The bit I've highlighted sums up succinctly what's wrong with the modern capitalist system, which emphasizes the individual and his/her personal needs over the needs of the collective. Who cares about tomorrow? I want, I want, I want!Jeff and Ada Qian both work as IT specialists for international firms in Shanghai. At home in their flat they and their 10-month-old son Tim enjoy many of the comforts of modern life. They have air conditioning, a car, a fridge, a washing machine and two televisions.
“I feel so far our life is good,” Jeff tells me. “But I think people always have ambitions, you always want to have more. If I have more money I want to have a better car, a bigger apartment.”
Today perhaps one-third of China’s 1.4 billion people live like this, and many of the rest aspire to.
“I think many of China's people would like a lifestyle like us," says Ada.
Here we have an obviously prosperous couple who still want more, when there is only so much to go round. When are we going to get a social and political system that encourages people to use less, not consume more? Answer: only when the various crises that are likely to kick in over the next couple of decades really hurt, when people are affected personally. The recent financial meltdown should have been a wake-up call, but already we're almost back to business as usual, particularly for the wbankers and others at the top of the greasy pole of acquisition and accumulation who caused the problem in the first place. So we're poorly placed to withstand the next crisis when it comes along. What will that be? Well, my bet is that degradation of the global environment, which has been increasing rapidly in recent years [destruction of forests, rapacious extraction of minerals and other raw materials, etc.] is going to start having a big effect on people's lives fairly soon. You can't expect finite resources to last for ever, but we behave as if we do. And the environmental crunch, when it comes, will make the credit crunch seem like a minor blip.
And what about the population crunch, when that comes? It is an iron law of ecology that the population of a species cannot exceed the carrying capacity of the environment it finds itself in. We as a species are clever enough to be able to postpone the inevitability of an ultimate population crash, but not clever enough to see that we cannot do so indefinitely. Drastic action is needed NOW on all fronts. The human race is in deep shit, and those of us at the top of the tree must drastically downsize our lifestyles, not encourage others to climb to our level. Unfortunately, I don't expect anyone to follow this advice until we can actually see the precipice ahead, by which time it will be too late to find out that the brakes don't work.
lofuji
