Back in April, I did a blog entry on how green consumers tended to be liars and cheats because they felt they had already done enough to seize the moral high ground.
Now we have scientific evidence, reported here, that green consumerism does not reduce emissions.
The reason for that boils down to the way the numbers are tracked in economics. If a gadget is made in China and shipped overseas, the emissions are not factored into the destination country's emissions count. This is known as "carbon leakage". And as the economies of different countries become more and more service based, they will rely more on imports from the developing world. The result: more carbon leakage.
The conclusions are obvious. Green products have less impact in reducing emissions than most people think and a consumerist society focused on higher levels of affluence wipes out any gains in emissions reductions through technology.
The only way to reduce emissions is to consume less. And that means society and its values will have to change.
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