Introduction
The modern state was the main obstacle to modern environmental issues between 1960 and 2000 because it perpetuated consumerism, greater poverty disparities, resource exploitation, and population growth. These factors affected the status of the environment negatively and thus acted as obstacles.
Consumerism between 1960 and 2000
The modern nation state was an impediment to dealing with environmental issues because it contributed towards consumerism. Consumerism is the tendency to purchase more products than one requires.
Although others may understand consumerism in a different light, in the environmental context, it is a harmful force. Consumerism causes people to confuse wants and needs thus perpetuating a greater amount of resource acquisition.1
In the 1960s, consumerism increased dramatically in western states because structural conditions perpetuated this pattern. At the time, the mass market gained access to television programming and became more educated. Other forms of mass media also marketed and exposed citizens to possible purchases.
Incomes were perpetually on the rise thus providing consumers with the financial resources they needed to furnish their purchases. The political system in most western states also affected consumerism. Influential leaders such as John F. Kennedy supported consumer rights while other legislators also passed laws that encouraged buyers to keep shopping.
Many politicians merely wanted to secure their re-election, so they were willing to push an agenda that would neither benefit the consumer nor the environment. In this decade, western states formed some of the first consumer organisations, which only served to encourage more indulgence.
In the 1970s, most first world countries still became synonymous to increased consumption. However, this time, the drift was towards specialization rather than mass consumption. Producers no longer designed one product for the masses, owing to greater technology use. Products began targeting particular segments of the population. As such, firms used demographical features to create their marketing techniques.2
In the 1990s to 2000s, consumerism was still a reality, but it existed in a different way through positional consumption. Here, a consumer makes a choice between purchasing something and leaving it on the basis of the absolute value, as well as the relative value, one will get from it. 3 The relative value stems from inequalities between high class consumers and middle income consumers.
Many middle income earners in first class countries would work hard in order to purchase more cars or houses. They did this not just because bigger houses or cars would lead to greater satisfaction, but because they wanted to climb the social ladder.
However, since this increase in purchases is not just prevalent in the middle class, then the net increase in expenditure occurs, in all groups, without changing a buyer’s social class. The need to climb the social ladder through consumption characterised the 90s, yet these classes never realised net migrations.
Several marketing companies would also tie-in their products to other lines of products. For example, companies would not just sell movies in their original form; they would tie them to fast food restaurants or actions figures. This created a lot of hype around the purchase of the product and thus perpetuated the growth of other industries that were insignificant.
Rising consumption characterised the late nineties owing to the birth of internet selling. At the time, consumers did not have to leave their homes in order to get something. They could buy whatever was on offer at different times of the day or night; geography was no longer a restriction. Therefore, consumerism continued to be a persistent trend in the lives of affluent and modern states.
One can realise that the modern state perpetuated rising consumerism after studying the trend between 1960 and 2000. Administrators needed to persuade consumers to keep purchasing commodities in order to grow their economies. Analysts can assess a country’s state of affluence by how much it produces and consumes. The Gross National Product (GNP) is one such indicator.
It illustrates the difference between the value of imports and exports that get into a country. When countries produce more than they consume, then they are more developed.
When manufacturers or farmers produce numerous goods in order to grow their economies, they still have to sell them. Sometimes consumers may come from the producing nation or may emanate from other countries. Whichever way it goes, greater consumption implies greater waste emission.4
The global environment has suffered adversely owing to rising consumerism. The manufacture of these commodities leads to production of a lot of waste. Most of it occurs during the manufacturing process, but distribution and consumption also yield waste. Studies indicate that individuals throw approximately ten million computers annually, and 200 million tires.
Most consumers throw their trash into landfills, recycle them, or burn them. The first category represents the largest proportion of waste management techniques. In landfills, thirteen percent of the waste consists of organics. While nineteen percent consists of rubber and construction materials. 10% of these materials are plastics while 6% consist of metals. Lastly, 1% consists of glass.
Most of these materials can be recycled or renewed, yet modern societies did not focus on that in the last half of the twentieth century. They simply produced the items and made them available to plenty of buyers.
Prior to the manufacturing, process, raw materials need to be planted. This leads to land degradation. Most farmers in modern nations were practising industrial agriculture between1960 and 2000. In order to meet massive demand, most of the concerned individuals needed to engage in resource intensive agriculture through enormous use of pesticides and herbicides. As a result, environmental damage occurred.
In those four decades, pollution affected the environment through pollution, and this ruined land, water, and air resources. The greater the consumption levels, the higher the amount of waste produced owing to the by products in the process.
This accumulation eventually propagated environmental degradation. Water shortages, land degradation, and climate changes are all after-effects of excessive pollution that emanated from this excessive consumption.
Waste mismanagement is synonymous to rising consumerism during 1960 to 2000. The modern nations produced more waste than they could handle, so a number of them decided to damp their trash into other parts of the world.
Several old electronic devices, such as computers and television sets, from First World Nations, get imported into developing or underdeveloped nations. It would have been possible to recycle or process these technologies, but most governments were unconcerned about this matter.
Environmental degradation was not the only challenge that increased consumerism created; there was the issue of resource shortage. The ecological footprint (the amount of resources that individuals use in order to meet their needs such as energy, food, clothing, or shelter) substantially increased in modern states, which had high consumption patterns. 5
These countries did not focus on shrinking the carbon footprint, but instead encouraged people to increase it in order to meet its economic needs between 1960 and 2000.
When a manufacturer produces a certain good, he or she always requires some resources from the environment. For instance when making synthetic fibre, industrialists require natural gas or petroleum. Alternatively, if a company makes plastics, it must extract petroleum from the environment. After this process, one must refine the raw material; the process depends on a number of resources, as well.
For instance, manufacturers must use electricity and water in large amounts. Electricity may be hydro generated or fossil generated, and this contributes to further resource depletion. The finished products must be transported to distributors or consumers after refining the raw materials. 6 This process also depends on energy in the form of fuel.
Since most vehicles depend on fuel, then more petroleum extraction needs to occur in order to get products to buyers. Furthermore, these automobiles emit greenhouse gasses, which degrade the environment.
Rising consumerism during the last four decades of the twentieth century contributed to a greater amount of capitalism and expansion of production. People consumed plenty of resources thus leading to concerns about shortages.7
As explained earlier, rising consumerism between 1960 and 2000 led to the development of shopping malls and large scale chains in First World Countries. Some food chains such as McDonalds have contributed massively to the overuse of national resources. Most of these food chains require items such as milk, eggs and meat. For every kilogram of meat or milk consumed, an equal amount of land must be used.
Additionally, the amount of water needed to maintain this number of animals is approximately 25, 000 litres. Livestock keepers must also consume grains to feed their animals.8 Studies estimate that, in high consumption cultures such as the US, farmers use grains to feed about 70% of their livestock. This has led to a high state of resource usage.
Industrial agriculture has caused a number of firms to practice monocultures that ruin biodiversity. The state of rising consumerism can be seen when people prefer to buy ready-made food rather than cook it.
In First World Countries such as the US, only a small portion of the population feeds the rest of the nation. This implies that each person’s waste cannot be compensated by the amount of resources that the person puts back into the environment.9
Excessive consumerism has also upset the delicate balance of nature in most modern states. In the 1960s to 1990s, more consumerism implied greater destruction of forests for processing needs. This destroyed the habitat of a number of wildlife species thus making others vulnerable to the same.
The habits were not just restricted to First World Countries; many developed nations entered into partnerships with developed nations to supply cash crops for them. Therefore, poorer nations had to sacrifice the land that they used to grow their own food in order to produce cash crops for rich nations.
Certain international mechanisms such as Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) have caused developing nations to grow these raw materials even when they do not consume them. Marginalised groups that had lost their land to cash crop growers had to move into sensitive areas such as forest land. This upset the delicate balance of the ecosystem, and thus destroyed wildlife sanctuaries.
Surface runoff from factories and farms, which high consumption cultures necessitated, often got into estuaries, streams and bays. Eventually, this upset the delicate balance of organisms in water bodies and even perpetuated the death of fish or other water-dependent organisms. Most of the time, the manure used in commercial firms was responsible for these effects.
Poverty levels between 1960s and 2000
Poverty levels during this period decreased across the globe. However, certain countries experienced rising poverty levels. Research show that poverty reduced by 80% from 1970 to 2000.
However, some countries have recorded increases in poverty levels especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Per capita income, in this continent, reduced by a number of percentage points between 1974 and 2000. Some estimates assert that this drop in income is around 5% while others claim that it is 10%.10 Since almost thirteen percent of the world’s population resides in Africa, then this has adverse implications on the global environment.
Studies indicate that poor people have a tendency to use resources adversely in order to secure their survival. Therefore, rising poverty between 1960 and 2000, in African countries, implies that a high number of people in this region had to use more resources than they had used before.
Places such as Bangladesh and Nepal have experienced high levels of flooding owing to rampant deforestation. The high poverty levels in those areas led to excessive dependence on unrefined sources of fuel, which came directly from forests. Since no group advocated for the replacement of these trees, then the environment was susceptible to greater flooding.11
Countries that maintained their status of poverty or those that got poorer, during 1960 to 2000, had no alternatives for survival other than to use natural resources. Many of them continued to overgraze on their land. Furthermore, they kept using rivers and other water resources to meet their needs.
Although both rich and poor nations depend on natural resources for survival, poor nations deserve attention because they depend on these resources directly. Persons from these countries will intrude into forests in order to get medicine, wild plants or may need to practice subsistence farming on those lands. 12
Energy consumption patterns in poor nations are quite different from First World Nations. Instead of relying on electricity, which is mass-produced and can be controlled, most of them depend on firewood. They have to cut trees in large numbers in order to meet such a basic need.
It should be noted that electricity production has its own ramifications, but these can be altered in order to make them sustainable. Depending on natural resources directly is a worrying trend in these nations.
Resource depletion is also prevalent in those countries that recorded increases in poverty levels in the last half of the twentieth century; such communities polluted their water bodies. Since most of these societies depend on local rivers for domestic use, they often end up polluting those water bodies.13
The high percentage of water-borne diseases is evidence of this pattern. High population growth rates in these nations have contributed to a greater strain on water resources.
The problem of poverty and environmental degradation also emanates from dependence of these nations on richer ones. Since most poor nations rely on foreign aid for management of their national resources, then they must prioritise the needs of their donors rather than their own.14 Many of these governments realise the importance of sustainable development, but most of them focus on loan repayments.
They have to abide by the regulations created by the IMF or the World Bank. Most often than not, these institutions require them to concentrate their efforts on producing food for export through industrial agriculture.15 As discussed earlier, commercial farming is highly detrimental to the environment owing to the vast amount of resources required to sustain it; furthermore, it destroys biodiversity.
Rising poverty levels in these countries has made them susceptible to exploitation by First World Countries and thus perpetuated the cycle of environmental degradation.16
The placement of polluting industries in poor countries affects their citizens substantially. First World Countries realise that when investors concentrate factories in their spaces, they emit immense levels of toxins into the atmosphere. As such, a number of them have decided to move these industries into third world countries.
Not only will they have access to cheap labour in those nations, but rich nations do not have to invest heavily in cleaner production technologies when they outsource. The status of poverty in developing nations during 1960 and 2000 led many of them to accept substandard or even dangerous economic investments in their territories.
Resource exploitation through capitalistic ownership between 1960 and 2000
In the last half of the twentieth century, capital intensity increased substantially. Several industrial economies grew tremendously and many of them relied on one another. Governments needed to support the rise of industries in different parts of the economy concurrently. In the 1960s, capitalism took the form of massive expansions through state sponsorship.
However, in the 1970s, most of Europe began adopting an intensive approach to industrialisation. Instead of relying on the government, now industrialists allocated resources to the most efficient processes. 17Firms that were willing to exploit new technologies had an upper hand over their counterparts, during this era. Worker rights were not a priority during the 1970s because employees wanted access to a greater pool of jobs.
Market capitalism was indeed a reality in Western Europe and continued to be perpetuated into different parts of the world. In the 1980s and 1990s, a radical shift of industrialisation occurred between the East and the West. Besides this, China implemented market reforms in the 1980s, and a lot of capital growth occurred there.
Additionally, new technologies in production eliminated the need for involvement of more labour in production. The phenomenon of capitalism has become synonymous to economic development, as a result of the changes that occurred during the last half of the twentieth century. 18
As explained above, resource ownership (a phenomenon associated with the modern nation state) increased tremendously within this period. It is necessary to understand how this affected the environment. The major problem with expansion of capitalism into various countries was internal migration. Capitalism perpetuated the concentration of resources in few hands.
Therefore, most people had to move to resource-rich areas. Rural-urban migration became a reality in these nations. Most migrants expected to find work from resource owners. The major challenges arose when cities became overpopulated since a number of slums sprung up, and dire resource constraints arose.
Developing nations that embraced capitalism found that their land was highly polluted by the people living there. Large amounts of waste were prevalent in these areas, as well. Furthermore farmers needed to provide more consumer goods to these urban populations. A number of them moved into marginalised lands and thus perpetuated environmental degradation. 19
Excessive use of natural resources through fuel is also another casualty of capitalism. Since capitalism propagated the rise of urban centres or cities, more people required a means of mobility, so they began owning cars. Automobiles are one of the most serious contributors of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. 20This has therefore contributed to current environmental challenges.
Additionally, most urbanites engaged in a lot of movement of materials. The construction of houses either for industrialisation purposes or residential purposes for these city dwellers also increased the movement of goods between various locations. Other forms of transport also demanded the use of materials. For instance, planes require lots of mineral resources as well as oil-based products.
The modern state is the biggest impediment to environmental development because it leads to the very problems that ruin the environment. Capitalism has caused an increase in the perception of the earth as a resource mine.
Oil exploration and the search of various minerals has been a growing reality in various nations around the world. Some of them have come at the cost of indigenous habitats, which harbour wildlife species. As such, a number of organisms have been destroyed and the trend has led to resource minimisation. 21
Modernisation,as manifested through capitalism, has also led to an explosion of waste. Since various resource owners want to focus on economically beneficial activities, then most of them will rarely package their products or use processes that will encourage recycling or better use of natural resources. For instance, in the past, cold beverages were manufactured and placed in glasses; they would be collected and reused. 22
However, this method proved unfeasible because the glasses had to travel long distances before they could get to manufacturers. As such, most of these producers started putting their beverages in plastic bottles, which are quite difficult to recycle. It is these sorts of decisions that continue to create environmental problems in modern societies.
Population growth between 1960 and 2000
Studies indicate that the global population has increased by 100% between 1960 and 2000. In 1960, it stood at three billion and by the year 2000, it had reached six billion. This increase in global numbers was perpetuated by improved health, higher life expectancy and improved nourishment.
One can deduce that these latter features were consequences of the modern state. Through technological advancement and education, people were able to access better nutrition. They could get better healthcare and thus enjoy longer life. The modern nation state created a situation in which the population could grow.
A rise in the population size has an adverse impact in the environment. An increase in more people means more pressure on the existing resources. Water resources, agricultural land, forests, fisheries and water are highly affected by these numbers. Statistics show that global water consumption patterns increased by 100% between 1960 and 2000.
This is indicative of a worrying trend, which could minimise environmental sustainability. The rise in consumption of water mirrored the increase in population size as the amounts that increased were equal to population increases.
In certain instances, the rise in population does not match the rate of infrastructural development or development of environmental policies. Because of this, several urban areas will witness increases in pollution.23
When countries report increases in population size, they have to change the way they use land in order to accommodate the needs of the extra number of people. Some of them may convert forests into agriculture land. This implies that such areas will be subjected to fertiliser application and other mechanical interferences.
As such, most soils in these deforested areas will be eroded. They cannot hold as much water as before and may flood. Species decline has occurred through fragmentation of habitats in these locations. Estimates indicate that if the current forest clearing trends are maintained, then 25% of species in the planet will be destroyed. 24
Global warming is also another repercussion of a rising population. The phenomenon has occurred due to increases in the level of greenhouse gases in the biosphere. These gases retain heat from the sun and contribute to temperature increases in the planet.
Green house gases come from fossil particulates, which are emitted from automobiles or may come from industrial use. An increase in population size means a higher need for consumer products (hence industries) and thus more automobiles in the road. Furthermore, higher populations cause greater deforestation thus upsetting the carbon dioxide balance in the biosphere. 25
Existence of more people implies more livestock production; this translates into a high proportion of methane in the atmosphere. Additionally, some forms of agriculture also heighten the amount of GHGs; one example is paddy rice cultivation. Statistics show that a rise in population caused a thirty five percent increase in the amount of carbon dioxide being emitted between 1980 and 2010.
Conclusion
Consumerism between 1960 and 2000 was propagated by political legislations, growth of the mass media and active involvement of the public. All these factors were synonymous to existence of the modern state. Greater consumption led to greater wastage and resource shortage.
The modern state also perpetuated rising inequalities in developing nations, thus perpetuating poverty in these countries. Most of them continued to use resources directly and thus ruined the environment.
Resource exploitation is also another aspect that is closely associated with the modern state. Capitalism was encouraged by most governments and this led to greater energy use, toxic emissions, uncontrolled urbanisation, and poor land use.
Lastly, modernism contributed to increases in population size between 1960 and 2000. Eventually, this contributed to greater emissions of green house gases, and thus global warming. Furthermore it accelerated resource use thus leading to pollution in the environment.
Reference List
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Simon, JL, Population matters: People resources, environment and immigration, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, 1990.
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Footnotes
1 G Spaargaren, AP Mol & FH Buttel, Environment and Global modernity, Sage, London, 2000.
2 S Young, The emergence of ecological modernisation: integrating the environment and the economy, Routledge, London.
3 M Friedman, ‘A positive approach to organised consumer action’, Journal of Consumer Policy, vol. 19, no. 3, 1996, pp. 439-451
4 AP Mol & DA Sonnenfeld, Ecological modernisation around the world: perspectives and critical debates, Routledge, London.
5 M Braungart & W McDonough, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the way we make things, North Point Press, New York, 2002.
6 JB Foster, Ecology against capitalism, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1999.
7 N Low & B Gleeson, Global ethics and environment, Routledge, London, 1999.
8 Dicken P, Society and Nature: Changing our environment, changing ourselves, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2004.
9 U Beck, World risk society, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1999.
10 O Altimir, Income distribution and poverty profiles, The World Bank, Washington DC, 1979.
11 K Griffin & A Khan, Poverty in the Third World: Ugly facts and fancy models, World Development, Washington DC, 1978.
12 JB Foster, The vulnerable planet: A short economic history of the environment, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1999.
13 M Barlow, ‘Water as commodity: the wrong prescription’, The Institute for Food and Development Policy, vol. 7, no. 3, 2001, pp. 180-195.
14 W Rodney, How Europe underdeveloped Africa, Harvard University Press, Harvard, 1981.
15 E Bacha & L Taylor, Macroeconomic models of Brazil, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999.
16 J Fei, G Ranis & S Kuo, Growth with equity: The Taiwan case, Oxford University Press, London, 1979.
17 B Eichengreen, The European economy since 1945: Coordinated capitalism and beyond, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2006.
18 M Redclift & G Woodgate, The International handbook of environmental sociology, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2005.
19 NC Smith, Morality and the market, McMillan, London, 1990.
20 V Smil, Energy in world history, Westview Press, Boulder, 1994.
21 H Chenery & M Syrquin, Patterns of development, Oxford University press, London, 1970.
22 A Wieczorek & X Olsthoom, Understanding Industrial Transformation, Springer, Dordrecht, 2006.
23 JL Simon, Population matters: People resources, environment and immigration, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, 1990.
24 J Cohen, How many people can the earth support?, Norton, New York, 1995.
25 MS Ahluwlia, ‘Inequality, poverty and development’, Journal of Development Economics, vol. 13, no. 8, 1976, pp. 67-79