The real story about the Ecological Crisis (Oversimplified version)
Let's first definite the term 'ecological crisis'. My personal definition of Ecological Crisis is a man-made crisis that results from improper planning and critical analysis on the distribution of ecological resources that causes an imbalance in the social, economic and environmental sector of the society.
For the general public, the ecological crisis is the combination of climate change, water, air and soil pollutions, premature death from environmental issues, plastics pollution, poverty, inequality of wealth, species extinction, excess deforestation, dying of both forest and aquatic habitats etc. The list can go on.
I think most of the people that live in wealthy countries regards the ecological crisis is just a side effect of our prosper golden civilisation era of human history, it is inevitable. If we have development and improvement of living standard, we 'must' therefore sacrifice the nature in someway somehow. That was also what I used to believe before I started my degree. And this is also what the society wants us to believe, some kind of environmental disruption is unavoidable. This is especially true when you are born in a wealthy country. Let me just quickly define what 'wealthy country' mean in this essay. If most of the people you see in the country have a roof on their head, can afford private cars, water on tap, more than enough food, obesity is a problem, have electricity most of the time and have internet access, you are wealthy enough for this essay.
Before we jump into the story, I have a confession to make. I am guilty all my life for the ecological crisis. I was born in Malaysia, I have a roof on top of my head, I never felt hungry, I have more than enough clothes to wear, I never walk to school, my parents always drive me to school, I have pocket money when I was studying, my family of six have three private cars at home, we fly sometimes for vacation, I study abroad without a scholarship, I have meat for almost every meal in my life, we eat out at least once a week, I have my own personal smartphone and laptop, we are able to afford private tuitions and extra curriculum activities such as learning an instrument or art class etc... the list goes on. And on a global scale, I am considered as the top 20% richest person. The bottom 40% of 7 billion people on earth live below $5.50 per day, per day! That is about RM 25. I just wanted to let you know that, you might be living a similar kind of life like mine or even more luxury and you are at least 20% richest person in the world. And let me tell you where your wealth might come from on a global scale.
(Please bear with me, these are all important for what we are going to dive in.)
You would then ask me, why are you telling me all these, why is inequality important for the ecological crisis? Unfortunately, the wealth at that the wealthy countries are enjoying now is built on scrapping on the wealth of the poor should have or the wealth share that the future generations are going to have. We are living in a high living standard dream that is not sustainable. This is especially applicable for big cooperation that has a global market and international companies. Of course, it is not true that ALL wealth that we are enjoying now is from scrapping from the poor. But the richer you are, the more luxury life that you are living, the higher possibility that you are supporting big cooperation like Amazon, Google and Nike (I am not saying that they are all bad cooperations) the higher possibility that you are supporting the scrapping of the poor and of the future.
Disclaimer: This is definitely oversimplifying the problem, but I just wanted to give the general public a nutshell of the strong relationship between ecological crisis, inequality and our wealthy lifestyle.
Let me take the example of company Nike. Nike is a sports brand company that had benefits much from globalisation and suffered in the sweatshop scandals in the 1970s until 1992. In the 70s, Nike has factories to make their product in poorer nations such as South Korea, Indonesia, Bangladesh. Nike pays very low wages to their worker and unethical working condition such as long hour working shifts etc, read here for more details. Benefiting from exploiting the poor, Nike sells their shoes to wealthy countries at a very high price, they used the profit they gain to sponsor athletes to promotes their brand and their sales continue to grow. And the evil loop continues. Not until 1991 where a big investigation happen and Nike is forced to compensate and change their business model. I will not go into details, you can search online about Nike's sustainable goal bla bla bla.
Another example is the recycling scheme of European Union countries. A lot of the EU countries regards themselves as the leaders in the recycling game. It is true that the recycling rate in EU countries has increased year after year and have reached a recycling rate around 30%. The truth is most of them got exported to developing countries mainly China before the ban in 2018. EU countries claimed that these developing countries have a cheaper recycling facility therefore exported their waste is much more economically viable than building their own recycling facility in their own land. The worst is yet to come, after the ban by China in 2018, a lot of the developed countries including Europe and Canada change their waste destination to other developing countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Philipines. This makes the tracking of illegal export of waste much harder to be investigated. From what I know now, there is not any sort of legal effort to stop this anyway especially when these developing countries are often still struggling politically and in corruption.
These are just two examples from thousands of companies or countries on how they exploit the poorer nations to make them become more and more wealthy. This is the real story of the ecological crisis in an oversimplified version. It is very complicated. It is our lifestyle that is killing our planet, killing the poor, killing the animals and causing forest and ocean to die.
Development that at the same time protect the environment, people and livelihood is possible. But it is definitely not the development system that we are using right now. We are going too fast, we are making investment solely on profits, not based on people and sustainability. Of course, there are efforts that are promoting a more ethical way of business but they are too small on a global scale. In the midst of all these, we are also struggling with the climate crisis. It is estimated that we have only another 10 years until 2030 to make drastic changes in our economic system before the impact of climate change becomes irreversible. This is especially targeting developed countries (US, EU, Canada, Australia etc) that have benefited much from carbon emission from the 1850s until the present time. This is urgent, we have so much to do but so little time.
You may be feeling very dishearted and guilty by now, please I beg you, do not stop there, change your lifestyle, turn your anger into momentum, demand change from your government, demand change from companies that we buy from. Sign petitions, support companies that practice ethical business model, know the sources of things that you buy, do your research, read books about environmental issues. Above all, pray, pray that God will help us in this crisis, pray for the conversion of those who have been scrapping the poor, pray for holy nations, pray that we will become more loving towards our brothers and sisters that are suffering because of our lifestyles.
Thanks for reading until the end, I have so much to say about this topic because the ecological crisis is not a science issue but a moral and justice issue. Christians should care about the ecological crisis because it will impact millions of vulnerable lives. They are humans, not numbers. I will try to write more and may God accept my work.
Pray for me and pray for our suffering world. Amen.
With prayer,
Jessica
@ Christ the King, Plymouth
7/12/2020
Comments
Post a Comment