Joseph Murphy

From Production to Consumption: Environmental Policy in the European Union

Publisher Summary This chapter examines how the European Union (EU) is dealing with the issue of the regulation of consumption to achieve environmental goals. The EUs approach to production and consumption-related environmental problems is described. In Western Europe, a fundamental shift is underway. No matter how strictly production is regulated, the important environmental problems remain. This is particularly the case, when the problems are closely related to consumption and lifestyles, and do not result directly from dangerous or inefficient production processes. Policymakers are starting to think about the regulation of consumption to achieve environmental goals. Various ideas and concepts from environmental social science are also described. Consumption-related environmental problems are being understood as technical problems, largely related to products, which can be solved in a way that will bring economic gains for all concerned.

Consumption, Environment and Public Policy

Publisher Summary This chapter introduces consumption, the environment and the policies related to both. It undermines the atomistic and economistic mode of public policymaking in the area of consumption and the environment and builds a richer and more accurate view of consumption. Since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, consumption has emerged as a significant environmental policy issue. The satisfaction of a seemingly endless stream of consumer desires was identified as a major cause of global environmental problems. With hardly a pause, the newly minted United Nations Commission for Sustainable Development initiated a research programme to examine more rigorously the challenges associated with any attempt to achieve more sustainable consumption. Taken as a whole, these developments mark an unmistakable watershed in the understanding of environmental problems for purposes of public policymaking. Policymakers and consumers have therefore been quick to blame industry for environmental problems. Over the past four or five decades consumers in the richest nations have largely avoided being identified as responsible for the environmentally damaging effects of their consumption practices in part because other targets and explanations have been offered. This distancing has been encouraged by elected officials in the richest countries who have been reluctant to question consumer decision making, aspirations and sovereignty. This chapter folds into the customary materialistic view of consumption a series of more complex and nuanced perspectives on consumption and the environment drawn from the social sciences.

Sustainable Consumption: Environmental Policy and the Social Sciences

Publisher Summary This chapter develops a complex and multi-layered understanding of consumption and the policies related to it. Around 1972, governments throughout the developed world began to institutionalize environmental protection. In 1971, eight of the worlds richest countries created environmental ministries. Other actions common at this time were the establishment of national environmental authorities and agencies, and the inclusion of commitments to environmental protection in national constitutions. Slightly later, the national environmental reports emerged and for many countries, these were followed by environmental framework legislation. The recent emergence of an environmental-policy debate in the area of sustainable consumption is represented as an attempt to overcome several decades of denial of the social dimensions of environmental problems. Individual consumption decisions necessarily reproduce or change existing networks, group norms and infrastructures. Assessment of consumption choices based on their future consequences for individual welfare (egotistic) or the welfare of society (social) is an “utilitarian consequentialist,” but not in a way that makes individual welfare consequences the decisive issue is a “non-utilitarian consequentialist.” Assessment of consumption choices in a way that does not judge the goodness of the choice according to its consequences but instead attaches value to behaving in a certain manner or according to certain rules is a “deontological” value position. The impact of context, the social and psychological objectives of people and the various characteristics of objects, offers considerable potential for creative policymaking.

From Production to Consumption

Publisher Summary This chapter examines how the European Union (EU) is dealing with the issue of the regulation of consumption to achieve environmental goals. The EUs approach to production and consumption-related environmental problems is described. In Western Europe, a fundamental shift is underway. No matter how strictly production is regulated, the important environmental problems remain. This is particularly the case, when the problems are closely related to consumption and lifestyles, and do not result directly from dangerous or inefficient production processes. Policymakers are starting to think about the regulation of consumption to achieve environmental goals. Various ideas and concepts from environmental social science are also described. Consumption-related environmental problems are being understood as technical problems, largely related to products, which can be solved in a way that will bring economic gains for all concerned.