TAYLOR SWIFT often tops the charts, but her most recent number one has drawn more censure than acclaim. Because, at 8293 tonnes of carbon emitted so far this year, she has been the world鈥檚 most polluting celebrity in terms of private jet use 鈥� easily beating Kylie Jenner, who infamously took a in hers.
For many of my fellow environmentalists, this carbon-spurting excess reinforces disgust at our celebrity-obsessed, conspicuous-consuming culture. The only thing that will save the world from a greed-triggered apocalypse? Sweeping it all away.
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This is a tempting idea, but it has one major snag: when environmentalists exhort us to care less about buying cars and clothes, and instead base our lifestyle choices on the planet鈥檚 limited resources, they ignore an elemental part of our hominid nature: preoccupation with status.
Status is, of course, the key that unlocks every animal鈥檚 ultimate goal 鈥� breeding rights. Charles Darwin named the status displays rife in nature 鈥渉onest signalling鈥�, noting that male peacocks鈥� ostentatious feathers prove to females that they are so adept at finding food and avoiding predators they can afford to grow big, bright, utterly wasteful plumage. Some deer grow antlers so unwieldy that they become caught in trees for days. Other animals buy jewellery and fast cars. From the forest to the penthouse, all status signals say: 鈥淚 am successful enough to have more than I need. See my superior genes!鈥�
If wasteful excess is entirely natural, it poses a head-scratcher for environmentalism. We eco-activists emphasise that humans aren鈥檛 above nature. But we can鈥檛 have it both ways. If people are no better than any other mammal, how can we banish our natural instincts for status?
This paradox needs untangling, and fast, because massive social and behavioural change has moved centre stage in our struggle to meet the Paris climate agreement.
According to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sociocultural change could rapidly save 5 per cent of demand-side carbon. But I fear this gigatonne-level prize could remain unclaimed unless we embrace the realities of being great apes and forget exhortations to act like angels.
Rather than trying to conquer our evolved desire for status, we must switch the symbols used to display it. Luckily, status semiotics are malleable. Throughout history, humans have been wildly creative with ours, from foot-binding in late imperial China to poorer Victorians blackening their teeth with boot polish as only the rich could afford enamel-rotting sugar.
Society is ripe for sustainable status signals. According to a , 52 per cent of UK citizens feel guilty when buying unsustainable products 鈥� rising to 71 per cent among young people. And we are all more likely to purchase greener products when we are watched. Perhaps upcycled or rented clothes could carry a distinctive tag that makes sustainability a status display. Maybe travelling by train could earn covetable passport stamps.
That said, it is in virtual worlds where status symbols have the greatest potential to radically cut material consumption. Your online status and virtual possessions could become more important than anything you own in the real world. That might not sound appealing, but status displays must remain anxiety-inducing, hierarchical and unfair 鈥� because that is the point of them.
By shifting from high-carbon, disposable, heavily material symbols to virtual, reusable and sustainable ones, we might buy more time to solve climate change. And if a bunch of great apes can decouple social status from its material impacts, we might just have the effect of angels.
Solitaire Townsend is聽chief solutionist at聽Futerra and author of聽The Happy Hero
