Con sumerism - Village Magazine

7 0 December - January 2017

ENVIRONMENT

Con

sumerism

Consumerism is sacred,

nature dispensable

by George Monbiot

December - January 2017 7 1

HE WORLD’S largest land animal, the

biggest fish, the bird with the great

est wingspan, the largest primate: all

are sliding towards extinction at

astounding speed. If we will not pro-

tect such magnificent species, what are we

prepared to do?

In just seven years, 30% of Africa’s savannah

elephants have been wiped out. The other Afri

can sub-species, the forest elephant, has

crashed by more than 60% since 2002. Perhaps

this month’s resolution to ban domestic sales of

elephant tusks will make a difference, but gov

ernments have done so little to restrain the

international trade that illegal ivory and other

wildlife parts are still sold on the surface web,

rather than the dark web.

In August the whale shark was classified as

endangered. Some are still hunted deliberately

for their meat and fins, and it seems that the

revolting practice of live finning – slicing them

off then dumping the shark overboard to die

slowly – continues. Most are killed as bycatch in

nets used to catch other species, especially

tuna. Some fishing boats use whale sharks as

markers (tuna tend to congregate beneath large

objects), and deliberately cast their nets around

them.

Their decline – whale shark numbers have

halved or worse in 75 years – reflects the global

loss of ocean life. Since 1996, the fish catch has

fallen by one million tonnes a year, as stocks are

exhausted. Sieving the seas for what remains,

fishing fleets will trigger the collapse of entire

ecosystems.

Fishing also accounts for what has happened

to the bird with the largest wingspan, the wan

dering albatross, whose population has fallen

by around 30% in 11 years. Again, the tuna fish-

ery is the principal threat, in this case through

the use of baited longlines. The albatrosses dive

for the bait, get hooked and drown. Another

cause is their junkfood diet: the plastic they eat

then feed to their chicks through regurgitation.

The photographs taken by Chris Jordan on

Midway atoll, of the albatross corpses rotting

away to reveal the rubbish they contain, are a

synopsis of our treatment of the living world.

However far we travel, our impacts precede us.

In September the status of the eastern gorilla,

the world’s largest primate, was changed from

endangered to critically endangered: it has

declined by 70% in 20 years. Its habitat, in cen-

tral Africa, has been ripped apart by logging,

mining and farming, and the gorillas are hunted

for meat. As they share 98% of our DNA, this is

not far from cannibalism. All the great apes are

now either endangered or critically endangered,

in the case of orangutans largely as a result of

producing palm oil. What does it say about us,

that we are prepared to drive our closest rela-

tives towards extinction?

The great acceleration towards a bare grey

world is also reflected in the most recent State

of Nature report, which shows that more than

10% of the remaining species in the UK are now

threatened with extinction. In August we learnt

that one tenth of the world’s wild places, forests,

savannahs and other lands in which human

impacts are not obvious, have been lost – dewil-

ded – over the past 25 years. The trajectory

suggests that there could be almost nowhere left

by the end of the century.

These should be among the central issues of

our age. Yet we treat these losses as sad but

peripheral, though we commission them through

the things we buy. Elephants, rhinos, lions, polar

bears, the great sharks, turtles, condors,

whales, rainforests, wetlands, coral reefs: they

are all the bycatch of consumerism. We assert

both the right to consume – whatever we want,

however we want – and the right to forget the

consequences.

Flying to Bratislava or Bermuda for a stag

weekend, shopping trips to New York, driving

our gas guzzlers 300 metres to school, buying

jetskis, leaf blowers and patio heaters, furnish

ing our homes with rare wood, eating tuna,

prawns and salmon without a thought of how

they were produced: these ephemeral satisfac-

tions, to judge by the reactions when you

question them, occupy a sacred and inviolable

space. The wonders of the living world, by con

trast, are dispensable.

People who would never dream of killing an

albatross or a whale shark are prepared to let

others do so on their behalf, so that they may eat

whatever fish they fancy. People who could not

bring themselves to gut a chicken are happy to

commission the disposal of entire ecosystems.

The act of not seeing is sanctioned and normal

ised, while attempts to explain the consequences

are treated as abnormal and impertinent. On the

guardian’s website, you can read about the

global collapse of tuna populations, then, in a

recipe published the following day, learn how to

prepare a tuna salad, without a word about the

implications.

Such cultural norms, positioning us as con-

sumers first and moral beings either second or

not at all, grant the disposal of the living planet

its social licence. They allow us to compartmen

talise, to be conscious of the issues when there

is little that we can do about them, and to forget

them at the moment when we have the capacity

to act (or to refrain from acting). This is the safe

space we establish for consumerism.

The costs cannot be computed in financial

terms. There is no price that can capture the awe

aroused by a whale shark, the deep being of an

elephant herd, the way in which your heart soars

with the albatross as it mounts a column of air;

the gorilla’s fathomless gaze. The albatross

hangs around our necks with a weight that

defies calculation.

Is this how we choose to be remembered? We

were here; it is true that we existed: you can see

it in the pulse of extinction. Are we to use our gift

of life to snuff out other lifeforms? What will you

leave behind, except your contribution to the

Pacific garbage patch?

I believe we can do better, that we can position

ourselves as just one participant in a world of

wonders, blessed and cursed with higher con-

sciousness, but using that capacity to embed

ourselves within its limits.

We cannot wait for governments or schools or

the media to deliver a new environmental ethics.

Join the groups trying to defend the living planet,

learn about the consequences of what you do,

demand, from friends, from parents, from your-

self, a better way of engaging with the world. By

living lightly we enrich our lives.

This article first appeared in the guardian

www.monbiot.com

Con

sumerism

Consumerism is sacred,

nature dispensable

by George Monbiot

One tenth of the world’s wild places, forests,

savannahs have been lost – dewilded – over

the past 25 years. This should be among the

central issues of our age

Join the groups trying

to defend the living

planet, learn about the

consequences of what you

do, demand a better way of

engaging with the world

Albatross corpse revealing rubbish