On social media recently a man's post went viral because he had expended a few bucks, a few litres of petrol and a little time in buying two live turtles from a food market where they were on sale for soup-making, and had driven them to the sea, releasing them back to the wild. So everyone's a winner, right? The fisherman who caught the turtles was paid by the market stall, who then got paid by the buyer, who felt fulfilled because he had saved the turtles from certain death. The turtles won out too.
The reality of the turtle story is that not everyone is a winner. Only two turtles were saved out of the thousands caught each year, to say nothing of all the illegal by-catch in fishing worldwide, the illegal trawling, dragnets and other harm to marine life. And why does this animal life - on the land, in the sea or in the air - have to suffer? To feed mankind is only a small part of the answer. But the real answer is to make money for big businesses and corporations. This is where money is god! Where nothing on this planet, no life form from humans down to the tiniest plankton or seed, is safe from the money-grabbing tentacles of those who do not see beyond the need to become rich.
Love of money leads to climate change
Why is a love of money connected to climate change? Because of greed. Yes, the world population needs houses and jobs and food and heating. But the desecration going on throughout the world, especially in the areas of sacred wilderness, has nothing to do with feeding the starving millions, the dispossessed, the poverty-stricken, but has everything to do with feeding the greed and consumerism of rich countries and their rich inhabitants, nearly all of them in the western world.
For those of us who aren’t short of a pound or two it is easy to throw last year’s carpet or sofa on the scrapheap, to throw out three-quarters of the Christmas turkey because we’re bored with it, to leave the lights and heating on day and night. “We can afford it, so why not?” The why not is because someone somewhere across the earth is paying for such profligacy. Do you ever ask yourself why are things so cheap? Why a new tee shirt is only £1 or why a chicken for roasting is only £2, or kilo of shrimps is only £2.50? It is not – emphatically not – because the retailer has foregone his profit. It is because someone at the very bottom of the supply chain has had to pay the price. It may be the chickens reared in soul-searingly atrocious conditions; it may be the child slaves forced to peel shrimp, or the wage-slaves forced to make clothes under barbaric conditions. Whoever it is has suffered because of the avarice amongst suppliers whose only god is money. We strengthen that every time we opt for the cheapest we can buy.
Of course there are millions of people who can’t afford anything better than the very cheapest, whether it’s food or clothes, and this plea is not aimed at them. It is aimed at those who can afford to pay the premium that ensures people, animals and the environment do not suffer because money is their god. It is the comfortably off who have caused climate change, not the poor.
The interconnection of all life
Dr Jane Goodall – as have many scientists and philosophers before her – has emphasised the interconnectedness of all life, and that is what we fail to appreciate when we are wasteful and extravagant. The unused food you discard, the new dress you chucked without ever wearing, the mobile phone you just put in the trash, does not cost you – your wallet soon tops up again – but it costs the environment, the natural world, whether it’s the seals killed to protect the salmon farms, the oceanic inhabitants polluted by chemicals or plastic debris, or the forests razed to grow palm oil. And it is so easy to agree with the cry of, “But the economy must grow! We must provide more jobs.” Mammon speaking here!
No-one wants to sacrifice one iota of their comfortable lifestyles, their ability to have (a euphemism for ‘waste) everything they set their minds on. Climate change is the result. Climate change is here to stay. We’re not here to stay unless we stop worshipping money and all it brings us; and start considering a more frugal, conservative lifestyle that extends some hope of life and quality of existence to the rest of the planet’s occupants.
Everything you demand helps to degrade the planetary existence
Do you want an airport close by or one with an extra runway to make travelling simpler? That is your god. Do you want more roads across the countryside to make your journey easier. That is your god. Do you want everything plastic-based, including toilet wipes, to be one-use only so that, on discard, it can sit in landfill or in the oceans for hundreds of years? That is your god. Your god is money. Think about it.
Remember the film, The Devil wears Prada? That wasn’t the story of a she-devil boss in her couture clothes. It was the story of how greed (for promotion, for money, for the good life) leading to unethical behaviour, is the devil’s ploy. It is not money that is the root of all evil, it is ‘the love of money that is the root of all evil’. Thousands of people have woken up to this, and governments are just beginning to wake up to the need for a change in mind-set. Now we need to convince the rest of the world.
