Climate Culture

Shop till you drop? There’s a better way

It's that time of year again. The bells are jingling and the registers are ring-ting-tingling, too. Black Friday has come and gone, and Cyber Monday orders are in the mail. Now we're wasting time in parking-lot traffic jams and long checkout lines, all the while trying to maintain our holiday cheer.

The National Retail Federation predicts that Americans will spend $474.5 billion this holiday season. That's up 4 percent from last year's whopping $456.2 billion spent on clothes, video games, and hot tech toys.

Do we really need to repeat history? Recent tradition, supported by plenty of well-crafted holiday advertisements, says "Yes."

Our current state of consumer mania -- our manufactured wants, must-haves and can't-live-withouts -- was born during the post-World War II era, when our country was trying to rebuild its economy. The best strategy, according to retail analyst Victor Lebow, was to make consumption a way of life. And boy, have we ever!

Umbra on paint disposal

Dear Umbra, A friend of mine is a painter. He is concerned about the environment and has been trying to find out how to dispose of his paint buckets, extra paint, and other supplies in a way that is eco-friendly, but he’s come up with nothing. We live in Chicago, and you would think that […]

Retailers beef up the packaging

For Christmas last year, I received an iPod Nano (through which I now get my weekly fix of podcasts from NPR Environment, PRI Living on Earth, and of course, Grist). That the Nano weighs a mere 1.74 oz. and is so slim it easily gets lost in an overstuffed pocket is pretty impressive. Nearly as impressive, however, is that I walked out of the store toting this pygmie player inside an slick, white, matte, double-ply plastic behemoth of a bag, with sturdy woven cords that cinched the neck; it could have easily fit 100 Nanos with room several real apples to spare. I've been using it as a gym bag ever since.

Apparently, that's exactly what Apple had in mind:

From Desire to Doherty

Pimp my ride Before Seattle hustled to rename its brand-new streetcar, the city was all set with acronyms: the Experience Music Project (EMP), the Seattle Art Museum (SAM), and the South Lake Union Trolley. Ahem. Photo courtesy Kapow Coffee Rhino, no, no We appreciate the sentiment, Santa — really, we do — but if this […]

Minnesota will ban mercury in cosmetics

On Jan. 1, Minnesota will become the first state to ban mercury from mascara and other cosmetics. Which begs the question: Why the hell is there mercury in mascara in the first place?

A review of compact fluorescent bulbs

Worth the switch — but which to pick? Photo: iStockphoto Part of our work here at Grist is to give advice to curious readers, and one thing we find ourselves saying a lot is, “Change those bulbs to CFLs!” But you can only socket to ’em so many times before such broad advice starts to […]

How I shucked my oyster ambivalence and learned to love the noble bivalve

I’ve lived in Boston for years, but for some reason, I had never visited nearby Portland, Maine — until last week, that is. I chose a dramatic occasion for my Portland debut: an Oyster Tasting Night put on by Slow Food Portland. Aw, shucks. Photo: pingpongdeath My previous opinion about the celebrated bivalve was decidedly […]

California yanks kids’ jewelry from stores

Bangles and baubles may make fun stocking stuffers, but beware: the California Department of Toxic Substances Control has yanked a dozen types of kids’ jewelry from 11 retailers — including Macy’s, Marshalls, and the Gap — after finding lead levels measuring approximately in the skazillions. “The problem is much more pervasive than we would like […]

Umbra on bleach

Greetings, I recently was infected with MRSA. It got better. As part of my treatment I’m supposed to use bleach in my laundry and around the house to help kill the bacteria. While I’m brunette, I feel like the stereotypical blonde about bleach. What are the environmental impacts of this chemical? Thanks, Emily Indiana Editor’s […]

Scaling back our energy-hungry lifestyles means more of what matters, not less

The work of recent Nobel Peace Prize winners Al Gore and the IPCC, along with a veritable mountain of other evidence, clearly lays out the reality and potential costs of human-induced climate change. Most analyses have concluded that we can and must keep our economies growing while addressing the climate challenge; we need only reduce the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases we produce. We can do this, they say, by using more efficient light bulbs, driving more fuel-efficient cars, better insulating our homes, buying windmills and solar panels, etc. While we agree that these things need to happen (and the sooner the better), it is clear that they will not be enough to solve the big problems the world faces.

The inconvenient truth is that to ensure quality of life for future generations, the world's wealthiest societies cannot continue our current lifestyles and patterns of economic growth. Further, the large proportion of humanity living in poverty must be able to satisfy basic human needs without aspiring to an overly materialistic lifestyle.

Does this inconvenient truth mean doom and despair? Absolutely not. Indeed, we think this seemingly inconvenient truth is actually a blessing in disguise, for our high-consuming lifestyles and western patterns of economic growth are not actually improving our well-being: they are not only unsustainable, they are undesirable.

Scientists are discovering a convenient truth: our happiness does not depend on the consumption of conventional economic goods and services, but instead is enhanced when we have more time and space for socializing, for nature, for learning, and for really living instead of just consuming.