An article by George Monbiot: --------------------------------- Green consumerism is becoming a pox on the planet. If it merely swapped the damaging goods we buy for less damaging ones, I would champion it. But two parallel markets are developing - one for unethical products and one for ethical products, and the expansion of the second does little to hinder the growth of the first. I am now drowning in a tide of ecojunk. Over the past six months, our coat pegs have become clogged with organic cotton bags, which - filled with packets of ginseng tea and jojoba oil bath salts - are now the obligatory gift at every environmental event. I have several lifetimes' supply of ballpoint pens made with recycled paper and about half a dozen miniature solar chargers for gadgets that I do not possess.It wasn't meant to happen like this. The climate scientists told us that our winters would become wetter and our summers drier. So I can't claim that these floods were caused by climate change, or are even consistent with the models. But, like the ghost of Christmas yet to come, they offer us a glimpse of the possible winter world that we will inhabit if we don't sort ourselves out.
With rising sea levels and more winter rain - and remember that when the trees are dormant and the soils saturated, there are fewer places for the rain to go - all it will take is a freshwater flood to coincide with a high spring tide and we have a formula for full-blown disaster. We have now seen how localised floods can wipe out essential services and overwhelm emergency workers. But this month's events don't even register beside some of the predictions circulating in learned journals. Our primary political struggle must be to prevent the breakup of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. The only question now worth asking about climate change is how.
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Info on Earth Day.
4 comments:
Happy earth day to you. I think 6 hours of power shut down a day is contribution enough.
relating it to our environment here. we dont even have clean air to breathe. and like it talks about recycled stuff, it wud be a blessing for the poor if they only get fresh fruit, meat etc on reasonable prices they cud afford. we dont hv electricity and this has added to environmental hazard, how? generators! they are noisy and emit fuel. also goldsmith who he mentions. while i was reading thru the article, i was thinking how easy it is for the book author to give her words of wisdom while sitting in her luxurious plc.
btw we had earth day in our uni today, my environmental major's friend was giving out green ribbons. but its sad to see that as soon as we are done with promoting greener and cleaner Pk or awareness campaigns like these, we totally get brain washed. its like we never learned anything
destitute: lol
mubi: I agree. Rich people are more of a blight on the environment anyway than those who don't even have access to adequate food.
Thats true. It seems like we go out to ease our conscience, in a way, by distributing things etc., feeling good about actually doing something. Intentions might be good but then we go back to the same old lifestyle. Not unless people's survival is directly threatened or they feel that it is, they do tend to forget. I suppose if we could have a sense of urgency about it, or if our government was more actively involved in it, dunno.
To be honest, I am as much a hypocrite as anyone else. But we (those of us who are fast becoming a part of this consumer culture)could do small things, switching lights off, turning devices off at the switch, tips we are thrown with every day.
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