"Out of sight" cannot be "Out of mind"

It has become convenient to think of the “impact of production” rather than the “impact of consumption”

At Globe 2018, which I thoroughly enjoyed attending, my attention was drawn to a session called The Circular City and described as: “Cities are engines of economic growth. They are also voracious consumers of energy and resources, and producers of waste.”

I thought to myself, “Engines of economic growth," yes, but "Consumers of energy and resources" absolutely not; it is we humans that consume energy and resources and I think it is time to stop being in denial of that fact.

My birth has already resulted in decades of consumption to live the life I lead. Depending on how long I live – and I hope I’m around for some time to come – this could mean eight or nine decades of consumption: food and water, housing, heating and cooling, all kinds of transportation, a myriad of products, technology, clothes, and the list goes on and on.

Without a doubt, my life and my consumption drives an environmental impact on planet earth.

I am joined in my consuming by seven billion other people who live in 195 countries on six continents. The number of people has doubled since I was born, and is projected to grow by one-third more over the next 30 years. Data suggests a child born in North America will consume 20 times as much of the world’s resources in their lifetime as a child born in Africa or India.

While we are often focused on production being carried out in as environmentally responsible and sustainable a way as possible, it is in fact our consumption that needs to be managed.

As a result of an increasingly open and borderless world (before Brexit and The Wall), national and international trade, and incredibly low-cost transportation by sea, air, road and rail, there is now increasing geographic separation between where we live and where we consume, and where the products we consume are being produced. In fact, most of the products I will consume or use today were probably produced more than a 1,000 km from where I live. As a result, citizens don’t experience the environmental impacts of their consumption, because the products they use are most often produced somewhere else. The adage, think global, act local, was never truer.

China, for example, with a population 40 times larger than Canada’s, has a relatively small per capita consumption-based environmental footprint, and a large production-based environmental footprint. That’s because China – as the world’s largest exporter - exports a lot more of what it produces than what it consumes. The poor air, water and land quality currently experienced in China is in part the responsibility of anyone that consumes a product produced in that country.

If I look at my own life, the wood used to rebuild the deck at my house in Vancouver likely came from a tree cut somewhere in the northern part of the province, perhaps Haida Gwaii. The dinner I had at the restaurant down the street included a bottle of Australian CabSav and a piece of beef sirloin raised in Alberta. I use technology produced in Asia, my clothes are produced in countries as diverse as Italy and Bangladesh, the coffee I drank this morning came from a coffee tree along the Mekong River in Vietnam. The plane I flew on recently, one of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliners, has parts that were made in Japan, Australia, South Korea, Tulsa Oklahoma, Wichita Kansas, Charleston South Carolina, Winnipeg Manitoba, the U.K., Italy and France.

Wherever production is taking place is where the impacts are being felt on the natural environment, on streams and rivers, fish and fowl. To pay for the products we import from the USA, China, Japan, Mexico and South Korea -- and for which those countries bear the environmental impact -- we locally fell trees, make pulp and paper, farm fish, process minerals, mine our gas and coal, dam our rivers to provide hydro electric power, and build factories to make parts and equipment. While we focus in the environmental impacts of what we produce and export, we minimize the environmental impacts of what we consume.

Depending on where the product comes from that I consume, the environmental impact of my consumption is local in BC, transferred to another part of Canada, or to somewhere else in the world. As consumers, we need to become conscious of the environmental impacts of our consumption.