Micheal Callaghan
Staff Writer
This Saturday is Global Buy Nothing Day, a day when we are asked to reflect on our unsustainable patterns of consumption. Groups around the world, including Ireland, are organising a series of events and demonstrations to mark Buy Nothing Day. Many of the items that we buy on a daily basis, from our food to our clothes to household items have travelled thousands of miles, across various stages of the production cycle, using large quantities of precious fossil energy and water to reach their final destinations. Many of these items are processed in large industrial plants in the developing world where largely profitable multinationals take advantage of some of the world’s poorest people and subject them to inhumane working conditions and extremely low wages – all in the name of global consumerism, which largely benefits only a minority of the world’s population, ie the developed world and those in the developing world who have managed to reach the top of the wealth ladder. Furthermore, many of these products are processed in parts of the world with very few or even no environmental protection standards, or by companies who can easily flout such legislation. Of course we don’t see or hear about this in the developed world, as this image wouldn’t exactly meet best marketing practices.
We are often told by economists and governments that in order for our economies to grow we must spend more and thereby add to the wealth of many of these companies and a trading system that perpetuates inequality and furthers the cause of environmental destruction and ecological mayhem. We have been locked into a global economic and financial system that must either grow or fail, and if it can’t grow the consequences are dire, both economically and socially for the vast majority of people. We have seen much suffering already in the last couple of years. But what if there existed limits to growth? What if we have overshot our finite plant’s capacity to grow and to dump out the by – products of such growth into its delicate eco system? What if the days of prolonged economic growth and consumption are coming to an involuntary end? This would surely then indicate that an economic system based on economic growth is no longer an appropriate means of structuring our society.
The aim of buy nothing day is not to create hostility or put people out of jobs. Rather its aim is to highlight the fact that much of what we take for granted, including our job security and social structures, is dependent on this growth fuelled globalised system. However, the problem with this is that many aspects of this system, such as the multinational companies and supermarkets have very little in built resilience or even loyalty to their local communities, so when times get rough they close their doors – this has already been seen throughout Ireland in the last few years with thousands of jobs having been lost in large multinational employers such as Dell, in Limerick. Global Buy Nothing Day aims to encourage people to support local businesses and enterprises that have a vested interest in their locality. It aims to highlight the need to re create a localised, resilient web of local businesses, enterprises and knowledge that can thrive in the transition to a lower energy future. It is inevitable that in the future we will need to produce more of our own food and all other goods such as clothes and construction materials closer to home.
It was not that long ago that our local communities in Ireland were largely self reliant and much of the knowledge that existed still remains. The challenge however will be to recognise the need to recreate this sense of resilience and re discover the vast amounts of knowledge and skill that has been lost in the maddening pursuit of consumerism and globalisation. It will be this knowledge and skill that will make the difference between social cohesion and social breakdown in the great transition period that we are entering. Undoubtedly this will involve a re – thinking of much of what we have come to take for granted in recent times and it will require us to re assess our own future plans and life paths and reconfigure them to fit with the new era that we are entering. Why should we try and fix the problems caused by run – away growth by applying the same old tried and tested means as ‘solutions’?
