It’s a Consumptagenic World

This chapter identifies a system in which some of the key drivers of health inequity fuel climate change, which in turn fuels further inequity. This process is based on excessive production and consumption; it constitutes a consumptagenic system. The chapter tracks the evolution of the consumptagenic system through the globalization of a market-based and fossil fuel–dependent economic system. It describes the addiction of this system to economic growth as the ultimate goal and to forms of consumption that are highly polluting. The last parts of the chapter focus on the roles of an industrial food system and urbanization as two central cogs in the consumptagenic system that is pushing our planet toward irreparable destabilization. The subsequent impacts, from climate change and health equity, of both of these systems (industrial food system and urbanization) are then described.