The mentality of mass-production

I think something is seriously wrong with a world where you sit around a boardroom table at work dreaming about hurricanes so you can sell more building products then laugh about it like it's no big deal. But in a world of mass-production and millions of people’s livelihoods depending on manufacturing based pay cheques how do we change it?

 In another conversation we discuss the low price of Natural Gas today and how much money we could save if we stopped burning our high-cost by-product (waste) and switched the system to use more gas, and then people laugh when I say “Natural Gas is not a sustainable long-term solution”.

 Then I read in the news that the premier of British Columbia is promoting Natural Gas as a safe and natural energy source.

Consider for a second how close the British Columbia and Alberta Natural Gas reserves are to the Juan de Fuca fault line... The very fault line that everyone already knows will one day create the largest and scariest earthquake anyone has ever seen. This by the way is not speculation or myth; it is a proven scientific fact. The only thing not known is when, but we know it eventually will.

In order to extract Natural Gas we pump a massive amount of water and chemicals deep into the earth fracturing its core, and creating a mini-earthquake deep underground which releases the gas into underground pools (reserves) so it can be extracted. With every little earthquake we create we risk contaminating our clean water source with the chemicals used to create these earthquakes and we slowly shatter the core of our earth... The core of the planet we live on. The more dependent we are on Natural Gas the more we shatter this, and the deeper the cuts... doesn't this petrify anyone???

 Of course not, because the people doing the fracking are getting huge paycheques to do it. Yes they know it's scary, yes they know it's wrong. But they need to eat. And they’re in debt way over their heads because money's been cheap the last few years thanks to the whole banking / derivative scandal the world economy is still slowly trying to recover from.

If your family were in deep financial trouble and someone offers you a fat pay cheque that will easily let you keep your nice suburban house with all your toys what are you going to say?  And what if you’re the guy sitting at the boardroom table making the big decisions.  You have a family to support to.  We are already living in a world of mass-production, we’ve already killed the little guy and are all eagerly shopping at WalMart for absolutely everything because it’s cheap and we all have debt so who would ever pay more for something when you could get it for less.

Somehow we need to change how we think. Being the lowest cost producer is the name of the game for any major manufacturer today.  The lowest cost always wins the race.  I took economics class, and I have my degree in commerce this was the very first thing they taught me.  But is it right?  How do we change the minds of a global society so dependent on a fiat based-monetary system that the financial statements aren’t the only reports we need to look at.

I work in manufacturing and we have a fabulous environmental department, we all talk about Environmental Compliance as do many large corporations, we all want to do the right thing.  But at the end of the day the real problem is that every individual person in every major corporation out there is driven by the same incentive.  Their pay cheque, and that’s not a corporate problem, that’s a societal problem.  You can blame the big bad corporate names out there, but remember Corporations are run by people and all people have individual objectives.

As a society we all value our individual material possessions above all else.  You can say that you don’t, you can try to tell me that you’re different and you’re better than everyone else.  But we all have debt we all have mouths to feed and the cost of food and clothing are increasing at a rapid rate.  At a macro-economic level we need to understand that the more we consume the more energy we need to produce, whatever it is we are producing.  And because everything on earth is somehow connected the cost of everything will continually increase, like compound interest except with everything.

 I don’t know the answer, I just know something has to change.

The guy sitting at a table making large decisions in New York has no idea what the guy in Northern Alberta just had to start hauling water because the well he's been using to feed his cows for the last 100 years has just been contaminated by the chemicals we use to frack the earth.  He just knows Natural Gas is suddenly cheaper than oil and some government official told him it was cleaner too, so he actually feels like he's making a green decision.  A decision he'll be happily celebrating with BBQ'd Alberta steak!