Wallets, votes: two tools for environmental change

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Inter Press Service

PISTOIA, ITALY -- Christian environmentalists meeting in Pistoia, central Italy, June 27-28 called for an end to mass consumption and a return to family values.

Greenaccord, an Italian environmental group, organized the conference because, it said, the global economic crisis presents an opportunity for redressing some of the imbalances in society.

“The economic crisis should be a moment for people to reflect on how they are living their lives and the choices that they make,” said Alfonso Cauteruccio, secretary-general of Greenaccord. “The crisis has helped to reduce mass consumption and reinforced the importance of family ties.”

Bishop Mansueto Bianchi of Pistoia read out a message from Pope Benedict XVI pledging his support for the conference and underscoring the need for “better rapport between man and universe.”

“The church has a strong role to play in helping to reduce the speed of modern life,” Bianchi said. “There are three aspects to this: to educate and inform, to stimulate individual consciences, and to persuade governments to raise awareness of the problem.”

Cauteruccio said that over the past 20 years the pace of life has increased to intolerable levels as the pressure for industrial production and economic growth has mounted. One of the problems with encouraging people to cut consumption is the inherently short-term outlook of governments, which often focus on the next election to the exclusion of long-term objectives, he said.

For many, the short-sightedness of governments is embodied in the political bickering over the Kyoto Protocol, an international environmental treaty that was drawn up in 1997 by the United Nations. Despite persistent pressure from European nations, the United States, the world’s biggest per capita polluter, has yet to ratify the agreement.

Denmark is to host a Dec. 6-18 U.N. conference on climate change that will discuss the formation of a post-Kyoto agreement for 2012, when the first commitment period for the treaty is due to expire. Greenaccord wants to hold an international forum on the fringes of this U.N. conference, to underscore the need for people to live at a slower pace.

Bruno Contigiani, a former public relations director of IBM in Italy and Telecoms Italia, has spent the past 10 years trying to persuade people to slow their lives down. He established an organization called L’Arte del Vivere Con Lentezza (the Art of Slow Living) for this purpose.

“I really believe that it is up to the individual to take things at a slower pace,” he said. “Companies increasingly expect people to speed up and produce things as fast as possible, but people must have the courage to say no sometimes.”

This is a view shared by Cinzia Scaffidi, director of the Slow Food Study Center, an Italy-based organization that aims to promote traditional and healthy eating. “If we let the markets decide everything for us and accept that we are just consumers, we will never be able to make a change,” she said.

Scaffidi believes that the role of government should be limited to educating and encouraging people to think in a certain way. “We have two elements that can change things -- our wallet and our vote -- and we must make good use of both.”

Over the past 20 years, rapid development of new technology has increased the production capacity in many fields, but many fear that it has also led to greater pressure on people’s time.

“Overall, technological development is a positive thing, otherwise we would still be living in the Stone Age,” said Gian Paolo Marchetti, president of Greenaccord. “But we should learn how to manage technology, so that we control it and not the other way round.”