Out of sight, out of mind: we may be up in arms about keeping our immediate environment clean and sustainable, but our lifestyle is exporting our eco-damage footprint overseas. Research from Sydney University has shown “the link between the gadget, food and resources supply chains and global extinctions.”
As much as a third of global species threats are due to global trade … compared to a pre-globalised world, where many species threats were localized …
In essence, … advanced economies … have mostly exported environmental destruction to countries that supply them with agricultural products, resource commodities, or manufactured goods.
This is hardly surprising, were we willing to stop and think. How much rubbish do we throw out each day? How much stuff do we buy and bring home every week? What proportion of that is 'need' versus 'want' versus 'throwaway' (jeans-print pyjama pants - really)? Do we really need to “upgrade” our phone again? How many babies are we producing; babies who are likely to consume even more per person than we are today?
But of course it is just easier to continue on as we have been doing. Someone else will fix it...
Read the full article on The Register.
