By Bread Alone
From Vol 2 Issue 4 - July, 2000

Western society today has more leisure time, more opportunities for creative pursuits, more access to works of art, more formal education and more money than ever before. And all these things are backed by a technical infrastructure combining both incredible intricacy and practical application.

So why are we not enjoying a golden age of intellectualism, of spiritual flowering, of concerted efforts to save and expand the lives of the world's less fortunate and spread truth and beauty around the Earth? Why is it that, instead, with all our chances and advantages, we are caught up in a soul-suppressing web of greedy materialism that is widening the gulf between rich and poor and calculatedly destroying the natural forces that support our very existence?

If that sounds overly dramatic, it is largely due to the all too successful efforts of the Establishment to cover up or play down the real horrors of money-worship and rampant environmental degradation. When vast corporations (with the aid of the best politicians money can buy) gobble the planet's natural resources for fast profits today, they are squandering the birthright of all future generations. When this gobbling includes replacing those resources with moonscapes and poisoned seas, the tycoons are putting guns to our grandchildren's heads.

Taken to its extreme, it would not be illogical to view such progressive superstores as the U.S. and Canada not as actual democracies but as industrial dictatorships. As a Times of London columnist put it during the World Trade Organization shambles in Seattle last year, the most splendid aim of the movers and shakers is to make the world safe for Wal-Mart.

How does Big Business get away with these things in our supposedly well-informed society? For starters, Big Business also owns or controls most of our mainstream media, so that respected national newspapers and TV networks constantly bombard us with infinite variations on one basic theme: What’s good for Big Business is good for you.

Industrial complexes maintain covens of lobbyists to keep governments in line (or, as in the case of British Columbia, pressure and smear them out of office), plus propagandists who scorn, insult and marginalize any who dare speak out against industry's power. Industry befouls the world and then sneers at those who object; protesters are "doom criers" out to keep honest workers from "putting bread on the table." Meanwhile, industry is replacing workers with machines just as fast as possible.

As a director of the 27,000-member Western Canada Wilderness Committee, I am keenly aware of the tricks and lies of the timber industry strategists. We do not get into direct confrontations but we sympathize with the brave souls who put their freedom on the line to save beauty and wildlife, the drama now being played out in the Elaho Valley, north of Squamish.

Incidentally, in some of the successful environmental campaigns (such as saving the magnificent Carmanah Valley on Vancouver Island) the artist community has greatly aided the cause by trekking into still wild regions to record and interpret the irreplaceable beauty. While other parts of the world have their man-made wonders—the "poems in stone" that are the great cathedrals--we have the awesome splendor of thousand-year-old trees reaching for the clouds. Even if we seldom see them outside of photos and paintings, we are richer simply for knowing they are there.

Felled, minimally processed and sold to the U.S. or Japan, such a tree may be worth $20,000 to a cut-and-run corporation.

What’s it worth to you?

Tony Eberts, now retired, is an Outdoors columnist and environmental reporter whose 40 years with The Vancouver Province newspaper won him much esteem and respect.