Documentary: Jonathon Porritt - Consumerism

Runtime: 36 Minutes



This documentary first appeared on UK television and it is currently available on YouTube where I have assembled the 4 parts into a playlist for your convenience. While this is longer than the average post here and technically it's not a web video, I think that UK Television is a different enough system from our own mainstream media that their perspectives can be valuable over here at times. This in particular is a very important subject that we hardly ever hear about. The only consumption people talk about these days is oil and electricity. They forget that even if they use green power and take a zero emissions car to the store, the stuff they buy at the store burned oil and electricity too. . .along with the mining of resources to make it and the human exploitation to build it. .

Jonathon Porrit is a British writer and political insider who you could think of as the British version of our own Al Gore. He was the co-chair of their version of the green party and he was appointed by the prime minister as the chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission in July of 2000.

In this documentary, he explores the problems with and solutions for the new religion of the modern era, consumerism. Today people have learned to feel they can buy any amount of junk they want to and then throw it away to buy a newer junk 2 years later. If we wanted everyone on earth to live this way we would need 2 extra planets worth of resources. How long can we sustain this?