The information age that we live in is like a perpetual blizzard,which, when one opens one’s door to it, can bury a personinstantly in more data than can be humanly comprehended over alengthy course of study, never mind with the morning coffee. And,for those whose business is gathering and sifting news, each daycan be like tackling an avalanche with a snow shovel. In such anenvironment it is easy to lose track of the bigger picture and theweb of interconnections that link things together.

The past couple of weeks the cases of the Pope and that of TerriSchiavo, which were more safe distractions than serious business,overshadowed a number of other issues not so safe and having morebearing on our future.

Foremost among these was the release of theMillennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) Synthesis Report, a UN report put together by about 1300 researchers from 22 nationalscience academies in 95 countries that says that we are using upour natural resources too fast and are in danger of destroyingabout two thirds of our ecosystems. In case it has slippedanyone’s mind, ecosystems include people, and people, along witheverything else, depend upon the health of their ecosystem forsurvival. The implications for all of us are not happy ones.

The report says that the way that we have obtained food, water,fibre and fuel over the last half century has dangerously degradedthe environment, and our population boom has created anunsustainable demand on natural resources. Farm lands are dying,fish stocks are down by 90 per cent since we began industrial fishing, andconversion of forests and brush lands has increased ourvulnerability to floods and other disasters. The list goes on.

One would think that any rational person or society faced with thethreats that we now face from our destructive practices would bekeen to make changes and secure the future, but that does notappear to be the case. Look at the resistance to the Kyoto Accord and the orchestrated denial about the effects of global warming.Watch developers continue to wipe out forests and pave over theland that we need to support us. Listen to the priests, mullahsand others rant against birth control and planned populations.

There are forces at work here that are powerful and whose shortterm interests run counter to the long term needs of society as awhole, which leads us to another item which crossed my desk, anessay on the spread of commercialized culture.

A piece by Gary Ruskin and Juliet Schor that was published inthe Multinational Monitor, discusses the growth of corporate powerand the subsequent rise of commercialism. They point out howcorporations are taking over government and creeping into everyfacet of our lives, commercializing public services, schools,entertainment, our whole culture, making it dependent on theiradvertising and support.

This is a development which may be goodfor corporate profit, but do we want a culture based on marketingand manipulation rather than on community well being? Theinterests that are commercializing us are the same ones blockingaction on our environmental problems. Environmentalresponsibility is a threat to profit.

Finally, a bulletin came in announcing the price of oil reaching$55 and predicting we may soon see it at $80. Oil, of course, isthe biggest commercial item of all. Over the years the oil baronshave managed to hook our society on oil more firmly than the worstheroin addict is attached to smack. Oil money owns many of thegovernments in the world. It has given us the mess in the MiddleEast, and is responsible for many of our environmental problems.

And that is the good news. We are running out ofoil, and the bad news is that we are not prepared for what happensnext. No amount of exploration will find enough oil to solve theproblem, and government subsidies to oil companies promising jobswill be money wasted on those who have too much already.

If we want a decent world for our grandchildren we have to cleanup the environment and put society on a cycle of sustainability.Doing so means breaking our dependence on oil before it sucks usdry and leaves us with nothing when it is gone. And, taking onboth of these problems requires reducing the power of corporationsand reversing the trend of commercialization.