I saw an interesting video the other day. The
video is popularly known as “The Girl
Who Silenced the World for Five Minutes”.
The speaker is Severn Suzuki. At age 9, she founded the Childrens’
Environmental Organization (CEO), dedicated to learning and teaching other
children about environmental issues. In the video, at age 12, she is speaking at
the International Earth Summit in Rio De Janeiro.
The full text of her remarks (with a few errors) is found
here:
Severn Suzuki, age 12, speaks about sharing.
“In my country, we
make so much waste. We buy and throw
away; buy and throw away; buy and throw away, and yet northern countries will
not share with the needy. Even when we
have more than enough, we are afraid to share; we are afraid to let go of some
of our wealth….
If a child on the streets, who has nothing, is willing to share,
then why are we, who have everything, so greedy?....
I am only a child,
yet I know that we are all in this together, and should act as one single
world, towards one single goal….I am only a child, yet I know, if all of the
money spent on war was spent on finding environmental answers, ending poverty,
and finding treaties, what a wonderful world this would be.”
Suzuki’s comments address the two major social and economic
problems of today’s world: The problem of relieving poverty, and the problem of
environmental waste. The problems are
in part contradictory. As economic
development has raised standards of living across the world, consumption has
increased. As consumption increases,
finite resources are depleted more quickly, and wastes accumulate.
Why Do We Consume
Wastefully?
Economist Thorstein Veblen (1857 – 1929) was an early
graduate of Carleton College (yay, Carleton!) in Minnesota. In his
master work “Theory of the Leisure Class” Veblen coined the term “conspicuous
consumption” – consumption solely for the purpose of demonstrating status in
society. A century ago, Veblen saw that
this excess consumption leads to waste.
Today, our society has adopted wasteful practices for a variety of additional
reasons: for convenience, to save time, and to enhance corporate profits.
But as Velben noted, high rates of consumption lead to high
levels of waste. Higher consumption
leads to faster depletion of resources.
As the standard of living increases around the globe, consumers change
their habits, consuming more meat and processed foods, buying disposable
products, and buying products which require more resources to produce and
transport. It is the reward of economic
development, but carries environmental costs.
The Role of Sharing
in the Global Economy
Sharing is a fundamental human gesture of kindness. It is encapsulated in Karl Marx’s phrase: “From
each according to his abilities, and to each according to his needs”, (once
described to me as one of the highest expressions of human ethics).
But sharing in modern economies and across international
boundaries is complex. Sharing goods
without sharing employment provides no future.
Sharing employment (as in the low-wage factories of East Asia) without
sharing wealth is exploitation. Globalization
and economic development of less-developed nations is a form of sharing, but
must proceed according to decent standards of human rights, human dignity,
worker safety, environmental responsibility and living wages, enforced by the
purchasing practices of the companies importing goods from developing
countries. Companies buying goods in
foreign markets have a responsibility to know their suppliers, and to buy from
ethical manufacturers. Consumers have a
responsibility to know which products are produced ethically, and which are
not, and to choose accordingly.
Awareness and oversight of working conditions in developing
nations has improved over the past two decades, although there is clearly a
long way to go. Pressure from activists
and consumers has forced companies such as Nike and Apple to evaluate the
working conditions among their suppliers, and to improve the lives of those
workers. However, consideration of broader environmental issues has lagged behind the concern for workers’ rights.
Consumers buying a cheap pair of tennis shoes may consider the reputation of the brand with regard to workers’ rights, but
rarely consider the environmental damage from the coal-fired electricity
producing those shoes. In sharing
economic development with the less-developed world, the developed world has “over-shared”
the environmental damage associated with development.
In some cases, the environmental damage is literally
exported to other countries. In the mining
of rare-earth elements, the United States formerly shipped raw ore to China, and
Australia still ships ore to Malaysia for the separation of valuable metals
from waste rock. The waste rock (or
tailings) from rare-earth mining is generally radioactive and highly
toxic. These wastes, of course, remain
in the underdeveloped nation, while the valuable metal is returned to the
developed nation in the form of products, leaving the environment of the developed
nation pure and pristine, and the underdeveloped nation contaminated.
It seems that consumers and companies in the developed world
need to be reminded of Severn Suzuki’s message:
“We are all in this together, and should act as one single world, toward
one single goal.”
Paradoxes on the Path
to a Sustainable Future
Industrialization has increased the standard of living in most
countries on the globe. Greater wealth
is accompanied by many good things: better health care and education, increased
life expectancy, decreased infant mortality and sustainable population
growth. Of these, the stabilization of
population is perhaps the most important thing, as a requirement for a
sustainable future. But economic development also accelerates the depletion of resources, creates a growing gap between
rich and poor, and degrades the environment.
This is particularly evident in China.
High rates of consumption require high production; high
production requires rapid depletion of resources. There is a conflict between the goal of
industrialization for developing countries and the goal of decreasing the
impact of production on the environment. Economic development is necessary for the equality and dignity of the
people in the developing world; but restraint is required to maintain
environmental sustainability.
Environmental writers, such as Donatello Meadows (principal
author, Limits to Growth, the 30-Year Update) emphasize the need to
reduce consumption to achieve sustainable levels of resource use. However, consumption is the engine of modern
economies. The University of Michigan’s
Consumer Confidence Survey is one of the most important indicators for the
health of the American economy. Lower
rates of consumption may be driven by fear of economic or political instability,
high interest rates or high energy prices. When these conditions occur, low consumption
inevitably pushes the economy into recession.
High unemployment and economic inefficiency are the result of widespread
reductions in the rate of consumption.
So paradoxes and conflicts exist on the road to a sustainable
future. Environmental responsibility
must be shared, along with wealth and economic development. Consumption should be reduced to reduce the
depletion of resources to sustainable levels, but developing nations must be
allowed to improve the lives of their citizens, and to reap the rewards of
economic development. In some ways,
this paradox requires restructuring of the economy, and of expectations in
life. Some of that restructuring has
already been happening for the past 40 years.
As automation has replaced many workers in manufacturing, there has been
a rise in the service sector of the economy.
Increasing numbers of workers are employed, not in manufacturing, but in
providing services to their fellow human beings. Perhaps this is the vision of a sustainable
future: a world in which we consume
less, but in other ways to serve and care for our fellow man.
-----
As an adult, Severn Cullis-Suzuki continues working as an
environmental activist, organizer, speaker, and author. She lives in British Columbia with her husband and two children.
