Effect of Overconsumption and Incresing Population

In recent decades the Earth has entered a period of challenges. Uncontrolled modernity and technological development has brought about numerous issues. Anthropogenic climate change, war, poverty, famine, pollution of food, air and water, ecosystem degradation, and economic inequalities are significantly affected by the pursuit of profits under the neo-liberal system of capitalism regardless of the consequences. These recent global issues pose short and long-term limitations to human development and challenge the welfare of life on Earth. This research emphasises current conventional agricultural systems, which should be designed to feed a global human population, are actually destroying the Earth’s systems, obliterating the natural environment and significantly impacting human health. Alternative agricultural systems have emerged in response to these global issues and are gradually developing globally. This research focuses on the concept of permablitz that is inspired by permaculture. The methods used to conduct this research consisted of a triangulation technique of semi-structured interviews, case studies and systematic quantitative literature reviews to analyse how permablitzes impact on local communities. Results suggest that permablitzes positively influence local communities at the environmental, social and economic level. Despite several barriers facing their operation, permablitz collectives offer opportunities and provide support to communities to become more connected, independent, sustainable and resilient.

Preserving wild nature has been an important goal of the conservation and environmental movements throughout their existence. The reasons given for preserving wild species and wild places sometimes focus on the benefits to human beings and sometimes on the intrinsic value of wild things themselves. In either case, more or less emphasis may be given to wildness per se as a direct value-conferring property. Though nature lovers have won many battles, overall we are losing the war to preserve the wild. Little wild nature will remain a century from now unless humanity
consciously and forcefully commits to limiting our numbers and our economic demands on the biosphere. For those who place a high value on wild nature, creating societies that preserve wildness on the landscape
remains a key, ineliminable component of a proper environmentalism.

In this paper we inquire into the fundamental assumptions that underpin the ideal of the Bio-Based Economy (BBE) as it is currently developed. By interpreting the BBE from the philosophical perspective on economy developed by Georges Bataille, we demonstrate how the BBE is fully premised on a thinking of scarcity. As a result, the BBE exclusively frames economic problems in terms of efficient production, endeavoring to exclude a thinking of abundance and wastefulness. Our hypothesis is that this not only entails a number of internal tensions and inconsistencies with regard to the ideal of BBE, but ultimately undermines the ideal itself, by pushing purported regenerativity into a cataclysmic and terminal discharge. We here point to the strategies that the BBE employs in this exclusion, the fundamental assumptions regarding the relation between energy and economy that underpin this endeavor, as well as to the resulting inconsistencies and their catastrophic consequences. We finally argue for the introduction of the presently excluded question of abundance and wastefulness and explore the implications of such a question for the ideal of a zero-waste humanity.

Individual-level overconsumption is a multidisciplinary problem. As one of the characteristic symptoms of contemporary societies, it is related to globalization, to the birth of consumerism, and to major transformations in community relations which are experienced today. The current study explores patterns of consumption in several secondary schools in Pécs, based on the data of a local survey. The data has revealed that among the students included in the sample a recurrent pressure to consume is present, influenced significantly by the media and peer group pressures.

Preserving wild nature has been an important goal of the conservation and environmental movements throughout their existence. The reasons given for preserving wild species and wild places sometimes focus on the benefits to human beings and sometimes on the intrinsic value of wild things themselves. In either case, more or less emphasis may be given to wildness per se as a direct value-conferring property. Though nature lovers have won many battles, overall we are losing the war to preserve the wild. Little wild nature will remain a century from now unless humanity consciously and forcefully commits to limiting our numbers and our economic demands on the biosphere. For those who place a high value on wild nature, creating societies that preserve wildness on the landscape remains a key, ineliminable component of a proper environmentalism.