Survival Means Immediate Change.

Friends, the APEC Summit has come and gone. The 21 countries involved did their billion dollar trade deals and signed onto some vague commitment to have a look at greenhouse gases. Wow!

There is a real sense of denial in the world today. Capitalist thinking (Profit First - Ignore the environmental Cost) has not yet accepted that the world cannot continue on its current course. People, in the main, have not accepted that the way we live is unsustainable, that their materialism, which the Capitalist Kings have carefully nurtured, is destroying our physical world and is also creating huge, divisive inequality plus a moral vacuum across the world.

The most ironic thing I heard during the Summit was the Chinese argument that we can't fully implement the reduction in gas emissions because we're trying to lift our poor out of poverty. This is an absurd proposition. The ones making the money out of industrialization are not the poor but the entrepreneurs. Peasant farmers in China are being thrown off their land without compensation to build factories and high rise apartments!

The other ridiculous argument used to justify the continuance of the rapacious, polluting Capitalist/Industrialist Juggernaut is the one promoted by both America, Australia and others. It's the 'we don't want to lose any jobs' mantra, a favorite among politicians. The rationale is that we can't change the economic system that is destroying our world because some people might have to move to other occupations. The logic of that escapes me completely.

The solution, I feel, involves completely rejecting materialism and returning to a much more simple, decentralized, healthy, semi-rural lifestyle, one based upon sustainability. There could be a series of country towns created surrounded by farms which produce all the food required for local consumption as well as wine. Each town could have communal land which would allow those who live in town and provide specialized services like health care, etc, to grow some food, get their hands deep in the soil, get close to nature. There would be community centers where the arts would be taught, where artistic talents could be developed, where people could discuss and debate things like philosophy, psychology, spirituality, learn hobbies, etc. Sounds like Utopia, eh?

Products requiring factory or laboratory technology could be undertaken, not by greedy capitalists, but by Government run enterprises where exacting standards were applied to ensure no pollution or negative carcinogen-inducing effects were created.

My thoughts are still evolving as to further solutions to the current catastrophe but surely doing nothing or applying band aid measures is no solution at all!

What do you think?