| Increasing global integration is
rapidly changing our moral context. Since 1900, the world's population has multiplied more
than three times. The economy has grown twenty-fold, the consumption of fossil fuels by a
factor of 30, and industrial production by a factor of 50. Most of that growth, about
four-fifths of it, has occurred since 1950. Developed countries use the world's resources
at a rate, on average, thirty times more than those in the underdeveloped world with
the equivalent ratio of waste and pollution resulting. In "The Future of Life", arguably the most important book of our
time, eminent biologist Edward O. Wilson reasonably and meticulously makes the case that
the scale of humanity’s present actions on this small blue planet are causing
ecosystem destruction and species extinction at an unprecedented rate; at a rate high
enough to threaten humanity's very future. The combination of increasing population and
increasing consumption is creating what Wilson calls the bottleneck*, a treacherous multi-decade passage to, hopefully, a future safer more
prosperous but environmentally benign human society.
The world’s population is expected to increase
from today’s six billion to nine or ten billion in 2050. A recent study* estimated that the human population began
exceeding Earth's sustainable capacity in the 1970s. By 2000 it was 1.2 times capacity
– the deficit comes out of the diminishing natural capital of forests, grasslands,
etc.. For every person in the world to reach present U.S. levels of consumption – and
we’re all trying - with existing technology would require four more planet Earths.
Our kids and their kids face a wall. Right now our family house is near full and
Earth’s support systems are stretched and fraying.
Kenneth Boulding described the full world change in
moral context several decades ago in his metaphor of the cowboy and the astronaut*. In a frontier economy, a cowboy can spit
and smoke, pee in the bush, burn down whole mountainsides; his actions don’t
negatively effect anybody. But in the spaceship economy everyone must carefully recycle
the precious necessities of life and interdependence demands a much more restrictive
ethics, etiquette and moral order.
The poorest billion people in our world live on less
than a dollar a day. The cost of a pack of smokes in B.C. could be the difference
between life and death for a young family in the Third World. Fostering a child in a third
world country for thirty dollars a month*, a pittance for most of us, buys food and the chance of an education for
a kid who will be a lifeline for his whole family and quite likely for his community in
the future. Given this opportunity to use our wealth for the good of our 'family', should
any of us frequent GM Place?
Empathy and recognition of our global village interdependence
must change our moral context:
- If you can look gorgeous in a $200 dress, is a $2,000
dress an admission that greed has overwhelmed need? If you can buy a modest and efficient
car for $10,000, isn't a great big expensive SUV or sports car a sure sign that you're
uncaring? Or unaware?
- What about spending a thousand dollars a day at a
rustic lodge to fish salmon in the
Great Bear Rainforest? Or flying to California for golf in the late December sun.
How about a luxury vacation in Hawaii to reward yourself for a profitable year during
which care of family and generosity to charity set new personal records?
These are individual moral choices, but
shouldn’t it haunts us all that so many have so little and lead such desperate lives
when we can do something about it? One shouldn’t judge others individual moral
choices from outside, without full understanding of their moral thinking and situation.
But while being careful in judging each other’s individual morality, it is imperative
to confront and decry the immorality of institutions, especially governments, which are
endangering our human future.
Governments such as the Bush Administration and
BC’s Campbell Liberal government are determined to roll back the present, already
inadequate, environmental legislation in order to stimulate even higher levels of
production. Instead of ending fossil fuel subsidies and accelerating investment to get to
a future clean energy economy, our governments are encouraging increasing oil, gas and now
methane exploration and production in ecologically fragile ecosystems. At the very moment
when forestry, fisheries and agriculture must shift to an ecologically sustainable
management regime, governments are rolling back endangered species legislation, minimal
forestry practices, and fisheries regulations, while continuing to increase subsidies to
an environmentally and socially destructive complex of agri-business.
These economic ideologue governments are encouraging
increased consumption and waste because economic expansion makes governing easier and
political success more easily attainable in the next election. They are not educating the
public about the "bottleneck" approaching; about the dangers of wasteful
consumption from increasingly degraded and fragmented natural ecosystems. They are not
leading change from a cowboy to an astronaut economy in order to protect the human
opportunity for future generations.
Dr. Wilson points out that if you were born after
1960 half of the Earth’s biodiversity could be extinct in just your lifetime. This,
he suggests, will be the one thing we will most regret about how we live our lives. Global
warming, global pathogens, terrorism (the revenge of the poor and disaffected) and other
accidental byproducts of our rush into the "bottleneck" also require change to a
new moral order for our family’s survival. Leadership by government is essential.
If we change then there is a very optimistic future
at the other end of the "bottleneck" Growth doesn’t have to mean increased
inequity and environmental degradation. A future is possible where the supporters of the Beijing Ice Comets can afford to take the
whole family to the game. These global-family hockey fans will get there without any CO2
emissions, and even if they end up sad about losing to the Canucks, they can go to a clean safe home in a world where they don’t have
to worry about catastrophe, war and extinction.
But for us, in the short term, the reality is that
increasing global interdependence is, to paraphrase General Motors’ Alfred Sloan Jr.,
turning everyday ‘necessities’ into luxuries that we can ill afford. |
