Eat it

Solving the other problem – the advertising that feeds our desire to acquire – might be more tricky. In an ideal world, it would be a counter-advertising campaign to make conspicuous consumption shameful.

"Advertising is an instrument for construction of people's everyday reality, so we could use the same media to construct a cultural paradigm in which conspicuous consumption is despised," [says William Rees of UBC]. "We've got to make people ashamed to be seen as a 'future eater'."

-- from Consumerism is eating the future (see also Hungry Ghosts).