Lost in the discussion of the recent Paris climate change conference was a big environment-damaging elephant: a global system that encourages us to buy more and more stuff, says a Brock University expert on consumerism\u2019s impact on the environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndeed, economic growth as the heart of our economic system did not seem to be challenged but instead there was a lot of discussion of what alternatives could facilitate business-as-usual economic growth,\u201d says Jennifer Good, Associate Professor of Communication, Popular Culture and Film at Brock University.<\/p>\n
Good says there\u2019s a certain irony about the COP21 climate change conference beginning on the same day as Cyber Monday, a day when consumers spent over $2.2 billion. The production of many consumer goods eat up valuable resources and emit pollution, she says.<\/p>\n
The Brock professor monitored the transcripts of North American television news networks including ABC, CBS, CNBC, CNN, CTV, Fox, MSNBC and NBC from November 1 – 27, 2015 and found that \u2018COP21\u2019 was mentioned or discussed 74 times and \u2018Cyber Monday\u2019 157 times. However, \u2018economic growth\u2019 blew both away with 1,510 mentions or discussions, Good says.<\/p>\n
Good researches how mass media fuels materialism and consumerism, which in turn harms the natural environment and contributes to climate change. In her 2013 book Television and the Earth: Not a Love Story<\/em> , Good says society needs new stories and new ways of calculating personal and societal well-being.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lost in the discussion of the recent Paris climate change conference was a big environment-damaging elephant: a global system that encourages us to buy more and more stuff, says a Brock University expert on consumerism\u2019s impact on the environment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":36992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3319,1,5],"tags":[794,3520,3655,3521,31],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36991"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36991"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36993,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36991\/revisions\/36993"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}