ETHICS FOR EVERYONE

Are you righteously angry about those awful people who are clear-cutting rainforests? Do you seeth with fury about all those awful cosmetic companies who test their products on innocent animals, or the appalling prices paid to third-world farmers for their products? Does the fact that farm animals are treated like production goods make your blood boil or the way they drive main roads through beautiful natural countryside make you want to go and live in a tree for a month in protest?

Great! Well now I am going to tell you how to make all that righteous anger work. You don't need plackard and rain-proof anoraks, you don't even need a sleeping bag and knowledge of how to create a bivouac. You just need to be totally honest and make a few changes in your own home.

Take one environmental problem that really annoys you and do a bit of forward tracing. Rembember that question I taught you in Circles? "When what?" In Circles this question helped us to keep products circulating until they were used up. This time I want you to use this question to break circles and prevent environmental harm. We do this by starting with the problem and then using "Then what?" to get to the place where we can make a difference. Let me give you an example:

I hate the thought of rainforests being destroyed because I love trees. It would be impractical to go and camp in a rainforest and try to prevent the destruction, however.

So what do I do that is practical?

Start with the problem: The rainforest trees are being logged. "Then what?" Then the logs are being exported to lumbermills. "Then what?" Then the wood from lumbermills is shipped to wholesalers. "Then what?" Then this wood is being bought up by people who need it to make wooden things - furniture, doors, toilet seats. "Then what?" Then ordinary people, people like us, buy these wooden products.

Without people buying the products it would not be economic to sell them, which means it would not be economic to log them.....All we need to do to stop the logging is to make sure that we do not buy wooden products from rainforests.....

Now here is the hard part (unfortunately, there is always a hard part) hardwood from rainforests is particularly beautiful. The furniture produced is gorgeous and lasts well. Have you looked at real mahogany furniture? It makes pine look fairly cheap. So what do you do?

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