This morning, the top five stories in my Apple News feed were: the U.S. and Iran trading strikes for the first time in weeks, from BBC News; one dead and 15 missing after sudden flooding at the Grand Canyon forced dozens to be airlifted, from Fox Weather; rescuers in Nepal racing to reach hundreds feared trapped in hydropower tunnels, from The Guardian; Congress finally talking about saving Social Security, from The Wall Street Journal; and, from ESPN, What Went Wrong? Novak Djokovic Knocked Out of US Open in First Round. Then, after months of food recalls and even a dog food recall, multiple states with impacted IVs as fiberglass detected in saline, from Newsweek, landed in my Instagram feed.
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| Hermosa Beach, California, during record breaking heat |
While wondering how Novak Djokovic had managed to land among the morning’s apparent horsemen of the apocalypse, I laughed. None of it is funny, of course. Collectively, however, it is absurd. Perhaps my brain has been slightly cooked by the past few weeks of Los Angeles heat, but I am beginning to wonder whether globalization, the very machinery that was supposed to make the world faster, cheaper, and more connected, is instead slowly killing civilization and, eventually, us.
Commerce and free trade are important parts of an economy, but what happens when demand is no longer born of necessity, but manufactured to compel businesses to make more, faster and cheaper, for consumption that matters only in the moment? When I wrote Guilt of Disposable Fashion back in 2022, the fashion industry accounted for about 10% of global carbon dioxide emissions, more than international flights and shipping combined. And here we are at the end of summer, having experienced record-breaking heat not only in Los Angeles, but around the world. We have become extraordinarily good at making life appear happy through cheap consumption while sending the actual cost somewhere else: into the atmosphere, a landfill, a water supply, or a future we refuse to see.
As the U.S. and Iran renew their military strikes, I wonder why we haven’t learned the lessons of the 1973–1974 oil crisis, when the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) cut production and imposed an oil embargo against the United States and several other countries that supported Israel; the 1979–1980 oil crisis that followed the Iranian Revolution; or 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. Each was a reminder that the lives we have built depend on resources, production and political stability far beyond our own soil and borders. Yet rather than reconsidering that dependence, we seem to have doubled down on it. We, the way we live and the way we consume, have only become more aggressive in our demand for more, faster and cheaper. Rather than living smaller and more locally, we have become obsessed with having more, disposing of it faster and replacing it with something new, different, and viral. The digital creator and influencer ecosystem does not merely reflect that appetite. It feeds the monster we call consumption until it becomes morbidly obese.
Food may be the strangest example because, unlike a viral handbag or the newest countertop appliance, we actually need it to survive. Yet we have industrialized even necessity into excess. We are now experiencing what agriculture at a massive scale can do, especially when regulations are lax or oversight fails to keep pace with production. Lettuce, eggs, jalapeños, bacon, and frozen and fresh berries involved in recalls, some carrying serious health risks, have often come through enormous production and distribution systems, including global supply chains. These are not the systems we associate with the farmer standing behind a folding table at the neighborhood farmers’ market or the small local business whose sources are local farms. The farther production stretches, the easier it becomes for food to feel less like something grown and more like another unit moving through a system.
And for all that scale, abundance and efficiency, we throw an astonishing amount of it away. ReFED estimates that about 29% of the U.S. food supply went unsold or uneaten in 2024. Households alone generated about 23.4 million tons of surplus food, roughly one-third of the national total. About 23.1 million tons became waste, and Americans spent approximately $141 billion on food they did not eat in 2024. Food that is ultimately wasted uses an estimated 16% of U.S. cropland and 15.5% of U.S. freshwater consumption, while surplus food accounts for about 3.5% of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions. Food waste is also the largest single component entering U.S. landfills, at about 24%, according to ReFED's current estimate. We use the land, the water, the fuel, the labor and the packaging to produce it; move it hundreds or thousands of miles; refrigerate it, display it and buy it, only to throw nearly a third of the food supply away. There may be no better portrait of abundance losing its mind.
None of this means retreating from modern life. It isn't about not consuming. My French press and blender, which is also a juicer, have been with me for about three years. My wok has been with me for about five years. Karen, the robotic vacuum cleaner, was a replacement for my first-generation robot vacuum after it finally stopped working. It isn't about not consuming things that make us gleeful. You've seen me start some mornings with coloring on Instagram. Currently, I'm coloring Johanna Basford's Magical Worlds with watercolor pencils and oil pastels, a small morning ritual that lets the day begin quietly instead of with another glowing screen demanding something from me.
It isn't about killing e-commerce, either. I purchase from Amazon, Nordstrom, and other online stores. Partly because I don't drive, so I need bulky items delivered. Partly because I cannot find what I need in a store. Partly because it is sometimes simply more convenient or less expensive. Convenience is not a moral failure, and neither is wanting beautiful things, useful things or ridiculous little things that make life more enjoyable.
It isn't even necessarily about consuming less. It is about consuming mindfully, with intention. It isn't about quantity versus quality so much as longevity. And by longevity, I don't mean only how many years a French press, a wok or Karen survives in my space. I mean the consequences of the purchase itself. How much harm will this consumption cause, not just today, but five, ten, even twenty years from now when multiplied by everything else we consume? Where does the thing go when we are finished with it? What was spent to make it? What was burned to bring it here? What was depleted so that it could be cheap enough for us to replace without thinking? These are questions anyone with children or grandchildren should ask if they want future generations to inherit an Earth they can safely live on.
And when we compare the benefits of globalization to what we are now living through, I am left with one simple thought. Globalization may have made the world more accessible, but it has also allowed our appetites to become enormous. And eventually, there has to be a limit to how much the planet can manufacture, ship, refrigerate, package, discard, burn and replace simply because we can.
Is there a need for globalization when there may not be a safe place for civilization?
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