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Edited on Fri Oct-10-03 05:07 PM by Karenina
is spreading unchecked. It is our death-knell.
I stashed this before I understood about URLs and highly doubt any objection to the dissemination of this info would be raised...
Confronting Consumption
The World Summit on Sustainable Development opens in Johannesburg, South Africa this week. This meeting of the world's ministers of environment and development is sponsored by the United Nations and is being billed as "Rio + 10," a reference to the first UN world summit on the environment in Rio de Janeiro held ten years ago. The summit lasts for nearly two weeks, during which time attendees will attempt to sign agreements of various kinds pledging to do more to protect the environment and promote improved living conditions for the impoverished around the world. No one expects anything dramatic from the summit, especially since the United States has made it clear that it will refuse to contribute substantially to any document with real force. President Bush has already decided not to attend the summit, nor will any other high level government officials, save for a token appearance by Secretary of State Colin Powell the last two days.
The Truth
The main reason is the inability of world policy makers to address the true root of international poverty and planetary degradation - consumption.
However, lack of serious participation by the United States government is not the main reason why this summit, like so many other international negotiations on the environment before it, will fail to make any real progress toward improving the state of the world, vis a vis the environment and sustainable development in general. The main reason is the inability of world policy makers to address the true root of international poverty and planetary degradation - consumption.
The political economy is driven, blindly so, in its promotion of ever increasing rates of consumption. Much of what the diplomats in South Africa will be discussing this week, for example, will no doubt center around increasing trade, increased access to capital markets, privatization and other market-driven topics. Most of the popularly reported economic data in this country centers around counting how much money is being spent in a given period of time - the GDP, for example, or total consumer spending. News reporters smile when consumption is up and get that concerned, sincere look on their face when consumption is down. A large portion of US diplomatic efforts every year are devoted to opening new markets for US "goods;" these efforts often result in the unseemly adjustment of our otherwise "firmly held" opposition to things like dictatorships, military juntas, and human rights abuses. Even when faced with overwhelming negative consequences from a given consumption pattern (say the burning of fossil fuels in order to produce electricity), our society's answer has typically involved more consumption - build and install scrubbers to remove the poisonous sulfur oxides from smokestack emissions that result from burning coal.
The twentieth century resulted in the perfection of consumption messages. Advertising, the media and popular entertainment have combined to dramatically raise popular expectations of what each of us needs in order to live. The invention of first the radio, then television, billboards and, most recently, the Internet have created virtually unlimited opportunities to promote consumption. Market research and corporate-directed scientific research have allowed an ever increasing variety of products, sold in a way as to inspire amazement that people ever got along without them. Subtly, the messages have even managed to implant the expectation of ever increasing variety - that we, as consumers, somehow deserve the multitude of products available to us and should be petulant and impatient should choice ever diminish.
Increased consumption has brought with it increased environmental devastation. Everyone is familiar with the solid waste crisis - we are generating more waste every year and soon all of our landfills will be full. This story has been easily packaged and sold, resulting in the standardization of recycling activity, much of which results in still more consumption of energy and goods in order to clean and reconstitute the plastic, glass and aluminum that has been thrown away. But the contamination of soil, water and air that results from trash is just one part of the environmental destruction that results from excessive consumption. It is actually quite a complex story. Take agriculture, for example. The mechanization and commoditization of agriculture in the United States that has taken place over the last hundred years or so has left us with extremely inefficient farms in terms of energy efficiency. Rice grown in the US requires, on average, 10 calories of labor and fossil fuel energy for every 1 calorie of energy produced in the form of food. Meat production is even more wasteful. Per capita meat consumption has grown steadily during this same time frame. What this means is that more people, consuming more products that are produced more inefficiently create ever increasing environmental devastation in the form of pesticides and fertilizers contaminating our rivers and lakes, healthy ecosystems cleared to make way for the monoculture of the farm and feedlot, and greater levels of greenhouse gasses released into the atmosphere.
This pattern of ever increasing consumption, way beyond simple increases due to population growth, is characteristic of modern capitalist societies. The structure of capitalism is built around sales and consumption. Most conventional thought about capitalism focuses instead on the system as a way of adding value, or of producing. As raw materials travel through the economic system, value is added at each step until finally the consumer pays a certain price that, according to the laws of microeconomics, is no more and no less than necessary to maximize both consumer and producer "utility." Goods are good, and more goods are better. It is no wonder that we have come to believe that owning things, buying new things are inherently satisfying and desirable things. The problem with the system as currently constructed, is that the price we pay does not reflect the entire cost to society of that item. For instance, a gallon of gas may only cost $1.45 at the pump, (and many will undoubtedly complain about this) but since no one owns the air we breathe, Exxon is not required to pay for the polluting of that air their product will result in. Because they are not required to pay, neither are you. That cost will instead be borne, perhaps, by your niece, who will develop asthma, your grandmother, who might die of lung disease, or your grandchildren, who will see their coastal home washed away by rising sea levels sixty years from now.
Defiling the Good
Even seemingly benign organizations like UNICEF are not immune to the gradual commoditization of all human life.
The problem of consumption is growing as the world becomes more prosperous. American and European firms are wasting no time in moving into the new markets of developing countries, already selling the idea that six Gap outfits are better than one homemade dress to Bangladeshis and Sudanese women or that a McDonald's hamburger made with cattle grown on what used to be Amazon rainforest is better than stir fry made from vegetables grown from the family plot in Vietnam. Environmentally aware consumers can be pacified by purchasing paper towels made from 25% post consumer content. The front loading washer which uses 30% less water and energy is still designed to fail in ten years, requiring the purchase of another.
For the participants of the World Summit on Sustainable Development to adequately address threats to the environment, they would have to be willing to stand up and question virtually everything about the current political economic complex. Even seemingly benign organizations like UNICEF are not immune to the gradual commoditization of all human life. This November, UNICEF will celebrate "McDonald's World Children's Day." Yes, that's McDonald's as in the fast food restaurant that sells fattening, unnutricious meals sponsoring an event for an organization whose purpose is promoting children's health. Presumably UNICEF will be air-dropping Happy Meals on Ethiopia as the famine there gets worse this year. But the summit goers in South Africa, if they are serious about addressing poverty, injustice and environmental destruction will think instead about how to nurture and support indigenous knowledge and experience as key factors in the fight against rampant consumption.
by joshua stearns
arlington, va
2002-09-02
v e n t S p l e e n
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