Walkmans and burgers: the primal market

We would prefer to call it the merry-go-round. Our Argentinean environmentalist-philosopher friend, Miguel Grinberg, prefers to call it “the hamburgerisation of society”. It is an issue central to the global environmental concern—that is, of values and lifestyles that Mother Earth can support. But it is not an issue that the proposed biggest bash on Earth—the much-touted Earth Summit in Rio (June 1992)—is likely to touch even in passing, except, of course, in the vacuous words of the world’s heads of governments, most of whom are likely to attend.

Everybody is now in love with the world’s wonderful market system. We are all becoming global consumers—the richer we are, the more the world market brings goodies from different corners of the Earth. And, of course, to be rich we rip off our environment to produce goodies for others. But what does Ronald Reagan (US President), Margaret Thatcher (UK Prime Minister) and now Manmohan Singh’s (Indian finance minister) market economics do to the environment? Wouter Veening, a Dutch environmentalist friend of ours, has written a fascinating article on resource use and trade patterns caused by rich people’s lifestyles. “The most symbolic element of current Northern lifestyle seems to be the growing use of the Walkman,” he writes. “Apparently it satisfies a need to cut off the sounds of the environment and to be constantly exposed to the sounds of the hit parade industry. The Walkman is interesting because it is part of an ecologically devastating world trade pattern, which may be called the Japanese Connection.” The majority of Walkmans are manufactured by Japanese firms, which, of course, do not deliver them for free. When one walks, for example, through the streets of Vancouver where many people are wearing Walkmans, the Canadian mode of payment can be seen lying in the harbour, a big Japanese paper and pulp carrier. To finance the imports of Japanese products such as Walkmans, Canada is selling off its forests in the form of logs or pulp for the Japanese market, which is known for its voracious appetite for wood and wood products.

To pay for Japanese products, Australia is exporting growing amounts of uranium to Japan, because the latter is embarking upon a major nuclear energy programme. The reason behind this, believe it or not, is partly environmental. The Japanese want to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to save the world from global warming. Their reason is also partly strategic, to lessen dependence on Middle East oil. Uranium mining is very polluting and in Australia it takes place on or near the lands of aboriginal communities, leading to their disintegration. The irony is that energy-poor Japan needs this energy to supply goodies to those who can pay for them in the rest of the world. The needs, of course, are determined by the market. If you can sell something, Thatcher would have us believe, it must be needed.

Veening also tells us how the growing use of cars in the industrialised world is vastly increasing the trade in steel, aluminium and oil. Amazonia is a major supplier to the world market of iron ore for making steel and of bauxite and primary aluminium. Mind you, we too rip out the forests of eastern India and pauperise our tribals to sell iron ore to Japan. But let us get back to Amazonia, where, as Veening tells us, mines and other infrastructure are cut out in the rainforest. Enormous hydropower stations are being built to process the ore, which are flooding tribal territories and displacing people and nature to supply the energy which ends up in the form of cars. But, of course, with Amazonia, there is not only Japanese but also a European and a North American connection. So far the prices of the cars made out of Amazonian steel and aluminium do not reflect in any way the social and ecological damage caused by this production, which is illustrative of the lack of concern for these matters in the world trade system.

But there is, of course, enormous concern amongst the world’s political leaders at another level. Veening says that on the wall of one of the buildings in the centre of The Hague is written: “What if Kuwait’s main export product had been broccoli?” Surely, the eco-catastrophe of Kuwait and the Persian Gulf would not have happened. Didn’t George Bush proudly announce that what Saddam Hussain was most doing is threatening the American way of life? Bush need not have chosen his words so pompously. He could have simply said, “My nation is addicted to fast cars and I will get that oil at any cost.”

What about that other famous American invention—the hamburger? Well, that is something we are getting addicted to all over the world. The first thing people seemed to want after the opening up of Eastern Europe and Soviet Union was to have McDonald’s or Kentucky Fried Chicken establishments in their cities. This trend will lead to more consumption of meat and meat products, which in turn leads to an increase in the cattle and livestock industry.

Producing meat is the most inefficient way of turning nature’s calories into food. A tremendous amount of land is needed to grow animal feed, which is not available then for direct food production. Much of the feed is grown in developing countries that find it hard or even impossible to feed their own people. On an average, everyone in the world has 0.28 hectare (ha) of agricultural land available. Each Dutch person, however, uses up 1.20 ha.

If the number of people adopting these consumption habits keeps growing, more land and forest will be turned into monocultures to provide raw materials for more and more “meaty” consumption habits in the market-efficient North.

A study by economist Jyoti Parikh shows that rich people’s demand for land to meet their food needs is not getting saturated. How can they keep eating more and more just because they keep getting richer and richer? Surely, there must be a limit to gluttony. No, this happens because the rich keep switching their food habits from the lowly shaak-bhaji to chicken tandoori (in India) and beefsteaks (in the North). So when you hear that 20 per cent of the world’s population is using 80 per cent of its resources, remember this is what it means.

You can be sure the Earth Summit in Rio will leave this unsaid. US Congresswoman Bella Abzug told us at one of the preparatory committee meetings that she had failed to get a chapter on US consumption patterns into the US national report. Nor will India discuss consumption patterns of its elite. But they will all talk. They will talk about population. The poor are too many. The poor are destroying forests. And the Indian official delegation will chirp away, as it always does, quoting that most fallacious of all statements ever made by an Indian prime minister abroad—Indira Gandhi’s famous dictum, “Poverty is the biggest polluter”. And, of course, we can always hear that doyen of British aristocracy and self-appointed environmental champion, Prince Phillip, telling us that there are too many people. He, of course, never says he will give up his car or beefsteak. And, in all probability nor will we. That is what is so great about the market—it is so seductive. The ultimate denouement of the human race is to become a global community of glittering window shoppers. God bless her, Margaret Thatcher is so wonderfully right.

Anil Agarwal was the founding editor of Down To Earth magazine. This column was written in October 1991

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