Life-Styles and the Environment: The Case of Energy
Author(s)
Schipper, Lee
Abstract
When we speak of pressures on the natural environment, we should speak more about home loans, old-age income, and women drivers, more about shrinking households and all-night shopping, and perhaps less about coal mines and pulp mills. In this essay I will argue that the precise nature of the demands for services that we collectively create increasingly shape environmental change. While the ways we farm, mine, and manufacture surely transform the environment, the end points of economic activity, what we consume, how we actually live–“lifestyles,” in short–are no less important.
