“Now is the time when we must break away from a society which favors mass production and mass consumption. In my view, we must develop a “new 21st Century System of production and consumption” that will be friendly to our global environment, and that make the transition to a sustainable society.”

-Yasuo Fukuda, Prime Minister of Japan at the Science and Technology in Society forum

I was talking with a friend the other day about how I felt so much of our society was not sustainable, and I recall mentioning that it is partially because we have this mass production and consumption mind-set that is primarily driven by the desire for continual growth and profit. I’d have to say I’m extremely impressed with the qualitiy of the statement made by the Japanese Prime Minister. I’ve never really heard a politician in the US suggest anything along those lines, in fact, if they did, they’d probably be dropped by all the corporations that fund them.

I sincerely feel that the way we think about producing and working with things has been highly dependent on assuming cheap energy costs and disregarding the environment, and I must admit that I probably don’t know half as much as I should in order to make decisions that would properly take those factors into account. However, I think these issues should be at the forefront of our political debates. It seems that in order to create a sustainable system, we have to make individual concessions in order to cooperate fairly and effectively in order to curb issues such as global warming, water toxicity, and the search for effective renewable fuel sources. However, it only takes one entity in the scheme of things to break the entire system apart.

For instance, if only once major industrialized nation (*cough* USA *cough*) doesn’t follow the Kyoto protocols, then the other countries will eventually try to squeeze out of the “save the environment” initiative because they cannot compete in certain industries with a nation that does not regulate environmental policies as strictly. Similarly, a corporation within the US that desires to strive towards sustainability cannot do so unless every corporation competing against it does the same (this of course, assumes that striving for sustainability incurs at least a significant initial cost).

So, I wonder, what will eventually unite us to cooperate and solve these issues? Will we be able to do it in time? It’s very possible that we can do permanent damage to the Earth, that even technological innovation cannot solve. Also, can the free-market system as it is result in the cooperation that is necessary in order to result in this sustainability? If so, can it do it fast enough? I feel as if the free-market system has very limited foresight, and the only way to “extend” that foresight is by governmental regulations that temporarily tweak the system in order for things to turn out right ultimately. However, how do you implement such a system when you are trying to encourage cooperation of this sort between governments? It’s a perplexing issue to me…

Anyways, hopefully some countries will lead as shining examples for the rest, or some great technological innovation will just blow us away (hopefully not literally…), but until then, I feel like with the way things are going in this country, the US will not be the nation to look to for the new “21st Century system” the Japanese Prime Minister speaks of…