I’ve been noticing a steadily increasing rise in news and information about global warming. It seems the majority is waking up to the matrix of the world and is beginning to understand our ecological footprint. In an ever increasing trend, I’m seeing news suggesting that “people” are the cause for this ever increasing disaster. While yes, the term “people” is technically correct, we must realize that “people†also means corporations and other for-profit enterprises.The world is about to come to an epic realization that we, as a society, need to change – both significantly and rapidly. People are finally coming to realize the ultimate flaw of capitalism; the unsustainable concept of unlimited growth potential. There simply are not infinite resources for infinite growth and as more countries adopt capitalism, industrialization and world trade agreements, the smaller and smaller the resource pool becomes. We must realize that we are at the crossroad of two choices: Either we change and push hard for and achieve sustainability or we face the consequences of a worldwide mass extermination of people. I hate to be blunt, but follow the logic.
As an American and reluctantly a consumer, I recognize that I have a fairly significant environmental impact as an individual. Even though I go out of my way to recycle, buy from “green” companies as much as possible, support organic farmers and so on…I still throw away a lot and produce a constant supply of carbon dioxide. I contribute to ecological decline, perhaps much less so than the majority of Americans – but I still have a significant impact, especially over the entire course of my lifetime.
I have a feeling, however, that this self recognition will be slammed down our throats and will justify additional taxation as well as rising prices in the years to come. It will unfairly put the burden and cost of sustainability on the consumer. I say “unfairly” because corporations have advanced beyond fulfilling the needs of society into creating needs, manipulating our desires and otherwise encouraging us to consume.
Corporations have made decisions based on the flawed theories of capitalism and complete disregard for anything other than profit and growth. These corporate entities have continually plundered the world for their benefit and purposefully, perhaps ignorantly, created unsustainable conditions. The ecological footprint of the corporation, no matter how you look at it, is far larger than that of the individual. They have made no effort to inform you of their unsustainable practices and have mislead people into believing that consumption is good. Their ultimate goal has been, and will continue to be, to have us consume more and more – that is, until we either face doom or revolutionize our concepts of capitalism, profit and growth.
The introduction of globalization, global trade and the creation of private interests that direct these concepts have insured that this system is growing increasingly larger and complex. Our government has not just paved the way for these unsustainable empires to exist and profit, but have also ignorantly perpetuated the “infinite growth”myth. Congress is just now waking up to ecological decline and they’re grasping at straws for the solutions.
My protest is not that we need “green” corporations, albeit this is of certain importance – but it’s one that I believe corporations should absorb the primary burden of ecological sustainability from their profit and gains. Corporations and their stakeholders are ultimately responsible for the continued advancement of natural deficit consumerism in America and across the globe. It is their very nature that has created the conditions we face and things are not going to really change until we make them responsible for their actions.
Forcing people to pay the tax of sustainability only allows the corporation to sustain it’s profitability and continued growth. I say we need to look at this from a much more fundamental level and that is, “Can the need be filled by sustainable technology ?” and subsequently, “Should we allow the unsustainable corporation to exist?” By creating a capitalist environment that is hostile to anti-sustainable means, we insure innovation of sustainable technology at a much more rapid pace.
