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A Copenhagen afterthought – Bauhaus and Wall Street - conscious consumption, design and democracy or climate change and doom?
I am in Copenhagen at the climate negotiations. It is all about global warming. COP 15 in December 2009 is heralded as the seminal conference. The global warming issue is powerful enough to destabilize our civilization. The powerful consequences of global warming have been unleashed through two centuries of irreverent use of technology, production and overconsumption. Fuelled by humanity’s greed for material wealth, the world has been brought to the brink of disaster. Only a positive outcome from the Copenhagen conference can save us. Science agrees unequivocally. The domestic consumption, consumption from households accounts for some 40% of global CO2 emissions. Perhaps each and every one of us can do something about this? Reduce consumption and reduce emissions. If we had a choice?
Thousands of people are milling about at the UN conference centre talking about climate change, global warming, sea-level rise. 193 countries are negotiating. Some 130 State Leaders participate. President Obama from the US, Prime Minister Wen from China, Angela Merkel from Germany, Sarcozy from France, Morales from Bolivia, Chavez from Venezuela and, and, and…they are all there for the agenda. The topic of consumption and production is nowhere on the agenda. But this is a seminal conference on emissions. Emissions caused by production and consumption.
Wall Street in Red
I had found a copy of a Wall Street Journal Magazine, labelled Winter 2009, the European Edition; a magazine left behind, an unobtrusive element in the debris of paper documents scattered all around in the conference centre. Despite its elegant design, had it not been for the bright red colour on the front page, I would not have noticed it at all. I leafed through the magazine, my eyes wandering idly over the pages, displaying all the expensive high quality doodads you have to have to be happy. Gaudy pictures to the point of being egregious in character. Pictures of opulence, consumption happy, designed and trend correctly happy, consumed and happy.
Climate crisis and finance crisis
My eyes caught a few lines in an article on what trend patterns to expect for the next years that would decide our tastes and our consumption. Domestic consumption accounts for around 40% of all CO2 emissions globally, I repeated. And after all, I was reading the Wall Street Journal, semi-official organ of Wall Street, global centre of investment heaven, home of all financial gurus in the world. But because of some glitch in the system, and lack of foresight these gurus had just, or accidentally, run the world into economic disaster.
I concentrated on my reading. I looked for signs that this influential newspaper took global climate issues seriously. A famous (-obviously), female trend-analyst was interviewed. A Ms. Edelkoort residing in Paris. The article was about trends and the financial crisis. How fitting and how trendy, I thought, me sitting in the middle of the climate crisis deliberations and reading this article. I was looking for connections between the article and the climate negotiations.
Consume without guilt
“These days, Edelkoort spends much time analyzing the recession,” I read. The article continued: “It differs from past crises, she says, “because the financial institutions screwed up, we don’t feel the enormous guilt we felt in former crises. The previous reaction was to go back to frugality, back to basics.” This time Edelkoort says, we are drawn to shine, metallic colours and eccentricity, upbeat trends that are very “very unusual for a crisis.”
So back to basics, and not frugality. Let’s consume without guilt, I thought. I seemed to remember that that was the remedy being prescribed by the traditionalist doctors of finance, residing at Wall Street. ‘Thou shalt consume, to get thine economy going, and get rid of thine debt.’ Their credo.
It is obvious that this - to me unknown - celebrity, was important to the reading clientele of the Wall Street Journal. She was given much respect in the article and treated with deference. The article continued: “Sometimes, Edelkoort gets it wrong and sometimes the timing is just off. Around eight years ago,” the article continued “as the luxury industry accelerated, she felt that the colour brown was rising in importance, from 70 percent pure chocolate to hand-rolled cigars – even as paint for automobiles. (Hands up: Who owns a brown car?) Larry Ericson, head of transportation design at Detroit’s College for Creative Studies, says that for companies that want to give off an environmentally sensitive image, brown is coming into its own. He points to this year’s launch of Fisker’s electric car in an earthy red-brown……..”
Thank you, trendsetter and designer experts, I think. If they say that brown is old hat, then the green concern thing is only camouflage and no need to take it seriously. Design, democracy, doom? Funny words. Design and consume, designed to consume? Is there a connection? Please. No brown cars! They are perhaps less energy efficient than red or green cars?
Free humanity from decorative clutter
I am also reading a book on design, architecture and democracy . I am thinking: A hundred years ago - at the beginning of the last century, a century that was ravaged by wars and yet so creative - design became important. Design was pervasive; it became the servant and stimulant to consumption that eventually bred overconsumption. And now we are reaping the bad fruits of this consumption spree. But design had a different meaning and function as well. Conscious design. I am reading:
“What was probably the most successful and far-reaching school of design began with a vision: the idea of creating a new human being from the disasters of World War I. This was to be a creature who, endowed with all the senses and trained by the best artists and architects of the age, would be able to invent the present and the future of a modern century. In 1919 Walter Gropius gave his vision the programmatic title of “Bauhaus”. He could scarcely have made a more adroit choice of name. For is not ‘house’ synonomous with wealth of ideas, painstaking execution and the ability to adapt to the builder’s new methods? A house provides a meaningful location for the communal development of ideas about the shape to be given to life and the outside world, and itself stimulates constant reflection regarding its own extension and rebuilding. The act of building a house, of making it into a home, is sustained by the defining elements of space and time and parallels the process of life itself. Gropius and the members of the Bauhaus wanted to change the face of their society, to erect a spectacular modern building which would be free of the decorative clutter of the imperial era and which would above all point in a new direction.”
Re-evaluate the way we consume
Gropius and the members of Bauhaus wanted to change the face of their society, free of decorative clutter! But Edelkoort and Wall Street say we are drawn to upbeat trends, shine and eccentricity, all unusual for a crisis. I wander if Gropius and the Wasteland poets and the WWI painters also were drawn to upbeat trends and eccentricity wiggling their way out of their crisis? But perhaps Edelkoort and Ericson had never heard of Bauhaus? I think that these two modern days’ trendsetters have at least not heard about the connection between consumption and global warming. Perhaps the members of Bauhaus also refused to drive brown cars? Back in the 1930s? Maybe the ideas of Bauhaus, to influence society through design and educate people to a sustainable lifestyle were economically irreverent and incorrect even before they were thought? After all, Bauhaus was shut down for political reasons. It was thought to be too equitable. And then, the financial world-crisis of the 1930s was solved through mass consumption, first rearmament and massive production, then destruction of everything in a ferocious war. We don’t want to repeat that. But we need to fight global warming, the climate crisis, and poverty, inequity, but fight it peacefully. Should we then adopt the message from Edelkoort and Wall Street saying that what we need now are upbeat consumption trends to get us out of the financial debt crisis?
I return to my days, the here and now at the Climate Conference. Pure realism. I look at parts of the editorial of the Wall Street Magazine: “….. As we re-evaluate the way we live and the way we consume, the cult of the artisan is undergoing a renaissance.” Perhaps they now will work on global warming, I think. The artisans, I mean. On page 39 in the magazine, there is a picture of a porcelain bust of Abraham Lincoln with a handsome red wool scarf draped artisanly around his neck. Beautiful photography. The caption reads: “At a time when our entire value system is under the microscope, it’s reassuring to know that, where artisanal gifts are concerned, you really get what you pay for.” The porcelain bust pictured is evidently the only one for sale in this world, and you can get it at an upmarket store in New York at an upmarket price. Sustainability endures.
Relax, world, we have weathered an enormous storm
I am intrigued. This magazine talks about values. We need real values today to get out of the global crisis, or crises, for there are several, you know: climate, finance, terrorism, security, human rights, governance for all, and so on.
Suddenly one of the climate negotiators tell me that disagreement at the conference is growing, that the outcome will be a lot less than we need. There will be no legally binding agreement. We are in the middle of a storm, obviously, a storm about to envelop us. Global warming is coming. I shudder, thinking about the future.
I return to the comforts of Wall Street reading. Surely the magazine will give me an optimistic assessment. After all, if you don’t believe in the future, you will not invest. Therefore all investors are optimists. And all optimists are good people, have good values. I take truthful refuge in the article on trends, design and consumption. I read:
“Overall, our main reaction to this crisis will be an urgent need for authenticity, ‘of things that are real,’ she says, as the shadows lengthen in her serene Paris living room and one of her cats stretches out on a nearby sofa. ‘It is amazing we are still what we are,’ Edelkoort says pragmatically. ‘We have weathered an enormous storm’ ”.
There it is. We have weathered an enormous storm. No need to worry. This is the message from Wall Street. The world’s greatest and most influential optimists, the investors have spoken. Always believing in the future, investing in good design, and consumption. But perhaps not investing in good governance? Or in global warming? But if they don’t invest in global warming, then it will cool off. Soon. Perhaps we could give cooling off a better design? But according to Wall Street, we’re on the right track. Consume upbeat, and shine, and look for artisanal eccentricity, consumption goods of authenticity. Relax negotiating delegates at climate change issues. It does not matter that we do not get a legally binding agreement from the climate conference and our hopes for a good outcome is shattered. We’re fine. “We have weathered an enormous storm,” says Wall Street.
Oslo, January 18, 2010
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