When Less
Is More:
Learning About Limits
By Emily Spence
11 July, 2007
Countercurrents.org
The
purpose of the Live Earth Concerts, held on July seventh, was to raise
awareness about global warming. Around the world, they were attended
by participants numbering in the hundreds of thousands.
When this overall figure
is increased to include those watching the various shows via television
and other sources, it is likely that up to two billion viewed the entertainment.
All considered, one winds up wondering whether doing so will have provided
an effective mechanism to promote people to adopt greener lives, ones
in which less energy use and other benefits accrue. Obviously, it is
too soon to tell.
However, it is known that
the total carbon output for holding the event was conservatively estimated
at 31,500 tonnes or more than 3,000 times the annual carbon footprint
for a typical British citizen. [1] In addition, some critics linked
the event to "greenwashing" [2] or lambasted it as feel-good
hype slated to accomplish nothing of any real value. For example, this
latter view has been taken by Dr. Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow
in environmental studies at the Cato Institute. [3] Meanwhile other
denunciations included the seven point pledge, which people were asked
to sign during the performances, as being "too little too late"
and the ironic incongruity of having Daimler Chrysler as one of the
program's main sponsors.
Meanwhile, heads of corporations,
including Daimler Chrysler's, will, obviously, have to come to terms
with conflicting goals. They will have to decide whether they want to
continue with their current objectives fueling (quite literally) climate
damage or change, while their competition does not, in ways that could
likely cut profit margins.
Concerning the latter, forty-seven
of the world's biggest economies (out of 100) are not countries.They
are corporations. [4] Fortune 500 companies made record profits last
year in the amount of $785 billion, a twenty-nine percent increase over
2005. Indeed, best ever returns existed for many individual companies,
particularly those involved with energy provision.
For example, Exxon Mobil,
Chevron and Conoco Philips all posted top earnings in 2006 while Exxon
Mobile's fourth quarter largess, alone, came in at a staggering $10.25
billion. Meanwhile car manufacturers are jockeying for first place rank
in overall sales, which are on the rise worldwide due to improvements
in economic conditions in some countries. Especially in those with new
levels of affluence, such as some Asian nations, new vehicles can't
be obtained fast enough.
In such a vein, China had
30 million cars in 2005 -- the same number as existed in Great Britain
in 2006. Moreover, the last year (1997) that data was tabulated worldwide,
600 million vehicles existed across the planet with the prediction that,
given current trends, this number would double by thirty years.
Meanwhile, it does no good
to speculate about the number of jets that exist and the frequency that
they fly, nor the number of ships navigating every which way. Suffice
it to say that 30 million visitors came to Great Britain, alone, in
2006 -- roughly the same number of people as existed in Canada in 2000.
In other words, people are using oil to travel by land, sea and air
as if there is no end to it in sight and as if they don't care that
there, actually, is.
So it is all well and good
for managers of companies to wax enthusiastic about cutting back on
carbon emissions, production of goods (such as cars, jets and yachts)
from ever dwindling resources, fair wages for workers and all manners
of other constructive goals in support of both human welfare and the
environment. However, it is doubtful that change will come any time
soon, especially as consumers are clambering for more of everything
all of the time.
Let's put it all another
way, a CEO of a fishing conglomerate would be fired were he to state,
"I am worried about the UN report showing that seventy-one to seventy-eight
percent of fisheries worldwide are depleted. I am anxious that our giant
fishing trawlers are making it hard for other species and second world
fishing communities to not starve. Maybe we should put less fish in
grocery stores. Let's do so by having a smaller fleet. We'll, also,
use less energy that way." [5] Likewise, can one picture a director
of a paper company mentioning his concern that forests are being globally
felled at an accelerated rate paralleling human population growth such
that very few woodlands will be left by thirty years from now? [6] Similarly,
is it conceivable that the owner of a transnational clothing consortium
would offer any mea culpa over her company paying third world workers
a dollar a day and no health benefits? [7] Can one imagine her, further,
declaring that it is a shame the garments have to be transported on
oil using cargo vessels and jets to the diesel guzzling trucks waiting
to haul them to stores all across the globe?
Meanwhile, many company managers
are (literally) banking on the trend that the human population will
continue to explode and, thereby, create more customers with the result
that there will ever be less available resources and ever more oil expended
to supply merchandise until the whole shebang collapses.
Meanwhile, which individuals
would not cave to the allure of becoming more affluent by selling farmland
(from which one derives backbreaking labor and a modest salary per year)
to housing developers for millions of dollars, their woods to paper
mills, their rock beds to coal and oil companies, and so on? What portion
of the population truly believes that it is not their right to decide
the number of children that they can produce if they want big families
despite that the world's global population is expected to increase to
eight billion by 2028? [8] What fraction would adjust to being told
that they cannot buy that twentieth pair of shoes and especially not
the cheap variety, that is guaranteed to need replacement in a year?
In the same vein, what amount would be willing to not drive, on a whim,
to the movie theatre, the ice cream stand, the Little League game, the
resort for the weekend getaway, the beach and all sorts of other fun
places whenever the desire hits? What percentage wouldn't flip the air
conditioner switch at the slightest discomfort or choose not to take
an overseas vacation out of some vague concern over worsening global
warming?
Yet most persons know that
we'd better soon learn to change the way that we treat the world. The
current droughts, the wild fires, the expanding deserts [8], record
temperatures for much of the globe, the melting ice sheets, the widespread
extinction of up to one half of all species within 100 years [9] and
many more indicators are all signs that we need to both limit our human
numbers and our use of resources. We, especially, have to reduce purchasing
products and partaking of those pastimes somehow dependent on oil --
whether requiring it for manufacture or transportation.
All considered, we, hopefully,
can learn to adjust to requiring less of much to which we are accustomed.
If the means for doing so necessitates attendance at concerts, let's
have more of these by all means. Whatever it takes, even musical gigs,
will serve.
Yet let us, above all, try
to keep in mind Buckminster Fuller's words, “We are called to
be the architects of the future, not its victims.” If we cannot
do so, we will surely learn about having less by other means. However,
the outcomes for the alternative ways won't be any bit as pleasant as
a concerts on a relatively mild, sunny day. This is guaranteed.
[1] To see an overview and criticism of the event, please refer to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Earth.
[2] The term is defined at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing.
[3] The views of P. Michaels
are expressed at:
http://www.cato.org/new/pressrelease.php?id=103.
[4] This information was
derived from:
http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/cms/page1533.cfm.
[5]The extent of fishery
ruin is exposed at: http://www.un.org/events/
tenstories_2006/story.asp?storyID=800.
[6] Forest decimation rate
is examined at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation.
[7] Labor overview is at:
http://www.lilith-ezine.com/articles/
2005/fashionistas_against_sweatshops.html.
[8] One of the deserts is
portrayed
at: www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/08/
asia/web.0608desert.php.
[9] Please see p., 18 of
this text:
http://fire.biol.wwu.edu/trent/alles/Biology_and_Society.pdf.
Emily Spence lives in Massachusetts and deeply cares
about the future of our world.
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