The climbing hydrangea has yet to shed its summer leaves and, already, the green shoots of spring are bursting forth. On some of these winter mornings the dawn chorus sounds as boisterous as it was in June. Weekenders are strolling around the Wild Atlantic Way in T-shirts because the weather is so gorgeously balmy for November. What’s not to like?
All of it. The winter solstice is next month and the mercury has been hitting 30 degrees in Spain. Mother Nature is playing tricks with us, luring us with uncustomary benign weather into laissez-faire contentment. From Ireland’s vantage point, melting ice caps, drought, famine, wild fires, tornadoes, cracking river beds and sand storms are the dangerous exotica of distant lands. In ours, other than gustier winds and occasional flooding, climate change doesn’t seem all that bad. It’s a false sense of security that will prove to be our ruination.
This moment in evolution has a chilling resonance with the standard scene in blockbuster disaster movies when the sounds of children happily playing precede the birds’ sudden departure from the skies, followed by the cataclysmic boom. In Sharm El-Sheikh, an Egyptian holiday resort jam-packed with multinational chain hotels, world leaders are making virtuous speeches about saving the planet from extinction. Every aspect of the race against oblivion – from carbon credits and mitigation budgets to geoengineering experiments that involve shooting sulphate aerosols into the sky – is on the agenda. Every aspect, that is, except the one elephantine culprit whose fingerprints are all over the crime scene. Its name is insatiable capitalism.
By now it is accepted that the western world’s corporate greed has denuded underprivileged countries of their natural resources, tearing out their forests, minerals and animal hides and laying those lands to waste. We should not fool ourselves that guilty consciences in Wall Street boardrooms have prompted this belated awakening. More likely it is the growth in human migration to escape the hazards of climate chaos that has forced the acknowledgment. Go Green is the latest fashion in the sales pitch.
In Sharm El-Sheikh there has been much discussion about how so-called developed countries can help less affluent countries to reach their standard of living without further scorching Earth. The presumption that the West’s lifestyle is the aspirational one goes virtually unchallenged. This is the same western world where for-profit celebrity, obscene personal wealth and ostentatious consumerism are glorified.
Reusable coffee cups and bamboo toothbrushes are all commendable but their impact on protecting biodiversity is minuscule as long as we keep buying into the capitalist dream of rich and famous
Capitalism is inherently bad for the environment because its survival principle is to part people from their money, often by creating artificial and grotesque needs and gargantuan demands on the environment. Who in their sane senses thinks it necessary to spend the equivalent of a family’s annual grocery bill on a handbag? What possesses someone to buy a bottle of designer perfume for a newborn baby? (Yes, it is a thing.)
Reusable coffee cups, biodegradable takeaway cartons and bamboo toothbrushes are all commendable but their impact on protecting biodiversity is minuscule as long as we keep buying into the capitalist dream of rich and famous. Rewilding the rockery in the back garden will not save a world stupefied with desire for unnecessary baubles.
Politicians don’t like talking about the cause and effect of capitalism on the climate because the globalist credo is that economic growth trumps all else, even the survival of our species. Global economic crashes and a lethal pandemic that slowed the rat race, making the air breathable again, have failed to change the mindset that greed is not just good; it’s best. While world leaders are enthusiastically stating their green credentials in Egypt, the markets are trembling at the sight of big-tech behemoths scaling back their operations. For Ireland, contraction by the likes of Meta and Twitter will have repercussions for their workforces and, as we are constantly reminded, for the exchequer. These companies have been manna from heaven for the Irish economy and those at risk of losing their jobs are now plunged into worry as we approach Christmas.
The State is spending €3 billion to connect broadband to every nook and cranny of the country. That is more than twice the State budget for planting trees
But there is a less savoury side to these corporations. They are powerhouses for digital consumerism that is accelerating the drain on energy resources. Data centres gobble up electricity but even more insidious is the culture that tech companies foster. Online shopping and banking, gaming, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, PayPal, Stripe and their cohorts are putting enormous strains on resources by the need to constantly recharge devices. Every night, when the house lights go out on the globe, it lights up with millions of charging lights. So ingrained has technology become in our culture that, in some offices, bosses issue instructions by email to staff members sitting at desks in the same room as them. Because we have fallen captive to technology to transact business and our social lives, the State is spending €3 billion to connect broadband to every nook and cranny of the country. That is more than twice the State budget for planting trees. It was supposed to help save the planet by mitigating the need for typewriter paper. Instead, it has become a more harmful monster.
The West’s capitalist culture deifies wealthy consumers who splurge on gin-palace yachts, jets, super cars, private islands and multiple homes. Their lifestyles are the exact opposite to the gospel being preached to humankind – ditch the car and take the train, up cycle your table and chairs, grow your own vegetables, take shorter showers and wear second-hand clothes. When did you last see a billionaire on a bus or browsing preloved suits in a charity shop? We are told that our average individual emissions should not exceed two tonnes of carbon dioxide per year if we are to limit calamitous global warming. Each of the 1 per cent richest people in the world accounts for 70 tonnes of the stuff annually.
To have any chance of saving ourselves, our ecosystems and our planet, the celebration of capitalist privilege must become unacceptable. The clock is ticking. Tipping points are looming on the road to extinction. It is past time we stopped and smelt the roses. If we continue to live by the motto of shop till you drop, it will prove a self-fulfilling prophecy.
