We're spendthrift 'environmentalists'

Americans are Consumed by Shop-til-U-Drop-Consumerism

Generic / USA Today 8dec00

Environmental issues in this election year seem framed almost entirely in terms of regulatory policies. It is as though the struggle for a clean, ecologically healthy world will be won or lost solely in governmental battles over environmental standards.

But perhaps such preoccupations, while noble, evade the true problem: the devolution of the American Dream from a promise of prosperity for all to a veritable feeding frenzy of unbridled consumerism.

Eight out of 10 Americans regard themselves as environmentalists. Yet while we Americans comprise a mere 5% of the world's population, we consume an estimated 30% of its non-replenishable resources. So much of what we call ''environmentalism'' in this country, from recycling soda cans to petitioning Congress for wetlands preservation, represents little more than a clamorous sideshow to the far more painful issues at hand.

We may be quick to take sides in political debates over environmental issues, but upon closer inspection we often are all on the same side in the larger ecological debate. Our voracious patterns of consumption engulf gadgetry-addicted, fossil-fuel guzzling environmentalists and anti-environmentalists alike.

The more single-mindedly we grab for that elusive, nirvana-like American Dream, the more inexorable the slippage in our quality of life. We suffer more stress-related illnesses now than ever before, while neglecting family and intimate relationships in our time-consuming struggles to surpass the Joneses.

America's most pressing ecological crisis stems from our societal addiction to consumerism. Our patterns of overconsumption reflect a dependency, a need for constantly whispering promises of untold bliss that mere goods simply cannot keep. This unbridled consumerism, editor Roger Rosenblatt notes in the book Consuming Desires, is ''threatening the ecological balance of our entire globe.''

In this holiday season of frenzied shop-'til-you-drop spending, those of us who call ourselves environmentalists might just wish to take time out to re-evaluate our personal patterns of consumption. What emotional or spiritual wounds do we really think that new item will heal? More to the point, what are the unspoken costs to the fragile, unreplenishable resources of this planet of our endless material acquisitions?

And we Americans call ourselves environmentalists.

Constance Hilliard is a professor of history at the University of North Texas in Denton.

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