The citizen and the environment

UNESCO Courier, Nov, 1991 by Claude Villeneuve

The scientific community today produces a flow of reports, hypotheses and observations which show that our constant assaults on the environment are jeopardizing the world's potential for development. It is even said that the survival of the human race is threatened. Faced with these planetary problems, it is hard for the ordinary citizen not to feel in the presence of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

We are starting to feel the effects of the by-products of the very same technologies that have enabled us to increase our lifespan and improve our quality of life. Both the causes and the victims of environmental degradation, we are learning with amazement that we live in an increasingly complex and fragile world.

The transformations we have imposed on the biosphere are so far-reaching that immediate action must be taken to prevent their catastrophic effects from posing insoluble problems for the next generation. What can ordinary people do in the course of their daily lives to help solve these problems instead of making matters worse?

WHAT IS SUSTAINABLE

DEVELOPMENT?

Many environmental problems are becoming increasingly global in scale, transcending frontiers and national jurisdictions and eluding the responsibility of individuals and nations.

Today's technologies are far more advanced than those of a few decades ago, but we are getting dangerously close to the limits of technological efficiency. Greater and greater efforts are required to make relatively insignificant progress, both in the production of goods and in the fight against pollution.

Furthermore, world population is rapidly increasing, and under the influence of the mass media consumer expectations are getting much higher. Although the resources of the biosphere still have considerable potential for development, the limits of its productivity will be reached in the foreseeable future.

Sustainble development is based on responsible management of resources so that the interests of future generations are protected while current needs are met. This is a stimulating challenge both for individuals and communities and it must be accepted immediately, for the longer the necessary decisions are put off, the harder they become.

BUILT-IN OBSOLESCENCE

The spectacular increase in industrial production that followed the Second World War improved living conditions around the world but also whetted appetites for material goods of all kinds. Industry provided a mass market with manufactured products at affordable prices. More and more goods were turned out at lower and lower prices, creating jobs and enabling people to buy more. Supply encouraged demand.

This situation could not last for ever. To sustain demand, products had obsolescence built into them. Advertising and marketing techniques that associated such goods with an image of happiness proved exceptionally successful. Unfortunately, however, accumulation of possessions does not guarantee contentment, nor is it an end in itself.

On the other hand, the production of goods that are not intended to last is a waste of energy and natural resources, and creates volumes of waste that are harmful to the environment. Every American citizen, for example, throws away a ton of domestic garbage each year. In highly developed consumer societies, this refuse, which consists mainly of useless packaging, constitutes one of today's most critical environmental problems.

It is perhaps in the handling of domestic waste that the individual can be most effective in the struggle against environmental degradation. By choosing products that are either less packaged or less polluting, he or she can influence the attitudes of industry.

Cars are among the most important of the ephemeral products of the consumer society, and many environmental problems are linked to their excessive production and use. In North America, for example, it is estimated that they account for nearly 40 per cent of total energy consumption. Using the car less is one of the first suggestions to make to the citizen to reduce pressure on the environment.

World population is currently growing at the rate of 170 persons a minute, the equivalent of the population of Canada every three months. Environmentalists are alarmed by their increase, and with good reason.

First of all there is an ethical obligation to feed, clothe and house all these new citizens of the world. At present we do this rather badly, because of inequalities in the distribution of natural resources. Second, everyone in the planetary village wants to enjoy the benefits of the consumer societies of the industrialized world. Unfortunately, in the present state of ecological knowledge, high North American and European levels of consumption of natural resources do not seem accessible to everyone in the world.

Many writers, including the French agronomist Rene Dumont, point out that for all the planet to consume energy at North American rates, we should have to increase oil production threefold, natural gas production sevenfold, and coal output tenfold, as well as multiplying the current number of nuclear power plants by sixty. This prospect, which would cause us to revise estimates of how long reserves of fossil fuels will last, is terrifying from an environmental point of view. The pollution caused by the production and use of the necessary energy resources would increase amounts of acid rain, greenhouse gases and nuclear wastes to intolerable levels.