COP15 and the utopianism of growth-based economics

 

Six months have passed since COP15 – yet another summit that proved that the conventional wisdom of the present political and economical system is incapable of responding to the environmental and climate-related crises that this system has itself created. COP15 ended with the so-called Copenhagen Accord, a non-binding and unclear document with no real targets.

What COP15 also proved was that the climate justice movement is gaining strength, although not at a rate befitting the urgency and importance of its message. Millions should have demonstrated in Copenhagen and elsewhere for the message to be heard loud and clear by the politicians inside the Bella Center on the 12^th of December, and although 100.000 marched in Copenhagen many stayed at home elsewhere.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

Until recently, many saw Denmark as a progressive and outward-looking country – at least that is the picture the more progressive Danes like to cling to today. Given the present political climate of hostility towards immigrants, one might wonder whether this alleged progressiveness was ever sincere, or whether the some of the more narrow-minded, nationalistic tendencies in contemporary Danish society are due to Denmark not being as homogenous and monocultural as it once was. Perhaps these more unappealing qualities had been there all along.

Consumerism – enough is enough

There are true needs and false needs – but only false needs need to be manufactured and nurtured. Indeed, today’s consumerist society has more or less turned Maslow’s hierarchy on its head. According to Maslow, people should be satisfied when they reach the top of his pyramid-shaped hierarchy of needs, but in modern consumerist culture and society there can be no satisfaction of needs. Consumerist society never satisfies, indeed it is meant not to do so, as any form of satisfaction is an enemy of the consumerist, capitalist society – a society that requires the persistent buying of things we don’t need for its continued existence – what is usually referred to as “growth”.

Our entire way of life seems to be built on the manufacturing of self-doubt and dissatisfaction, our economy built on exploiting such human weakness.  Needless desires drive our economy, and our economy drives our needless desires, and consumerism thereby becomes a tool for control.