March 2026 edition

The official reply to the argument, published about one of my posts at LinkedIn:

“I read this post by Elena V. Amber today and thought of Edward Schieffelin.] … [I bring up Ed here because the post by Ms. Amber feels like she is opening Schieffelin’s cage and releasing some unpleasant starlings into the Central Park of climate thought.  She quotes a paper by researchers in Amsterdam who found that people who are optimistic about clean technology are less likely to adjust their lifestyles by foregoing consumption or otherwise limiting their choices to join the battle against climate change.The Dutch researchers have done a fine job with their analysis, but, as a climate technology optimist myself, I find their thesis …. strange.  

Clean technology remains the best, most politically sustainable pathway to addressing the risk of climate change. Yet, while admittedly not rejecting the importance of clean technology, the Dutch researchers say that we shouldn’t be too optimistic about its potential to take on climate change, lest we commit the sin of failing to adjust our lifestyle toward a lower emission, lower growth society.

This sounds awfully close to a theme that has haunted climate policy for as long as I can remember:  that the solution to climate change is a kind of impoverishment, because a people who are less wealthy will consume less and, consequently, emit fewer GHGs.  Lurking unstated in this theme is the possibility that it may be necessary for the state to force this unhappy outcome on society.  As we have seen repeatedly over the last century, that is not a place we should ever want to go. With all due respect to Ed and Elena, this is one starling I’d suggest we leave in the cage.]

Dear reader, my newsletter aims to uphold your right to be informed and champion the science of emotion. By meeting people where they are and understanding their stories, motivations, and limitations, we allow amazing impact to happen. Together, we can empower each other through emotional capital – humanity’s most powerful asset – and build the future we aspire to live in, where you are warmly invited.

Imagine we’re walking through an old forest, a place where every tree marks a truth about our world. The air is clear, the path is soft underfoot, and the conversation is rich. We speak of meaning, of balance, of living well.

But then we learn that the global demand for resources, such as food, water, and infrastructure, is at an all-time high and continues to rise (Global Resources Outlook UNEP, 2024). Municipal solid waste is expected to rise from 2.1 billion tonnes in 2023 to 3.8 billion tonnes by 2050, potentially doubling the global annual cost to USD 640.3 billion without urgent waste management action (Global Waste Management Outlook UNEP, 2024). Resource extraction has more than tripled since 1970, including a fivefold increase in the use of non-metallic minerals and a 45 percent increase in fossil fuel use. By 2060, global material use could double to 190 billion tonnes (from 92 billion in 2017), while greenhouse gas emissions could increase by 43 per cent. Global inequality is extreme, with the top 10% of adults owning ~75% of global wealth and capturing over 50% of income, while the bottom 50% owns just 2% of wealth and earn only 8% of income (World Inequality Database, 2025).

As we round a bend, we find it: a small, iron cage. And inside, a single, shivering argument is trapped: “People who are less wealthy will consume less and, consequently, emit fewer GHGs.”

The idea that if we just keep the world’s poor people poor, they will consume less and the planet will be saved.

But this cage wasn’t built in a forest of truth. It was forged in a place that ignores the deep, tidal pull of human longing.

This logic is as fragile as a bird’s bones.

I remember a time of watching the lights flicker on in the big houses on the hill. From the valley below, those lights looked like fallen stars, each one a promise of a different life. The yearning to ascend, to hold one of those stars, is a powerful current running through the human heart.

To suggest that those in the valley will simply choose to remain in the shadows is to misunderstand the story of us.

The future we are building doesn’t whisper restraint; it broadcasts desire for a better life. However, we are told we need all that stuff to step into it.

Yet, the story they tell through their glittering shop windows and sun-drenched advertisements is the one the whole world is learning by heart.

In reality, the desire to rise above one’s station is universal: those with less often aspire to the lifestyles of the wealthy. For 2024 alone, 113 million more people were expected to join the consumer class, mostly in Asia (World Data Lab, 2025). As Stiglitz (2012) writes, the global poor imitate materialistic lifestyles, while Bertrand & Morse (2016) found nonrich households spend more on visible goods as top incomes rise, often irrationally from economic, psychological, and health perspectives. The tragedy is that the lesson being learned is backwards. Instead of first building the foundations of wealth, the patience, the work, the creation, people are starting with the gilded rooftop.

They reach for the symbols of success before the substance, finding themselves shackled not to prosperity, but to the ghosts of payments yet to come.

They are chasing a reflection in a window, a life that is seen but not lived, and the chase itself becomes a cage far bigger than the one we found in the forest.

The danger is clear: the poor are reaching for symbols of success, not always by building wealth but by taking on debt and risk, stepping into a bigger cage of consumption, not freedom. Numerous studies show that a significant number of purchases resulted from consumers’ engagement in impulsive buying behavior (IBB), with 40 to 80 percent of all purchases in some contexts  (Rodrigues et al., 2021), 27% to 80% of general purchases (Khan et al., 2015), 30% to 50% of self-reported purchases (Ah Fook & McNeill, 2020),  up to 62% in grocery stores (Cobb & Hoyer, 1986), and as much as 68% of online consumption (Wang, Y. et al., 2022a).

Consequences extend far beyond greenhouse gases.

Limiting the problem to GHGs overlooks the devastating effects of overconsumption: the land cleared for another shopping mall, the rivers running dry, the soil choked with poisons, the oceans filled with the ghosts of our momentary wants. The quick, impulsive click of an online purchase, a fleeting thrill born of a discount, sends ripples we cannot see, disturbing ecosystems we will never visit (Escobar-Farfán et al., 2025; Anoop & Rahman, 2025; Kitzmann et al., 2025).

There is a strange paradox at the heart of our story: we claim to value health, relationships, and our environment, yet chase habits that unravel them (Brick et al., 2021).

Let us turn from this small, sad cage.

Let us open the door and let the fearful little bird fly free, not because its song is true, but because we need to see the whole forest for what it is and fear nothing.

We cannot build a better future by locking others away from it. At the same time, we’d better start to see a difference between the light of a shopping window and that of a real star in the sky.

We don’t need to pretend to be someone. These are not our ideals, not our North stars, not life targets, not at this cost.

We are not what we have.

By now, we should be done with cages, even golden ones. These concerns are encapsulated in the concept of “well-being,” which encompasses a broader set of variables such as job circumstances, meaningful social relationships, work-life balance, personal development, and more, in contrast to welfare, which focuses only on economic achievements (Maximo, 1987). According to the multi-level assessment by the Croatian Interdisciplinary Society (2020), although there are differences in the size and generosity of the welfare state, these differences do not have considerable effects on individuals’ subjective well-being. The belief concerning the level of well-being is higher in welfare states, and its distribution is more equitable, as tested in another comparative study of 41 nations from 1980 to 1990  (Veenhoven, 2000; Brulé and Veenhoven, 2014).

Contrary to expectation, there appears to be no link between the size of the welfare state and the level of well-being within it.

Wealth and poverty exist in both developed and developing countries, with environmental pressure overwhelmingly driven by affluent consumption. Using an expenditure database that includes up to 201 consumption groups across 168 countries, research (Tian et al., 2024) shows that the global top 20% consumers account for 51–91% account for planetary boundary transgressions.

This means the central issue is not for the poor to consume less and thereby save the planet, but to mitigate the influence of the global top 20% high-consumption lifestyles wherever they occur.

If the global top 20% adjusted their consumption toward the lowest-impact patterns within their own income group, global environmental pressure could fall by 25–53%. In other words, protecting the planet does not require keeping people poor; it requires rebalancing the lifestyles of the 20% who consume the most in the first place, and stopping the creation of demand where it does not exist naturally through invasive marketing that exploits human vulnerabilities and genuine desire to live a better life.

We are not what we have. We are how we relate to each other.

There is a different story, the one not of imitation, but of creation; not of consumption, but of connection. We must find a way to live that does not require us to put ourselves, or anyone else, in a cage.

Let’s open them: the iron one for the poor and the golden one for the rich. It is the right time for both.

That’s all for today.

We’ll talk again next month.

If these words were helpful to you, please share your thoughts with Emotional Capital Newsletter readers: we are happy to hear from you!

---

Find me on LinkedIn or website. Send me professional inquiries at Kirkus ProConnect. Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

1. Emotional Capital Newsletter promotes freedom from buying urges and overconsumption, advocating for global emotional health as a foundation for a post-growth economy.
2. Emotional Capital for the Triple Win: 50 Innovative Ways to Lead the Consumption Revolution book reveals 50 business ways to transform consumer behavior for a triple win: benefiting people, the planet, and universal prosperity.
3. The Gift of Sensitivity Book saves you precious time by summarizing 8 years of research & personal journey for extraordinary faculties such as creativity, originality, innovation, intuition, flexibility, and inclusiveness in times of technological acceleration.

---