In my last rant about advertising, I mentioned that I believe that advertising has a negative effect on the planet. One comment challenged me to flesh that out a little, so I’ll try to do that here.
First, I must come clean and tell you that I’m a minimalist. I don’t have anything that I don’t need and I make all my decisions based on what will or will not make my life better. I’m tell you this because some might say that I’m prejudiced. So be it. In part, my minimalism is motivated by not having much money, but I also find that it makes me appreciate my life more.
I think of Greta Thunberg chiding people who demand that the economy must always grow. I completely agree with her sentiment. It’s clear that advertising constantly lures us to buy things. People are always buying things — things that they need and things that they don’t need. This is the power of advertising to convince you to buy stuff.
A clear sign of this disease is the Self-Storage industry. In fact, there are over 2.3 billion square feet of total rentable self-storage space nationwide. The $38 billion business has demonstrated steady expansion, with a 7.7 percent annual growth since 2012.
People buy stuff so that they can pay to store it off-site. This phenomenon has been highlighted by all the reality shows about hoarding that can be seen on TV (I don’t see them because I don’t own a TV because I don’t need one — even more, I don’t want one).
So it just seems eminently logical to me that a planet with limited resources and a constantly growing population has a problem — a big problem.
I live in an area of SW Florida that, after its incorporation in recent years, is now exploding with massive numbers of “luxury apartments” — apartments that I will never be able to afford. Why don’t we build apartments that people CAN afford? Why are rents all over the country rising at such rates that homelessness among senior citizens has tripled over the last 1-2 years?
Concupiscence is a word that I’ve always loved. It was drilled into me in my catholic upbringing and eventually in the Seminary. Here’s the dictionary definition: strong desire, especially sexual desire; ardent, usually sensuous, longing. Given the fact that churches are typically obsessed with sex, the term has therefore been focused on sex.
But titillating desire is the core dynamic of advertising. It’s no secret that sex sells and playing on human desire is a core attribute of adverting.
You need to have:
- the latest Mercedes
- more new clothes
- the hot new box for G5
- Tide for a cleaner wash
- YOU NAME IT!!!!!
What would happen if I only buy what I absolutely need? That’s what I try to do, and I haven’t crashed the economy yet.
I can’t describe poetically the way advertising hurts the planet, but is seems quite obvious to me. You can see this statistic on the Internet: Our daily ad exposure depends on many factors—from where we live to what job we do and how we prefer to spend our leisure time. If folks from the marketing firm Yankelovich, Inc. are right, the average modern person is exposed to around 5,000 ads per day.
It doesn’t take a lot of thought to draw a straight line from the power of advertising to it’s effect on the Climate Crisis.