Cognitive dissonance might be one way to describe how we conduct our lives in the face of climate change and environmental degradation. Willful ignorance might be another. Or, perhaps most damning of all, willful self-indulgence, in which we exult our passion for convenience and comfort over their cost to the larger society, and the world, around us.
Any way you define it, the picture is grim.
It is clear why our governments make only token gestures to mitigate the damage we are doing to the world. Real action would require sacrifice, a virtue that seems to have largely disappeared from our modern age. Any politician who tries to do what must be done would pay a very heavy price indeed. And despite new reports about the dire health impacts already underway due to climate change, dealt with in today's Star and in a post by The Mound the other day, I think we all know that there will be no restorative measures pursued by our 'leaders.'
That inaction provides for all of us a convenient shield from an inconvenient and very unpalatable truth: our collective refusal to act as individuals (I hope that's not an oxymoron) to slow the pace of our rapidly deteriorating world. I know that sounds like a massive over generalization, and that in fact many individuals and groups are dedicated to doing what they can in the face of the existential crisis we have created. But their efforts, as noble as they are, seem to fork little lightning among the general populace, who seem hellbent on continuing their wasteful and destructive ways.
If you want an illustration of this, you need look no further than the massive popularity that coffee pods, and to a lesser extent, tea pods, enjoy. An extremely wasteful and expensive technology unless you live on your own and drink one cup a day, the majority of these pods are not even compostable, something Ontario PC MPP Norm Miller is trying to do something about via a private member's bill:
He’s pushing for all parties at Queens’ Park to support a law requiring every single-use coffee pods sold in Ontario to be compostable within four years so they can be tossed into the green bin as soon as the cup of Joe is brewed.However, there is that pesky problem of the consumer's addiction to convenience, which limits even recycling of the pods:
The goal is to keep more of the 1.5 billion pods used annually in Canada out of garbage dumps.
“Ontario has a waste problem,” said Miller (Parry Sound-Muskoka) Wednesday before presenting his private members’ bill. He cited a recent warning from the province’s environmental commissioner.
While some companies, including Loblaw, McDonald’s and Muskoka Roastery Coffee Co., sell java in compostable Keurig-style pods, the majority of pods sold in Ontario are made elsewhere and are not recyclable or compostable, Miller said.
Recyclable pods are “finicky” to deal with because the cap must be torn off and the coffee grounds rinsed out and the plastic cup thrown in the blue bin, Miller said.Precisely the reason I suspect that Miller's initiative is doomed to failure. Imagine the 'extra' effort putting compostable pods into a green bin would entail for the harried and selfish consumer.
What is my point here? Clearly, non-compostable coffee pods are not the worst environmental problem we face today. Their massive popularity, however, is a symptom of the larger problem fueling our increasingly debased planet. As Walt Kelly in his famous comic strip Pogo wrote:
“WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US.”
Convenience, Lorne, may well be the death of us.
ReplyDeleteWe can see the train coming very clearly, Owen, but we refuse to get off the tracks.
DeleteMy parents and others of their generation, those who grew up in the Great Depression/WWII era were familiar with the sacrifices demanded in difficult times. Yet, when the postwar era arrived and they began their own families, they seemed focused on ensuring that their children would not have similar experiences. I'm not saying that they spared us from want of any description although some did but we were never deprived and my parents always seemed to find a way to provide even if it was a bicycle from a police auction dressed up with a can of spray paint.
ReplyDeleteWe maybe worked part time, a paper route or a job in a grocery store or cutting lawns, but that was to earn money for our own use. Few among us were expected to contribute to family upkeep. My parents never took a dime from us nor have I from my kids.
Sacrifice existed in small and not greatly inconvenient ways. Charitable giving wasn't seen as sacrifice nor should it be. That was penny ante stuff in the main.
Sacrificing for our kids or homeless, street people is far different than the sacrifice that we're now called upon to make. That's "here and now" sacrifice, a small bite from the bank balance.
This new sacrifice is different. It's not as tangible or immediate. We're now being asked to sacrifice today from our lifestyles to benefit generations to come, people we will never know - if, in fact, they ever exist.
Scientists tell us that bad things are looming but many of us dismiss that with one device or another, a favourite being "they'll think of something by then." We see ourselves as potential dupes, being asked to sacrifice, to shrink our ecological footprint, for possible good we cannot foresee.
What we don't do, and this comes from our own leadership, is address how what we're doing today, the things we don't want to forgo, will make our children's and grandchildren's lives so much worse. That's a responsibility we will go through mental contortions to avoid facing.
As you know I'm convinced that the synergy of climate change, the freshwater crisis, over-consumption and overpopulation, all of it unchecked, means that we will be overtaken by events for which we shall be almost completely unprepared.
I hope I'm wrong. I hope we have some grand, civilizational epiphany, and that universal goodwill and sacrifice becomes massively fashionable, that we're transformed into a new and much better species. Or maybe 'they'll think of something by then.'
Like yours, Mound, my upbringing was pretty much free of want. It is a nice state to be in. Sadly, the avoidance of any kind of want seems now a mania of the West. We have become so cossetted that outrage greets the suggestion that people should drive less, and should not be tooling around in monster trucks and other fuel-guzzling behemoths, just to cite one example of our heedlessness.
DeleteI guess we are just not as smart as we think we are, eh?