Economics is all about consumption. People either spend money now or they use financial instruments - like bonds, stocks and savings accounts - so they can spend more later.
A healthy economy is largely a result of a reasonable balance between consumption today and consumption deferred, and it's pretty clear that balance has been ridiculously out of whack for a while.
Shortly after Sisi was elected, his administration announced cuts of 'subsidies' on natural gas and energy consumption and lowered those for bread and other goods. Such action was taboo during the Mubarak and Sadat presidencies for over half a century, but Sisi was able to convince Egyptians he was taking necessary action.
People know excessive consumption of anything is bad for health. By imposing a ban on something, we are, in a way, provoking them to do it.
At the outset of the creation of the euro in 1999, it was expected that the southern eurozone economies would behave like those in the north; the Italians would behave like Germans. They didn't. Instead, northern Europe fell into subsidizing southern Europe's excess consumption, that is, its current account deficits.
When you affect consumption, production falls, and when production falls, employment falls and when unemployment rises, it affects poverty.
I think unadulterated products and smaller portion sizes mean consumption of less food overall. Portion is everything. The first time I bought a scoop of ice cream in Paris, they weighed the ice cream on a scale before putting it on the cone. It was so small, it fell into the cone as she handed it to me.
For carbon-neutral cities, there are things worth talking about in how our consumption patterns can change - sharing goods, etc. - but those are a fraction of the impacts of transportation and building energy use. If we need to choose priority actions, the most important things are to densify, provide transit, and green the buildings.
Consumption may be regarded as negative production.
We are in niche consumption mode, but 'niche' doesn't mean 'small' anymore. Niche can mean focused, and particularly with the Web, which is a global audience... you can have something niche and still get 10 to 15 million views.
