Cost of consumption

Affluent and unsustainable consumptions have resulted in significant higher carbon, water, air and energy footprints, compounding environmental challenges. Human-induced multifaceted environmental crises contribute to overall climate change and also cause localized environmental problems such as air and water pollution, groundwater depletion, solid waste accumulation, and human displacement due to infrastructural projects such as dams and mines. While carbon dioxide is a global problem, the impacts of air pollution and water consumption are more regional

- JAYDEV JANA

The term "consumption" simply represents purchases of goods and services (including energy) by consumers. It has a strong material dimension that lies along a gradient between "needs" and "wants". In the words of German-born British economist E.F. Schumacher: "Modern economics considers consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity, taking the factors of production - land, labour, and capital - as the means. Buddhist economics tries to maximize human satisfactions by the optimal pattern of consumption, while modern economics tries to maximize consumption by the optimal pattern of productive effort."

In his book, "The Theory of the Leisure Class", Thorstein Veblen, an American economist and sociologist, in 1899 first coined a term "Conspicuous Consumption" to refer to the practice of acquiring and displaying luxury goods and services to publicly demonstrate one's wealth, status, and power. Veblen claimed the goods consumed by such consumers were wasteful and did not hold any practical useful value for the consumers except to enhance their reputation and social prestige as well as to provoke the envy of other people. Veblen also called conspicuous consumption of the goods as a conspicuous waste. However, following the original insights of Veblen, some heterodox economists such as James Duesenberry and Robert H. Frank, have argued that awareness of conspicuous consumption habits of others tends to inspire emulation of these practices. James Duesenberry (1949) gave the name "bandwagon effect" or "demonstration effect" to the phenomenon.