Business
As Usual
By Emily Spence
11 April, 2007
Countercurrents.org
The future for the whole Earth
looks horribly bleak. If worst case scenarios transpire, an inordinate
number of people will die, during this century, due to the effects of
global warming. In addition, up to one fourth of all species, in the
same time span, will become extinct for identical reasons. As it is,
160,000 people, annually, die from its consequences, according to World
Health Organization (WHO) and London School of Hygiene and Tropical
Medicine. In addition, this number of deaths could reach, according
to them, almost double each year starting around 2020. Moreover, up
to a billion individuals, mostly children, are expected to suffer from
severe malnourishment and chronic hunger indirectly caused by our planet's
increasing heat.
Yet, are any of these predicted outcomes new other than the high numbers
involved? No. Indeed, the main difference between these current times
and many prior ones, simply, is that the human impact globally is more
extensive than in earlier periods.
Other than this, life carries on as always. In suggesting this, I mean
that people, throughout history, have always annihilated their own and
other species for personal profit without much consideration of the
tremendous suffering and ecological devastation that result. Indeed,
capitalism is founded on this practice successfully taking place. Put
another way, those with access to resources have always obtained their
personal gain based on decimating other people and species.
One simple case in point wherein this process can readily be seen involves
deforestation. For example, Nigeria's annual rate of deforestation is
11.1 %, which is appallingly high considering that the global average
is .8 % (still dreadfully high). However, the outcomes are roughly the
same in both cases. Generally the topsoil, no longer anchored in place
by massive root systems, runs into waterways to increasingly cause them
to be devoid of life (except for bacteria and other pests that cause
illness). Parched earth incapable of holding moisture and supporting
plants is left in place of the trees, wild fires often ensue, and some
entrepreneur made a quick, dirty profit off of advertising flyers, newspapers,
lumber and other wood based products. Meanwhile many from the surrounding
population either die off or migrate away from the sterile land that
can no longer support them.
With globalization of industry and increasing privatization of many
kinds of property (not just land), economic growth has expanded despite
that environmental ruin frequently does result from such ventures. In
other words, myriad eco-niches utterly fail after having been torn apart
faster than they can replenish themselves. Local people, plants and
animals die in the process and, as always, a self-serving industrialist
makes off with a huge fiscal coup as a result.
Another case in point involves worldwide fisheries. Currently, 71-78
% of these are 'fully exploited', 'over exploited' or significantly
depleted' according to the United Nations. In addition, many species
of aquatic life are on the verge of total extermination.
All the same, we cannot expect the owners of huge fishing trawlers to,
willingly, give up their stupendously lavish earnings based on caring
about future fish for the world or the fact that, right now, impoverished
fisherman living in small coastal communities are, literally, starving
to death, along with their families. Why should they care? After all,
business is supposed to be competitive and snapping up fish is just
like snapping up foreclosed homes and commodities futures. It's all
in a day's work.
In the same vein, why should owners of those mega-companies -- ones
like Walmart, Gap, Nike, Disney, MacDonald's or Starbucks -- dependent
on sweatshop laborers and impoverished farm workers around the globe
be troubled that, largely thanks to them, three billion people presently
live on less than $2 a day? After all, it's just business as usual.
Meanwhile, that this way of operating is lucrative has not escaped notice
from many fresh financiers, ones who would love to join the ranks of
the ultra-wealthy. Indeed, many newcomers have done just that!...
Individuals with a net worth of at least $1 million in all holdings
(excluding "primary residences") amounts to 8.7 million people
according to the 2005 data in "World Wealth Report," compiled
annually by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini. While this represents an increase
of 6.5% over 2004, the information relative to 2006 points to even larger
extremes in BOTH asset accumulation AND the number of rich people extant.
So, why wouldn't information pertaining to global warming not be considered
in the same vein? Why should car manufacturers, industrial tycoons whose
companies depend on massive outlays of energy for product manufacturing,
oil laden countries and nations heavily invested in oil based economies
care about the assorted impacts from global warming? Indeed, many from
these groups want to undercut findings that mention the severity of
damage caused by warming. For example, China and Saudi Arabia wanted
to decrease the level of scientific confidence in the latest Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. The reasons for this choice should
be obvious.
It should, also, be clear
that those individuals who stand the most to gain from dependence on
oil and coal will to everything in their power to continue dependence
on these two energy sources because they will always have bountiful
air conditioning in the summer and ample heat in the winter, the possibility
to move to new regions if their gated communities and remote vacation
homes wind up being in "uncomfortable" climate zones, ability
to always afford a plethora of fashionable clothing and cars in whatever
amount that they choose, as many jet and yacht vacations as they wish
whenever and to wherever they want regardless of the carbon loading
that such excursions require, and anything else that they voracious
crave.
Meanwhile, how can we possibly
expect them to be concerned about the future of humanity or the world
in general when they, currently, don't care about miners' heath, poverty
stricken masses in their own countries, smog related deaths, their employees
receipt of inadequate wages, droughts, famines or any other signs that
their decisions are, ultimately, immoral, grotesque and greedy?
At the same time that scientists,
at the Worldwatch Institute, suggests that it would take five worlds
to supply the bounty of resources that are used by America, alone, it
makes no difference to them. Why? Until any ecological crisis hits home
in such a way as to be personally relevant, you cannot expect them to
be sufficiently motivated to change their behaviors. After all, they
have the biggest losses to subsume if the warming warnings are seriously
heeded.
Until then, Gore or anyone
else pleading "Are you ready to change the way you live?”
(as posed in a frame of "An Inconvenient Truth") holds no
meaning. Indeed, one's giving up any money-based personal privilege
for the sake of ethics, social justice, compassion, the welfare of humankind
and other species would be just too radical a departure from prior choices
concerning matters of conscience. So, don't expect a mea culpa or acts
of contrition any time soon.
The saddest part of all of
this whole situation, of course, is that if we all had deliberately
chosen to exist reasonably well rather than focused on a hedonistic
obsession for accumulations and/or big families, humans could have made
a paradise on earth for practically all living entities, including many
from other species now doomed to being wiped out due to humankind's
avarice. Instead we face a looming hellish inferno and hardly anyone
with the capacity to effect sufficient remedies has the slightest urge
to do so. This orientation is nothing short of being hideously depraved
and thoroughly tragic.
Emily Spence
lives in MA and deeply cares about the future of our world.
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