Inconvenience and Why it Matters in a Climate Crisis

The answer for most people to the question, “Am I willing to be inconvenienced and uncomfortable,” is no. A plain simple no. I think learning to live with inconvenience is divesting ourselves from the slavery of Capitalism.

This is what I have been thinking about - will the world be better off with more inconvenience? I think so. I think that if there was more inconvenience, the world would be a more present and mindful place, something we sorely need at this moment in time. The Anthropocene time. Extinction is coming if we don’t change and embrace inconvenience. Say yes to inconvenience.

Through Capitalism the world has become so convenient. By this I mean, one can purchase meat at any time of the day, you can buy avocados and bananas year-round, even though they are seasonal fruits. You can fly to anywhere in the world, visiting exotic places. You can make purchases online and have them delivered the next day. There is nothing that seems to stand in the way of our convenience in the Global North. We always have running water and electricity for example. We cannot imagine our lives or a time when that has not been so.

We get annoyed when we can’t have something we want. We call it bad customer service, or a rubbish supply chain. We rarely value anything that takes time to make or get.

So, in a sense I think convenience is the currency of capitalism and not money. Convenience is the manifestation of the madness of Capitalism.

Convenience speaks about extraction and exploitation. The burger joint that is conveniently open 24/7, allowing us to eat their junk any time of the day. This convenience is at the expense of the people and resources it has to exploit to maintain this convenience? Convenience is the vehicle of our destruction. It wants to service us day and night. Those big global companies know this and make sure that things are as convenient as possible. It keeps us lazy and stops us from asking the real questions; At what cost did this convenience come? Why is something that comes from half way around the world cheaper than something made locally? Surely you have had those thoughts, and just shrugged it off with the propaganda that has been programmed into your head. Convenience makes us all lazy in the head. It is markedly convenient for capitalism and its protagonists to keep us colonised in our heads to think convenience is good for us and the earth. “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” was a saying when I was growing up. Convenience has spared us the rod. The global north is a spoiled brat. And I don’t want convenience anymore. I don’t want things to be simple and binary.

I want to reconnect with the earth and know that I am one of its living organisms and that I don’t have any more right than the earthworm to live in its abundance.

I don’t want to be able to fly to Rome as if it’s a bus and almost as cheap. I want the cost to be inconvenient enough to help me understand how extraordinary it is to fly and see new places. How privileged we all are in the Global North. Through this inconvenience I want to be mindful of the impact my movements have on the world, its biodiversity and the foot print I leave behind. I want to be reminded that I co-exist on this planet with many beautiful living organisms that have just as much right to light, water and space as I do. They are not a resource to be exploited.

I want to remember how consumers, like me, wanting greater access to cheaper animal protein have driven the growth and exploitation of animals for cheap meat. I welcome the inconvenience of not having any meat to eat, so that we can take the pressure off the convenience of burning down the amazon to make way for pasture for cows. I welcome the inconvenience of very high prices for meat, being cognisant of the life that has been given up to feed me and also having to pay a high enough price to mitigate its loss. What price would be put on the heads of our loved ones to be eaten?

Women are inconvenient. I want us to start thinking about population growth and how to reduce the number of people on this earth. Women’s education and the right for them to make decisions about their own bodies is crucial and the place to start. We need to start valueing women. Inconvenient for the Global North I’m sure, seeing life from a women’s perspective. Something it hasn’t done up until now. Men have had their time. It’s now time for something different. It’s inconvenient, so what. Women are the key to our survival as a species, it is a glaring truth that those fat cat white politicians fail to acknowledge time and again because they are well… fat cat white men. The world only has so much space. Going into space is not an option either. Only crazy people and stinking rich capitalists, who have made their money off the backs of exploiting women and the poorest on the globe think this is a good idea. Imagine the richest 1%’s horror if the world treated their children and family like their companies do employees in the Global South. There would be outrage.

I want to start thinking about the inconvenience of limiting the use of fossil fuels and what that would mean for me. I know that it would make my convenient world a lot more uncomfortable. I wish that Politicians in power would have the courage to talk into this tension to secure a better, and most likely more uncomfortable future, rather than just the next vote.

I consider, on an early Sunday morning walk through the streets of Amsterdam, the inconvenience of revellers being forced to keep their trash on them instead of throwing it on the ground or in the canals. I wonder if that will change the way they might think about how, and how much, they consume? The inconvenience of the municipality cleaning up the streets creates the convenience of our lives.

The inconvenience I am talking about is a real pain in the arse because I want to be free to travel, eat and buy as my money allows. Yet my mind is calling me out on this idiocy. It is no more sustainable for one more person to live the way they want to,than it is for all the millions who have come before them and will come after them. Individual agency claims that you can behave like you want, now. But you can’t. Think of the future generations. It’s not someone else’s problem. It’s our problem now and that is fucking inconvenient. Future generations won’t thank us for our individualism and materialism and not standing up to Capitalism and not creating something different. They just won’t.

Why should I exercise self-restraint when plane tickets, avocados and meat are cheap and convenient? Why should I put myself out like this when the convenience of modern life still exists? Will I be more willing to accept inconvenience when the world is forced out of it by climate change?

I am only a drop in the ocean of the billions of bodies that sponge on the earth, like pieces of plastic on the water. What difference will my inconvenience make to the convenience curve? Nothing. It will not change minds or stop corporations. But nevertheless i do it because our brothers and sisters in the global south are suffering with the inconvenience of capitalism and climate change. Ther is real suffering, injustice and inconvenience in the global south as a direct response to my desire for convenience. I am troubled. Those jeans from China or customer service department in India. My money bought them by proxy, but at what cost? Modern convenience is expensively cheap. Capitalism exploits and extracts from people and the land, internalising the profits and externalising the costs.

Has convenience become a bad habit? Has it anesthetised our minds of the fact that our lives impact the world and is leading to its destruction? We rarely get to see how, here in our Global North castles, protected by our wealth and blinded by capitalism.

I am learning to live with inconvenience because I feel that it is important to do so. If not to stand with those abused and exploited by colonisation and capitalism, then because Inconvenience is coming to the world, whether we like it or not. Would the letter from the future say, “Just exercise self-restraint and inconvenience now and see the world heal to a degree that is still habitable?”. The ultimate inconvenience I can see is the extinction of the human race and the annihilation of the Planet in the name of our comfort and convenience.

Maybe learning to live with inconvenience can help us all make the tough choices we need to, to bring the earth and its eco-system back into balance and soften the blows when they come.