Sustainable Consumption: Oxymoron?

The increasing mountain of waste in today's society inextricably linked to increasing population and over-consumption. Hence the term "sustainable consumption" is somewhat of an oxymoron as buying stuff will directly impact our ecosystems. Suffice to say that our current economic system is geared to the ever-increasing demand to buy buy and buy. The 20 December 2008 issue of The Economist had an article entitled The Way the Brain Buys where, essentially, it outlined how marketers know the tricks to get people to consume and buy either via advertising, in-store lay-outs, etc. So the question is: what if we redistrbute the way we are taxed and add a levy on advertising? Can this be one of so many tools to curb our current unsustainable consumption patterns?