Carol Goar illustrates Canadians’ penchant for wanting to live a more sustainable lifestyle without making any significant changes. NIMBYism, consumerism and habitual behaviour are among the hurdles that need to be crossed. Without dismissing government’s role and big carbon’s influence, as long as people keep driving to the store to buy what they want but don’t necessarily need, Goar asserts that this behaviour and the attitudes underlying them, let government off the hook. I think she’s got a point, but that there is more to the story.

[quote]Just Fair-Weather Friends of the Environment

“As long as it isn’t expensive, noisy, inconvenient, uncomfortable or labour-intensive, we’re eager to save the environment.

Little wonder our greenhouse gas emissions keep climbing. Little wonder Canada produces more municipal waste per person than any other country. Little wonder we rank among the world’s top consumers of fossil fuels. (The oil-rich Gulf states are worse.)

Our 20-year quest to preserve the ecosystem – without changing our lifestyle – has led to a succession of unrealistic plans, missed targets and ineffectual initiatives…

It is possible to get along without central air conditioning, a leaf blower, a snow blower, an espresso maker, a plasma TV, a winter vacation abroad, apples from South Africa and avocados from the Caribbean. People managed for generations.“[/quote]

First , we should also acknowledge that our government, and residents, won’t solve the problem alone. True, many of us are energy hogs, but it’s a global problem which will require co-ordinated, co-operative efforts across borders. We could be setting an example while doing our “small” part (I think Canada accounts for about 2% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions).

Second, not all people living in Canada have the same personal footprints. There is a class issue here which is often not acknowledged. People living with limited means do not participate in the consumer culture in the same way as those in the top 10% wage bracket. While we’re all supposed to want things we don’t need, not everyone can actually go out and buy those things.

This is all to say that, unfortunately, our economic system, by its very nature, does not lend itself to “reducing” or “reusing” even as many have always had to do so in order to survive. It is a system that requires expansion, growth and private profits. Huge wealth is amassed for a very small minority whose influence is well beyond its numbers. It is a system that passes off the real costs of doing business (like cleaning up their messes) to the public purse while at the same time reducing corporate taxes in order to be “competitive”. So the public pays twice. 

Even as the world economy is going through a huge contraction – caused by a combination of the “growth/recession cycles” of capitalism, greedy deregulation, rapacious fraud and raiding of the public treasuries – the mainstream public discourse, with very few exceptions, unimaginatively remains limited to thinking “inside the box”.  

The same people who’ve gotten us into the mess are now entrusted to tinker around the edges while at the same time  preparing their “mitigation strategic plans” so that they can  profit from the destructive changes expected to come from climate change. Not all that unlike war where cities can be levelled in order to be rebuilt. 

But tinkering will not do. Climate change is perhaps the scariest of big-picture prospects in the long run (it used to be the threat of nuclear world war), but most of the people in the world have been paying a very high price all along for policies which exploit the majority for the sake of the few. Unless there’s a way to get alternatives on the table, the long-range future looks quite grim.

Edited to add: July 12 – Sanjay Khanna says it better than me in this piece: From Climate Science to Climate Justice: Climate Change a Symptom of Man’s Inhumanity to Man

Gary Shaul

Gary Shaul is a life-long Torontonian and retired Ontario civil servant. He's been involved with a number of issues over the past 45 years including trade unionism, proportional representation, Indigenous...