According to this article from the New Scientist, not only are we simply doing what all creatures do: we're doing it better. In recent times we're doing it even faster because of changes in society that encourage and celebrate conspicuous and excessive consumption.
"Biologists have shown that it's a natural tendency of living creatures to fill up all available habitat and use up all available resources," says William Rees of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. "That's what underlies Darwinian evolution, and species that do it best are the ones that survive, but we do it better than any other species [...]." This in part is attributed to advertising and the stimulation of a [Galbraithian] consumer society, post WW2.
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- Andrew McStay
- I am director of the Media and Persuasive Communication (MPC) network at Bangor University where I also lecture on political-economy of the media. I am currently working on a book provisionally titled Deconstructing Privacy for Peter Lang and leading two empirical projects in connection with privacy perception and the use of new media for smoking cessation. I am author of Creativity and Advertising: Affect, Events and Process (Routledge, 2013); The Mood of Information: A Critique of Behavioural Advertising (Continuum, 2011); and Digital Advertising (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2009). Please contact me at mcstay@bangor.ac.uk if you are interested in Ph.D supervision or consultancy services.
2 comments:
Interesting comments, some much in the vein of Adbusters. I'm curious as to why you believe green technology and sustainable industry cannot work. Whilst I understand reservations about regulation and the sincerity of industry, I do not understand the problem with renewables that may plug directly into a national electricity grid, for example. One thing is for sure, "joined-up-thinking" is required that utilises a cyclical approach that gives and does merely take as with the traditional industrial mindset.
To achieve such goals requires heavy regulation and the need for profit motives. Many companies now seem to be tuning into this and there is lots of scope for profit making, creativity and useful innovation from business. Anyone for plugging gymnasiums into the grid?!
Although big-business has been the problem, they are also the answer. Is an alternative viable?
so if we have heavy regulation, it will help to save the panet earth? are not those regulations killing people too, the heavy government regulations are taking away the livelihood and source of income from people too. ex the EPA regulations in California, they had turned off water supply for farmers to protect smelt fish. look what happened farmers in that area is struggling ecomically. another stupid regulation that the green environmentalist are rallying to the white house to get pass is to close and stop beef production because cows emmitting carbon monoxide that causing global warming. that bulshit global warming, is just a man made story lies to get funding from the government and other sectors
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