No Exit: Ecological Limits and Climate Change

Much of the Global consumer industry is controlled by a few, giant corporations. As long as this continues to happen, it seems likely that goods will be imported, exported, packaged, and transported globally, with a hugely negative impact on the environment. It is simply cheaper and easier for the companies involved. Refusal to buy into certain brands is obviously better than ignoring the problem, but goes little way to solve it, and without abstaining from consumerism altogether, is very hard to do.

Being self sufficient to some extent is the simplest, and most obvious way of combating globalization. Caroline Lucas, (Green Party Member of the European Parliament) suggests in ‘Green Alternatives to Globalization: A Manifesto’ that the way forward is localization of economies, and minimal global trade. This does not have to mean a move towards socialism, but simply a less aggressive, more localized capitalism. Britain, the West, and intrinsically, the entire world, seems to be embroiled in the system of buy and sell, controlled by corporations that seem unlikely to relinquish control. The ecological methods of the West require a complete overhaul, a radical change of society, in order to sustainable change the effect we are having on the environment. In the current economic and political climate, one wonders how easy this would be. The chances of a political party putting forward a radical change of any kind purely to benefit the environment are slim. The chances of a party being voted in, if they did so, even slimmer.

Perhaps, therefore, the tools for change lie with the individual. Leading environmentalist George Monbiot, who runs the student activist community ‘People and Planet’ suggests an individual limit on carbon emissions, in a similar way to the Kyoto protocol, only on an individual basis. Maybe campaigning needs to be more responsible, not only advertising how to offset carbon emissions, but how to begin the reverse of globalization, and all its negative effects.

Campaign for a change of climate law:
http://www.thebigask.com/campaigns/climate/big_ask/march_about_climate.html

Student environmental activist community:
http://peopleandplanet.org/