Comment by Lisa Macdonald
November 29 is the fourth annual international "Buy Nothing Day".
In case you haven't heard of this momentous event, on that day environmentalists (mainly in the US, Canada, Britain and Europe) urge the public to "give spending a holiday" on the grounds that the First World population's "over-consumption" is a major contributor to the global environment crisis.
The Vancouver-based organisers of Buy Nothing Day even provide a hint list for "getting through" the trauma of not spending for 24 hours. It includes using the buddy system ("Like licking any addiction, your chances of getting by increase with a little help from your friends. Keep an eye on each other!"); keeping a diary ("Don't buy it, write it down! Read it the next day and feel inspired."); and being prepared ("Make sure you've got enough of the 'essentials of life' to get you through — cat food, coffee cream, toilet paper ...").
If following those guidelines doesn't ensure that you meet the challenge, the fact that November 29 is a Sunday should help. But if even that isn't enough, be consoled by the organisers' assurance that "it's OK for people to bulk up on food to avoid purchases on Sunday ... the main idea is to get people thinking about what they are doing to the Earth's natural resources."
The organisers claim as a measure of success the fact that the number of participants in Buy Nothing Day is increasing each year. But then you can be pretty sure that, however many people forsake their Sunday morning cappuccino and newspapers at the trendy cafe down the road this November 29, millions more — the growing army of unemployed, homeless, working poor and institutionalised in the US, Britain, Canada and Europe — won't buy anything on that day either.
This reality points to the fundamental flaws in the individualistic, consumer-driven approach to pro-environment action.
First, there is the obvious question of why environmentalists persist in believing that the greatest consumers in the First World, (who also happen to be those best protected in their places of work and residence against harm from environmental destruction) will give a fig about Buy Nothing Day. What would make them heed the organisers' request that they not only refrain from purchasing anything on the 29th, but also that, as they relax in front of their harbour views with no shopping to do, they "reflect upon their wasteful ways" and "come up with a plan for reducing wanton consumerism" (whether their own or others is, perhaps revealingly, not specified)?
More fundamentally, it does not seem to have occurred to these environmentalists to question too deeply why, as the proportion of the world's people living in poverty (and therefore not consuming) increases — in the First World as much as the Third World — almost every major and minor environmental problem continues to worsen, locally and globally.
International Buy Nothing Day is no doubt motivated by the best of intentions. But confronted with escalating environmental and human disasters across the globe, misguided, middle-class liberalism is a luxury the progressive movements cannot afford. It is not simply that it is ineffective against the immensely powerful forces driving the destruction of the Earth, but that it is destructive in a number of ways.
The Buy Nothing Day approach explicitly reinforces the very ideology — individualism — which this rapacious world economic system relies on to keep the majority of people (who have the desire and capacity to take over and run the world on a rational, environmentally sustainable basis) isolated, divided and disorganised. Worse, advocating individual solutions to social problems demoralises people when they realise (as most do) that no amount of personal abstinence has made the world a better place.
The individual consumer-based approach also cannot and does not even attempt to relate to, involve or empower the rapidly growing number of people who do not have "consumer muscle" to flex. On the contrary, this approach consciously excludes masses of people from action and fragments the immense energies and resources that could be mobilised against environmental destruction if this task were approached from a collective action perspective. Consequently, it in no way challenges the overriding economic and political power of the ruling elites, who are directly responsible for the bulk of environmental damage.
If all that the environment movement believes it can ask of middle-class "consumers" in the struggle for ecological and human survival is that once a year they stock up on their coffee cream one day so they don't have to buy it the next, then either the movement is sadly lacking conviction, or it is appealing to the wrong class.