What are you doing posting here? Go do something about it instead of lamenting the end.
Consumerism is a plague, and it's the #1 reason why it's impossible to talk about the environment. It's the elephant in the room.
That article highlight the type of person I despise with passion, because it represents the vanity of humanity. Granted, it's a hobby like any other, but to me it's the most ugly part of income inequality, for what luxury represents as a whole.
It's just my opinion like any other, you can disagree with it, but to me consumerism has become a political problem because it diverts our attention while making sure we don't think in terms of political responsibility.
People do things because it makes them feel good. Talking about global warming doesn't make people feel good. And it's not a political issue, it's a social one, yet we've dumped it into the realm of politics because we don't want to be responsible for it. At least now we can say "party X is at fault because they didn't support legislation Y".
To truly fix a problem like global warming, we need to fix the social aspect of it. Find a way to play off people's self interest instead of making it a partisan issue. Only suggest policy changes as it relates to molding social perspective. We need to find a way for people to selfishly protect the environment, not force people to give up things they like to help someone else...
There are simple living communities, but I doubt they'll reach mainstream success. Nonetheless, I think those communities success because there's a way to communicate with others in the community. If you want to help, find a way to make it "cool" to save the environment, and make a way to display that publicly as a status symbol.
People are self interested, and to make significant progress generally, you need to play off that.
But your argument here is a mess - you despise people with passion because of their consumer choices... and you're mixing up consumerism, environment, politics and income inequality into something completely incoherent.
The picture isn't clear, there isn't a single issue that makes the world as it is today purely by itself. So I would blame consumerism, together with everything else you listed - and I would strongly believe that you need to put the blame on every single one of these things at the same time.
I'm frustrated that so much human energy and time is allocated to appeasing the fleeting insecurities of the hyperwealthy. Not just allocated to it, devoted to it.
Meanwhile, there's very critical work to be done that isn't allocated shit on any meaningful scale.
We as humans only have so much time in our days. The luxury goods sector, to me, is a wasteful allocation of energy. And I know people on the other side of the pyramid scheme busting their asses to take care of kids and pay the rent at the same time.
It highly irritates me that this is where their hard work is aimed. At the top of society,the owner class is focused on fricking Prada? That really gets my goat.
The ability for people to excessively obsess over logos and funnel money at them is enabled by the excessive exploitation of working people.