Wanton consumerism and saving ourselves

Save ourselves? Paradigm shift needed
Letter from Zhuang WenXiong, Straits Times Forum 27 Dec 07;

I REFER to Mr Eugene Tay Tse Chuan's letter, 'To save ourselves, we must get back to nature' (ST, Dec 25). Mr Tay mentions several pertinent points I would like to expound on.

Joseph Tainter, in his seminal book The Collapse Of Complex Societies, argues that capitalism is unsustainable as it requires both whole economies and individual components (for instance, companies) to grow constantly on a three-month basis, resulting in a philosophy of wanton consumerism which encourages the purchase of an increasing number of goods and services in order to sustain economic growth.

Current rates of resource extraction may not be capable of keeping up, especially with the nascent development of resource-hungry behemoths like China and India - witness the increasing inflationary pressures on food and oil prices worldwide. Competition for dwindling resources may even result in new outbreaks of war and civil strife.

This is notwithstanding flawed methods of measuring wealth, such as GNP, which do not take into account potential costs like pollution or climate change. This leads to the myopic fixation on short-term revenue that Mr Tay rightly points out.

In short, a fundamental paradigm shift, a drastic change to the foundations on which world society is built, will be required. A simple exhortation to 'return to nature' which does not take into account geopolitical realities and inherent resistance to change will not do the trick.

In the meantime, we as consumers can do our part by, for instance, supporting environment-friendly companies and reducing consumption of superfluous goods and services.

Help improve, not just sustain, our living environment
Letter from Goh Si Guim, Straits Times Forum 27 Dec 07;

I REFER to the letter, 'To save ourselves, we must get back to nature' by Mr Eugene Tay Tse Chuan.

I agree that exploitation of natural resources anywhere on the face of the planet is never benign nor a pretty sight. We have gone overboard in sustaining the existence of the human race.

Development of any kind is reformatting the natural appearance to our needs and liking. These activities involve rearranging components of nature into unnatural orientations and compositions. By doing so, we layer one thing over another; we destroy as we encroach.

A whole host of unquantifiable factors changed, the consequence of which cannot be readily ascertained. Past experiences intuitively tell us that they are not necessarily good. The only good derived from all these are that we have what we wanted. The other matters are cast aside, out of our mind and out of sight. Often, they are quickly forgotten.

At what point do we cross that line where the good we get out of what we do starts to diminish, to borrow a concept from economics. Going by emerging pictures, we have!

We do not have the option of back pedalling; going back to the Stone Age is not necessary. Putting back what we have taken out is not possible. Going forward through alternative means is the only viable option. We need to refocus and redirect our effort at 'diminishing our diminishing return'.

Put simply, improve the sustainability quotient of our living environment.

This should be the nature of our business from now on. Not only should the industries head in this direction, but the political leadership should also remodel itself to facilitate and complement. So should individuals.

The haggling in Kyoto and recently in Bali showed that there is a lack of collective leadership and willpower to making things better in our journey forward.

The human race has brought us into this conundrum and we have to find a way out of it. Nobody will be doing us that favour.