As I prepare to enter second-year, I find myself wondering - as I often do - "why is the world the way it is?". And in these complex thought patterns, of which the "why" is omnipresent, I sometimes find myself in a state of cognitive dissonance - a state where I believe in one thing but my actions speak differently.
Here's a quick tangent: it seems foolish to abandon the innate childhood sense of wonder. If every child does this, perhaps it means we are hardwired to question reality; and I believe it is only through this questioning that we really gain a sense of who we are in the world. Through social conditioning, however, a good number of us dismiss the "why" and simply accept the "because".
So, you'll have to excuse my lack of consideration of social norms and indulge me whilst I recount to you a dilemma that I wish to explore.
This dilemma is none other than the biggest problem the Earth ("Gaia", from here on in) is facing right now; that is, ecological destruction effected by Homo sapiens.
Let me dive right into it. There has been a great amount of effort by "
moral entrepreneurs" to get people to "go green". You see car manufacturers selling "eco-friendly" cars (an oxymoron, in my opinion), you see vegans giving you dirty looks when you walk around with meat (how rude!), and you see packaging companies advertising that their box is 27% more "environmentally friendly" than before (whatever that means).
But see, I have beef with all this. Don't get me wrong; I have nothing against the idea of people trying to save Gaia in whatever way they can manage. It is a noble cause, after all. No; I have something against the manner in which moral entrepreneurs go about trying to rescue the world. The current trend is to recycle (okay), reduce (good), and re-use (good). But this trend is being ingrained in people; not businesses.
Corporations, governments or otherwise organized entities are the ones that got us into this mess by making us want to buy things. By convincing us that we need to get a good job, that we need a new car, that we need to invest in the economy - all for the sake of living a comfortable, if not luxurious life - we are forced to sacrifice great expanses of pristine land and, by extension, biodiversity.
And yet the burden of trying to fix things - because we have to, otherwise the aforementioned things don't even exist - is on the individual. Still more, businesses manage to profit from that burden by selling us things that we think are "green".
So here's my impractical solution. Instead of spending money on trying to convince people to go green, why not get businesses to be as environmentally responsible as the next? Every business ends up being on the same level playing field, being limited by the potential environmental impact instead of being driven by competition.
Let me explain.
If we prevent resources from being consumed at the rate that they are being used right now, then we can slow down the degradation of Gaia and, ideally, restore a symbiotic relationship with Her.
How do we accomplish that? Well, I've identified the problem as being greed - businesses wanting to make lots of money.
What's the most common way for a business (i.e. one that has a relative environmental impact) to make money? By exploiting resources, and then selling manufactured goods at a premium.
Our governments enact policies that put us in a perpetual battle, pitting the environment versus the "economy", where the losing side is more often than not mother nature. But the war cannot be won by us. In the end, we are only destroying ourselves
(relevant!)[
Update: This is a dead link as of 2019!]. The result is that while most of us in the first world live in luxurious comfort, a great number of
Homo sapiens alive today live either in sickness and/or poverty.
But what if we could stop stop the "profit above all else" mentality dead in its tracks? We'd stop the deluge of unbridled consumerism that is ravaging Gaia every day and be left with an economy that is entirely sustainable and that co-exists peacefully with the environment. The shopping frenzy instilled in each and every individual to some degree would dwindle, and we would return to peaceful harmony with the natural world around us.
I could go into greater detail, using such works as Aldo Leopold's
Land Ethic, and Thomas Berry's
The Dream of the Earth as foundations, but I will reserve this discourse until I at the very least start my environmental ethics courses at UofT. :)
Take care.
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