Is our lust for adventure a good thing?
A few years ago at a sustainability design conference I attended, speaker after speaker shared their ideas on how to reduce the carbon impact of our everyday lives. Only one man stood out for me. His message was simple: to reduce our footprint we need to demand less; less products, less travel, less power. Only by creating a reduction in demand and subsequent consumption will our society really make the changes required.
So it was interesting to read on the BBC website this morning that the New Economics Foundation are advocating a switch to a 21 hour working week (worth a read). They argue that a shorter week would reduce unemployment, but the main benefits are far more widereaching than that. We would enjoy more time with families, more opportunity to contribute to our communities, while the lower income that results would stem our insatiable demand for consumer goods that is responsible for so much of our carbon use.
So where would travel fit in to this brave new world? Assuming this concept was adopted across the world (I can hear the Americans choking in their coffee already) how would our travel habits change? On the one hand we would all have more leisure time. With only three days a week in the office, we would have long weekends as standard. On the other hand, less money would impact our ability to take luxury breaks and expensive flights. Something would have to give.
In such a situation, we could still be encouraged to have the same curiosity, lust for adventure and desire for experience that currently send us to the most exotic corners of the world. In this new world however our playground would become local, not global. We would explore areas that we could reach on foot or by train and not by a 12 hour flight.
I have to say, we’ve lived all over the UK and spent a year in NYC as well, and in every place we’ve called home we have explored our neighbourhoods and our surrounding areas with relish. There are always many options for experiencing the great outdoors, for visiting historical sites and for finding the unusual. We have completed several multi-day hikes which have required no use of transport and these have provided us with some of our most vivid travel memories.
So how would you feel about having lots of extra time at your hands, but with a lower disposal income as a trade-off? Would it affect how you travel, and is that important? Would a shorter working week create a better world where our scarce resources are shared out more equally, or is such a world, for good or ill, completely alien to the values of our society?
Love the 21 hour work week, but no one will ever go for it. I live that way however, and love it. As for travel, there are so many other things out there contributing to problems in the world. I think the least of our worries are people’s travels and vacations.
Quality time with family…hopefully some of us will really enjoy our kids finally if this ever happens!
It sounds like it would be difficult to travel junkies and those who need to travel as part of their jobs. I’d give it a shot – why not? I’m not sure shortening the week would directly lead to a change in lifestyle though – it might just mean people spend longer in Vegas. Credit card might get worse until people accept the new reality of the short week. There would be those who would continue to work 5+ days a week (you wouldn’t be able to completely curtail that, right?). Very thought-provoking.
Thanks for the comments. It is, I agree, highly unlikely to ever come about, but it is an interest idea and its effects would be far-reaching. I guess credit would be harder to come by with lower earnings, so this would help push down spending quickly. Travel would continue, but might be more locally focussed rather than long haul. And quality time with family, yes… I wonder how people would cope with that.
I think that more our at home doesn’t mean less comsumption needings. In fact, I think it could be more, since while you’re at home you need energy, and things to do, which may or may not be less-comsupting, Less hour of work means less money, but what for people who works by themselves? If I’m freelance I’ll need to work as I’m doing right now, just because I can’t be competent if I don’t, and can’t deliver lot of work In few days.
I don’t think less hour of work means less contamination. I think it just means more fun, which is great though.
I would prefer a more balanced work/life balance, for sure (and I’m American).
But the question is, assuming a handful of countries adopted this stance, would they become so competitively disadvantaged that they would switch back to a more laissez faire attitude?
I think you can find comparisons in the 35-hour work week popularized decades previous in Europe and their more recent move towards longer work weeks. Global competition, and countries that operate with near slave-labor hours, make dictating maximum working hours an unrealistic goal.
Unfortunately, of course!