Miles Masterson: Do the greens ever win?
Against the might of corporate political and economic power, is environmentalism fighting a losing battle?
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I’ve been writing and researching a few topics related to the environment recently and I am continually astounded by the capitalist greed machine that - for the most part - couldn’t seem to care a toss about the world we live in.
The bottom line always seems to trump eco concerns, and though there is a lot of lip service paid to conservation and ‘going green’ by corporations and governments these days, I still think most of it is manure.
It's not just bad in the western world or China, many developing nations are responsible too (although in the grand scheme of things their record of pollution is nothing like that of the west). I’ve visited Indonesia on surf trips a number of times for example and spent a bit of time on layovers in other South East Asian cities. I’ve always been gobsmacked by their exploitation of their national resources, environmental ignorance and rampant polluting habits.
Sure, there is a cultural imperative and one should not be quick to judge the rural uneducated. Indeed, whilst it's always amazed me that some people are happy to live surrounded by their own litter, excrement and squalor and do nothing about it for themselves, we can’t judge the developing world's poor at all (especially when an Indonesian farmer is a lot less responsible for the destruction of the natural environment than any average person living in the west). We should rather question why their governments don’t do more. Is it corruption, cronyism or do they just not care? But in the end, it always comes down to economics and the corporate mindset that conservation minded businesses are less profitable.
My homeland, the mostly poverty-stricken South Africa, is pretty similar in many ways. In fact, whilst doing some preliminary research for a story on a fragile, vulnerable pristine environment on the South African west coast involving money-hungry venture capitalists, black empowerment interests and the government, somebody recently asked me the question: do the conservationists ever win?
To be honest, I don’t know. We could all probably cite examples of small victories we are aware of or major publicity (Oscar, anyone?), but it really got me thinking that though there might be the occasional battle being won, what about the war?
A couple of years back, I wrote a feature on overfishing for Men's Health Best Life magazine and, quite frankly, it depressed the hell out of me. For all the efforts of conservationists and claims of awareness in the fishing industry, restaurants and pretence of policing it from the authorities in South Africa, it seems that little real change is taking place and the stark reality is our waters may well become devoid of fish in the near future.
It seems to be the same the world over; coastal housing developments, golf courses, mining ventures and pollution; the exploitation of our oceans, rivers, wetlands, beaches; the pillaging of natural resources and wilderness areas. It all continues unabated, especially when there is a profit incentive, corrupt official due process and public apathy.
Opposing a development or polluter of any kind in any realm is a major challenge for everyday people. Most of whom are poorly funded, lack the time to focus on it because they need to make a living (meaning they are at best fractured and unorganised) or possibly even too militant and zealous for their own good or that of their cause.
Thankfully, there are those who are committed, rational, organised and have some access to funding to oppose and block these environmental fiddlers. What they usually lack is support and awareness, which is where you and I come in. That’s why I try to follow one or two 'eco' stories a year such as overfishing and poaching, shark conservation ocean acidification and marine plastic pollution to name but a few.
Sure these articles earn me some money - I have to feed the brood - but another motivator though is to highlight these causes and get their stories out there so that the general public can get involved and try to facilitate change through the sheer force of numbers and noise. I’ve also taken to joining organisations and spreading nuggets of information I’ve come across on Twitter, Facebook, etc to do my bit.
The sad truth though - despite all efforts - is that we are all up against it and the financial and legal might of large corporations and dodgy government officials is often overwhelming. So the answer to my friend’s question is more often than not is 'no'.
At least for the time being, although there are promising signs here and there. You can read about one of these in an upcoming issue of HUCK in my article on marine plastic pollution.
Nevertheless, the enemy is powerful, devious and growing stronger every day. But does that mean we should all just give up and do nothing and accept the inevitable, as we watch nature being destroyed and the corporates soak up the all the profits at Mother Earth’s expense?
I hope not. I guess the more pertinent question is: what are you doing to help the greens win?
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Do the greens ever win? (text) by Miles Masterson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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