by
Jun 22. 2020
Where Does Today's Prosperity-
featured in Bold Journal
**This is an English version of an article that I contributed to 'Bold Journal(magazine for modern fathers in 30' & 40')' this year—featured in 'The Green Survival Lifestyle' episode. Thankfully, the magazine did an awesome job in translation, and I'm happy to share my stories and opinion with people around the globe. The contents could be sounded very easy for someone(especially if you are the one who is conscious of environmental issues). But considering the general readers of this particular magazine, I wrote this while imagining ordinary fathers who barely have the chance to expose themselves, such as climate change issues, a paradox of short-termism, and general environment-related problems (but don't get me wrong, I don't mean to generalize ordinary fathers here, Only, I wrote it imagining fathers doing his best for family's happiness and economic stability. If you tell me this is also a generalization of fathers, then I have nothing more to say)
Where Does Today's Prosperity Come From?
The reason little changes need to be made to every aspect of our lives
Picturing the year 2050
"There will be more plastic than fish in the ocean in 2050"
"Natural disasters may occur twice as many times than now in 2050 due to climate change. Subsequently, the number of people needing humanitarian assistance will also increase."
"Seoul's average temperature will reach similar levels as Granada, Spain at around 12.5C. The air will become stagnant because of climate change and we will feel the effects of air pollution with increasing intensity. In 30 years, our children may have to spend most of their time indoors where the air is circulated and puritied by air conditioners and air purifiers."
I feel bad about freaming the future from a disater perspective. That's what typically happens when we talk about climate change and pollution though. The word catastrophe has been associated with the future on so many occasions that a new term has been coined to describe people's exacerbation - Apocalypse Fatigue. The more we're confronted with the image of doom, the less it bothers us, until we eventurally become numb. Maybe that's why we're in denial and choose to ignore the warning signs of environmental disasters. Forget about the distant future. I'm talking about the heat wave that hit Korea in 2018, the fine dust that suffocates the country every year, and the Australian bush fires that raged on for 6 months.
Maybe we don't have the envergy to think about the future. After all, we're all too busy trying to get through each day. Thinking about the distant future is something that is reserved for futurologists anyway. And the world seems pretty liable for now so getting to worked up about climate change feels like somewhat of an overreaction. But is there really no room for us to think about the people who have to live in the future and not in the present?
Confessions of an eczema sufferer living 2020
I was born with eczema. And after 30 odd years, I still haven't been able to break free from its effects. It affects the things I eat, where I live, and how I work. A few years ago, my body completely broke down due to sick house syndrome after my office was remodeled and I moved into a new house. The environmental toxins in the furniture, paint, and construction materials were the cause. Ever since then, I've become particularly sensitive to the chemicals in newly remodeled cafes, restaurants, and around the city. They make my eyes and nose burn. A city where buildings are demolished and rebuilt every year to suit the trend of the season. A society with ridiculously loose regulations where construction materials that release class one carcinogens are used on the daily. This is not a society that is easy for an eczema sufferer to live in.
Eczema was a novel illness when I was a little kid. I remember there only being one or two children including myself that suffered from it in each year when I was in school. Bt the prevalence of eczema in Korean society continued to rise and there is now a huge market that focuses specifically on this illness. Whoever told me it would disappear over time was wrong because I'm now an adult that still suffers from eczema. Being an adult with eczema is a completely different ball game from suffering from it as a child. As an adult, I'm wholly responsible for myself. But there aren't any social safeguards in place if my physical condition doesn't allow me to work or participate in everyday activities. Whether you quit your job or give up on your social life, the blame is placed solely on you even though you are not physically able to go through the stages of life like the average person. This still applies when the cause of your illness is external and out of your control, such as environmental pollution.
I think about the next generation who will share my fate. Personal experiences aside, I picture what it would be like if no one spoke up about the issues and didn't do anything to solve it. Our chlidren will continue to live in a city with no safey nets and they will be forced to make decisions that they have no control over. This is what motivated me to start writing and caring about the environment.
The price of prosperity
"If I live to be 100, I will be alive in the year 2103. When you think about the future today, you don't think beyond the year 2050. By then I will, in the best case, not even have lived half of my life. What happens next? In the year 2078, I will celebrate my 75th birthday. If I have children or grand children, maybe they will spend that day with me. Maybe they will ask me about you, the people who were around back in 2018. Maybe they will ask why you didn't do anything while there still was time to act. What we do or don't do right now, will affect my entire life and the lives of my children and grand children. What we do or don't do right now, me and my generation can't undo in the future."
- From Environmental Activist Greta Thunburg's 2018 TED Talk(16 yrs)
According to social philosopher Roman Krznaric, we treat the future like "a distant colonial outpost devoid of people, where we can freely dump ecological degradation, technological risk, nuclear waste and public debt." This basically means that the negative repercussions of the prosperity that we're enjoying now will be passed down to the next generation. Our children will have no choice but to pay the price of the prosperity that our generation and the generation before us enjoyed, and learn to live and adapt to a world that they had no part in shaping.
What is it that has made us so shortsighted? We are constantly chasing new goals and resolutions whether it be yearly term for politicians, every season for fashion and culture, every quarter for corporations, and every few seconds in the financial market. Korean even publishes an annual trend report. Time is segmented for productivity and the world rewards us with instant gratification. The more we fight and struggle to achieve short term goals, the less energy we have to think about what the future will be like. Are we able to think beyond earning moeny now to make sure my family is comfortable? What is robbing us of our ability to think about the future? We must remember that we should fight just as hard to pass on a stable ecological environment to our children, as we do to give our children a financially stable and prosperous future.
"This must take priority over material prosperity."
Photo by Jomjakkapat Parrueng on UnsplashWhat is the problem?
It's easy for an individual to feel defeated in the face of a ginormous problem. The weight of issues such as climate change, plastic waste, nuclear waste, fine dust, and acidification of our oceans is more than enough to make us think "What diffence can I possibly make?" It's sometimes difficult to even know where to start.
So instead of talking about solutions, how about discussing how this problem began? Growism is one of the major root causes of environmental issues, I want to touch upon the deception that is GDP, which we've been led to believe is best when its increasing. Gross Domestic Product(GDP), as its name suggests, is the aggregate of all the goods and services that were produced measure the rate of a country's economic development. But strangely enough, GDP continues to increase even through wars, natural disasters, and wildfires. Weapons need to be produced for wars and goods and services are exchanged to rebuild regions that were hit by natural disasters. Paper can be made from destroyed forests and golf courses can be built in their place. There are also some factors that aren't included in GDP. These would be things that aren't exchanged for money such as things that we take for granted like water, air, soil, forests, and bio-diversity, and unpaid labor(caretaking, bartering, self-sustained living, volunteering), and ecological and social costs that are incurred due to economic development(environmental pollution). In other words, consuming vegetables that were produced in a faraway country and flown in by airplanes with huge carbon emissions is far more beneficial to economic growth than growing and consuming vegetables from your own garden. Doesn't that seem strange to you?
According to the Global Footprint Network(GFN), humans have been depleting resources at a faster rate than Earth can produce them ever since rapid industrialization occurred in the 1970s. GFN even estimated that we would need 3.5 more Earths if the whole world consumed resources at the level Korea does. How much is enough? How much more do we need to have and how much more comfortable do we have to get to be satisfied?
Instead of blindly accepting the insatiable desire for economic growth and accumulation of wealth as just the way things are, we need to think about what exactly is driving this system and what we can do about it in our respective places, We can't wait for the government or corporations to bring about the changes that we need, because they will only take action once we, as voters and consumers, clearly signal to them that we want changes. In that regard, individuals are now powerless in the face of environmental issues.
Environmental activist Annie Leonard, the author of The Story of Stuff once said that "our voices as citizens, adults, and parents need to become louder than our voices as consumers so that we can have deep discussions as a community with those around us." And that really is the first step towards creating a world worth passing down to the next generation.
What can we do?
Famous zero-waste activists grace our TV screens while holding a palm sized bottle with full of trash and proudly say "This is all the waste that I generated in the last 2 years." Some climate activists choose to travel by sea rather than air to reduce their carbon footprint. There is even a Flight Shame movement going on in Sweden which aims to shift social perception into thinking of flying as a shameful act. Their triumphant messages may inspire awe in some but it can also intimidate others. After all, change is intimidating.
But there is no need to start off with a challenging goal. Think of it as a long journey and make conscious choices in your everyday life to decrease the footprint you leave on the environment. Take shorter showers, take public transportation and drive less, turn off your computer monitor when you're not at your table, and switch to search engine Ecosia(they plant 1 tree for every 45 searches) to build your eco muscles in every aspect of your life. It's possible that this world needs 100 average people with small ecofriendly habits more than it needs one perfect zero-waste activist.
The truth is, there are a myriad of things that can be done on the individual, community, corporate, and governmental level to preserve the environment.
Unfortunately, I don't have enough space to write them all down, so I'm just going to finish off this article with a few things you can do and think about as a family. I hope the following helps you to figure out how to live in this finite world.
1. Eat more vegetables
According to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization fo the United Nations, the carbon emissions generated by the production of feed for livestock, deforestation for pastures, and excretion of gas from the cows themselves is greater than that of all of the world's transportation methods combined. You can help preserve the environment by participating in selective vegetarianism such as meatless Mondays or a veggie meal a day. It's also good for your health.
2. Create ecofriendly habits
Start with the small things. Turn off switches that aren't being used around the house, turn off the water while you brush your teeth, don't leave food, and ask yourself one more time if you really need something before you buy it. Being able to talk to your child about how their actions are affecting the Earth when they do these little things is just icing on the cake. For example, you could talk about how by not leaving food, you're helping to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that are released in the process of food waste disposal, which will prevent the glaciers from melting and save animals from extinction.
3. Improve their media-literacy
The ability to differentiate credible and non-credible information in media is essential for adults and children alike in today's information saturated world. We need to think about who created and disseminated said information, why it was created, who paid for its creation and dissemination, and what stance it is taking as well as what viewpoints it is deliberately leaving out. This kind of training will help your child to wisely navigate the endless options, incentives for consumption, and fake news that will be thrown in their direction on a daily basis.
Article in Korean
https://boldjournal.com/xe_blog/Today%E2%80%99sProsperityComeFrom
Yejin Park l Runs Minimize Impact and is an arts and culture planner. Due to her chronic eczema, she developed a deep interest in the city environments we live in and the effect human activity has on nature. Started Minimize Impact (brunch.co.kr/@minimize-impact) with the faith that society could be changed by the small choices that individuals make to minimize their footprint on the environment. Co-planned and held events such as Soosunjang, a market where used clothes were exchanged and mended at no charge, and Sonitnunnal 2019, a festival devoid of electricity and chemical substances.
