6: Identity, Lifestyle and the Gaming Interview

The issue of consumerism and lifestyle choice has become an increasingly important topic among environmentalists, with particular focus on personal automobiles. The World Watch Institute has targeted automobiles as an unsustainable technology (Lowe 1989). In his diatribe against consumerism, Durning (1992) gives automobiles a travel chapter as does Albert Gore in his book Earth in the Balance (1992). Durning proposes a three-tiered global ecological class system, based upon consumption levels according to three primary variables: type of diet, mode of travel and types of materials used in goods. Consumers (1.1 billion persons) eat meat, packaged foods, drive cars and use throwaway materials; the Middle Class (3.3 billion persons) eat grains, drink clean water, ride bicycles and buses and use durable goods, while the Poor (1.1 billion persons) have insufficient grains, unsafe water, walk and consumer only local biomass (pg. 27). During targets the Consuming class as using more than their fair share of the world's resources and following an unsustainable path of development. He blames consumerism primarily upon capitalist industries for creating false needs.