissions rose to more than 700 mega tons of CO2.
Another model is from the fashion industry, where individuals make a special effort to get their hands on extravagance and marked products, for example, Chanel bags, Gucci shoes, or Cartier gems. A perceptible expansion in fashion season collections shows how individuals are perseveringly attempting to assess an individual’s income by observing what season garments they are wearing