Really? My feverish pursuit of shit (have you ever noticed that your shit is stuff and everybody elses’ stuff is shit) makes me happy. My job is enjoyable and makes other people happy. I spend money on clothes and people compliment me on them. I spend money to go to the gym and meet lots of nice, supportive, cool people. I spend money to go to the pictures and, if all goes well, I come out more cultured and thoughtful (or at least more relaxed). I work and work and work, and this enables me to make charity donations where I see fit. I’ve got HECS debt up the wazz, but the education that gave me this debt is what enables me to manage the other debts I have (and even, heaven forbid, not get into that debt in the first place).

Been poor. Been rich. Rich better.

What is wasteful or excessive consumption is very subjective. I daresay each of us has an idea of products or services that are downright boneheadedly stupid. I recall during the last summer, visiting the home where No2 son had spent the afternoon hanging out just after dusk. It was still stinking hot outside, but these people lived in Arcadia, and I rather fancied they’d have some pretty impressive aircon to deal with it. Surprisingly, though the atmosphere inside was even worse. They were running the aircon at full power, but there was no way you’d have known. What they did have was a massive flatscreen TV that would have doubled as a heater in winter. Out of curiosity I wandered up and placed my hand on the screen and it was hot enough to hurt. Hmmm.

Personally I don’t much like those ‘urban assault vehicles’ either — which strike me as irredeemably stupid. That said, I also recognise that the distaste I feel is essentially arbitrary. For all I know, there’s a good reason why the one that seems outrageously excessive makes sense. No way would I be in favour of becoming the Minister for Socially Responsible Consumer Behaviour. I strongly believe that people are entitled to offend me with their conduct unless they infringe some practical benefit I’m entitled to claim. If you want to live in a free society, you have to anticipate being irritated at others’ choices. The pay off is you get to annoy others right back with yours.

That of course is a quite separate issue from the broader question of what is sustainable in a global sense. While it is indeed a truism that humanity cannot consume more of the world’s resources than are there, humanity can certainly consume more than can be persistently harvested at the current cost in human labour, and consume in a way that alters the biosphere in ways that subtract from our comforts or those available to our descendants.

It seems to me that sustainability is something we humans need to learn how to do, and in a hurry, and if that means rationing basic things like clean water and fossil energy and land using suitably robust price signals, then so be it. Let people make whatever choices they think apt, but let each of us pay a price that can ultimately ensure that the value of the commons is preserved.

One last point. The Health & Hospital Reform Commission recently published a report that said that 70% of the health budget was tied up dealing with what they called ‘lifestyle diseases’. One need not be a patronising snob to note that some choices, far from being rational exercises in cultural preference harm both the person choosing and the community at large. Maybe one can’t call poor diet, excessive alcohol consumption, insufficient exercise and persistent smoking ‘affluenza’ but one should surely call it something suitably condemnatory.

They say that people like their things to reflect who they think they are, or who they want to be. The marketing guys work hard on this “who they want to be” stuff, especially for luxury goods.

Cars are an absolute classic example. Logically, we would get the most economical and fuel efficient car to solve the problem of getting from A to B. That would be the Hyundai Getz, according to the latest RAC magazine. If you think diesel is the way to go, then it would be the Hyundai i30. A step up from that, is the Prius neck-&-neck with some of the smaller German diesels, in terms of cost and fuel efficiency.

Better half and myself have just been having exactly this discussion. Lo and behold, he wants something cool (as per Jeremy Clarkson’s criteria) with muscles under the bonnet, whereas I want heroic, first-generation, low-carbon technology. We could happily agree on the electric Lotus Elise (Tesla) – both cool and heroic – IFF we won lotto, and IFF we only needed to carry a toothbrush with us on holidays. Do we need a Tesla? Well, actually no. But it would be fun to drive!

As babies we feel we are the focus of the universe, then as time goes by we increasingly recognise we’re just another one six-billionth of the world’s human stock, and that we really don’t matter very much. So we have babies to lend us some second-hand importance … but that’s only a temporary fix. So, the main thing we do is to ‘big up’ our jobs. That focus usually leads to higher salaries than we actually need for a comfortable existence. Which in turn leads to the plasma tv and the maserati – not because we particularly need them, but because we have all that money to spend.

So, it is the search for importance in an overpopulated world that leads to over-consumption rather than “an insatiable desire for ‘stuff’”.

But consuming more resources than the earth actually has? Impossible, even in principle. The very idea is ontological nonsense.

This is a bit like saying it’s impossible to spend more money than you have, so the whole concept of living within your means is nonsense. In a way it’s true: eventually your assets will be exhausted, no one will give you any more credit, and you can’t spend any more. However, you might not like the sudden bump at the end, and you might be better off moderating your consumption to a long-term sustainable rate, or even a rate at which you gradually accumulate assets for your successors.

It would be like me saying that since people stopped using horses and carts, that that the sales of oats have plummeted, and thus we are all getting fatter from unhealthy breakfasts.

His data points are way too cherry picked.

There are numerous traditions in the west that do precisely this, features of which have been synthesised into Hamilton’s formulations. Reaction against perceived decadence has a long history, whereas the affluenza thesis seems always to have an incredibly short memory, as do its proponents.

We go for holidays to “natural” or “historic” places. We are most happy when in natural environments, and with other people and their cultures.

Surfers Paradise? Las Vegas? the Costa Del Sol in Spain?