When you can't see the forest for the billboards: a look behind the billboards at the impact that a consumer-based society has on the planet�� and what we can do to restore balance

I am an urban person. I recently realized that I spend more time walking on concrete than anything else. I lived in a big city, Toronto, for eight years but came to my senses and am happy to once again breathe the clean air and take in the living skies of Saskatchewan. I aspire to live among nature, outside of an urban centre, but for the time being I am getting my feet wet by gardening, saving seeds, collecting rain water, and learning about sustainable living.

I recently enjoyed a trip to the countryside. I liked the way the hills were changing colour-it made them seem very alive to me. The contrast between walking on the relatively untouched native prairie grass and the cultivated fields was a sensory lesson.

As I was looking at nature-the hills, the lake, the flora-my eyes kept focussing on the "unnatural" things; like the basketball hoop, the boat, the road, the cars. These things seemed like a blight on the landscape and I considered how human forays into the country are a real imposition on nature and on non-human species. But does this line of thinking mean that we should all live in cities? Living in cities only increases our detachment from nature, hence our detachment from the devastating effects of environmental degradation that we impose-yet cannot see and therefore do not think or worry about.

Although globally the majority of humans are still living in rural areas, they are very connected to the urban centres. In Canada rural people commute, shop and ship their products into urban areas. In the majority world many rural people buy and sell in the urban centres as well, and increasingly are being forced to move into urban areas-often into slums or ghettos.

This urban connection is primarily due to market forces, where goods and services are bought and sold. Although many things that are sold in the market are useful, many of them are luxury items produced for the few who can afford them. One way to be ecologically sustainable would be to reduce or remove the luxuries, and move to a subsistence based economy based on needs, not artificial wants. It has been argued that going "back to the land" is too harsh and people would be unwilling, if not unable, to do it. If that is true-that it is too harsh-then why do we expect the majority of the world to do it? While most western people are lucky enough to have more than enough (of everything-food, clothes, houses, cars) the majority in the world go without (food, clothes, houses, cars).

While the majority world tries to subsist, they are no longer rooted in subsistence based economies, but are caught up in the capitalist, military, industrial pursuit of profit. In order to shift to a more ecologically sustainable way of living within nature, it would take a major revision of the priorities of the agenda setters, as well as political will.

Destructive Jobs

One of the main barriers to our ecologicalism is the type of jobs available. In the current system, in order to survive we need money, in order to have money we need to work, in order to work we need job creation, in order to create jobs we need to produce things. A close inspection of the kinds of jobs we do and the things we produce reveals that many of them are unnecessary and unethical. In the manufacturing sector we produce many superfluous items including disposable plastic items, fashion and "beauty" products, legions of vehicles, unhealthy convenience foods, thousands of chemicals, tons of pulp and paper products and luxury items. In the communications sector - broadcasting, internet, mail services, and publishing - we produce advertising for capital.

In the science and technology sector the emphasis is on information technology, intellectual property, and research and development - most of which does not benefit the average person and does a lot of ecological damage. Service industries are a large sector in Canada, and are mostly just a convenience and not all that necessary. Trade and transportation are growth industries expanding exponentially, often for no other reason than to grow. Sports is seen by many as a huge waste of resources, as is gambling. In the television and movie industry, just how many hospital shows/ cop shows/ law shows do we need? Not to mention the proliferation of pornography.

The professions that we idealize and aspire towards deserve a closer look as well. We have doctors in the sick care system, pushing patented drugs that kill more people annually than illicit drugs; CEO's of multinational corporations who operate with virtually no regulations; lawyers whose existence is based on protecting property; stockbrokers buying and selling futures (literally and figuratively); engineers displacing nature; growing numbers of personnel in the "justice" and prison system; insurance companies that don't pay out and banks and bankers reaping ridiculous rewards.

In order to keep this rolling, the average Canadian spends the majority of their life energy at work. We work so much that we do not even have time to cook anymore, or spend time with our children, or go on vacation, or clean anything - and that is why everything for the house has become disposable. We spend a phenomenal amount of time working to pay for things we don't have time to use, like our houses, recreational toys, cars, and clothes. We are overweight, stressed, alcoholic, divorced, medicated, indebted, and spend phenomenal amounts of time in front of the idiot box. Meanwhile, the other half is starving, warring, alcoholic, indebted and facing an uncertain future, which is certainly bleak.

Rethinking our Needs

So what is it about capitalist patriarchy and accumulation that is so much better than sustainable living in harmony with nature? Aside from the ethical impetus, there are practical reasons for living ecologically: to ensure the next generation's future, to maintain biodiversity, to build community, to exercise and eat healthy food, to shrink the chasm between the haves and the have-nots, to breathe clean air, to have more free time, and to employ our life energy in the service of ourselves and our community--not for the bosses' benefit.

A major step towards ecological sustainability is to stop our incessant shopping. We can become active global citizens, not just consumers; givers, not just takers. For Canadians, once we quell our addiction to stuff, it is relatively easy to be ecologically sustainable. We are highly literate, and there is no shortage of knowledge out there, albeit camouflaged in the barrage of product placement. The next step is acting upon that information, not just tuning it out or passing the buck. We have "experts" in many fields who could focus their energy and resources on sustainable technologies and methods. We have leisure time (in the sense that we do not have to walk five miles for water everyday, and are not enlisted in wars for our survival) with which we could pursue ecological endeavors. We can find things to do with our time and money, like volunteering and donating to worthy causes, instead of shopping and watching television. We can overcome our individualism, our "what is in it for me" mentality, our tunn el vision.

We need to create more jobs that restore (rather than deplete) natural systems; jobs such as developing and running renewable energy projects, or refitting homes and buildings for energy efficiency. We should be expanding community gardens, composting and recycling projects, urban-rural exchanges to trade labour for agricultural produce, and sustainable education programs.

There is an excess of things we can do on an individual level, raising consciousness and empowering people to make change, but we cannot stop there. As the lucky citizens in a "democracy," as parents and grandparents, as workers, and as people who rely on nature for survival, we must implore our governments to act as true global citizens. The beautiful thing is that our governments have already acknowledged the problems and the remedies to the issues of environmental degradation and the human condition. They have confirmed it on paper as signatories of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the International Labour Organization, the World Summit on Sustainable Development, and various incarnations of the Kyoto Protocol.

We have it all--power, knowledge and resources. Now all we need is the political and individual will to make positive change--for all beings.

Denise MacDonald is a Briarpatch board member and is a student of sustainability.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Briarpatch, Inc.
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