Recently, we tuned our radio to an all-news station to hear the weather forecast. Instead, we got a well-known, deep-voiced newscaster talking about bubonic plague, its devastating effects and how it was stopped in the past. To build up the tension, he mentioned a new strain of bubonic plague that is resistant to antibiotics. Then, suddenly, it was time for a few words from his sponsor. This, of course, is the reason he structured his commentary the way he did: to call attention to the advertising.

The commentator asks in the same deep, serious voice, "Do you have a problem with mildew stains in the cracks between your shower's tiles? ... Just use this new, non-toxic and environmentally-safe product every day. Simply spray it on the tiles after your shower, and say good-bye to unsightly mildew."

After being told about the problem of the mildew in my shower and this nifty solution, how can I possibly care if a bubonic plague, resistant to all known medicines, threatens? My bathroom tile is safe!

Seriously now, what is truly important? In our culture advertising is clearly what's important. Buy something. Buy anything. But, just buy. Whatever gets people to look at, listen to, or read advertisements is used-whether it's the bubonic plague, sex or gruesome violence. It all has the same importance if it attracts consumers and serves advertisers.

Meanwhile, there are some very serious problems which face all of us as a global community. Bubonic plague is just one of many deadly contagions spreading throughout the world as a result of the increasing movement of people and products, the degrading of ecosystems and the changing climate. Malaria is another. Closer to home, AIDS and antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis stalk the poor in our cities while equine encephalitis and Lyme disease spread fear in more rural areas and the Asian longhorn beetle threatens our forests.

Earlier this summer, a group of environmental scientists broke with tradition to warn about the profound changes that humans have brought to the Earth's landscape, atmosphere, plant and animal life, and basic chemistry. In the words of one of them, a former president of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, "I think things are so serious that we don't have any choice but to speak out and say what we're seeing." She likened human activities on Earth to what's happening on the Mir space station, except that we don't understand the consequences of what we're doing here. Just like Mir, we've got serious problems with our control and energy systems. We're destroying both the forests which generate our oxygen, and the ozone layer which shields us from dangerous radiation, while we add insulation to the Earth in the form of greenhouse gases.

Our culture prods incessantly to find the cause of Diana's wreck or TWA Flight 800's crash, yet ignores the 30,000 to 40,000 people who die every day from hunger and related diseases. They're mostly children who live far away. Yet we're sold fancy foods that come from their villages and bioregions and are told to worry about the mildew stains in our shower.

The situation for most of the world's nearly six billion people may be akin to Diana's on that fateful night. We're being driven down the fast-growth globalization highway at a ridiculous speed. Our corporate and political leaders are drunk on power and greed and are out of touch with reality, their depression barely held in check with Prozac or conspicuous consumption. And like the paparazzi, the media focus not on the out-of-control drivers, but on what sells advertising.

This broadcast begins the eighth year of Living on the Earth, dedicated to the premise that we need to evolve a new relationship with our planet. Understanding the flows and cycles of the natural world, we need to use direct, energy-efficient and environmentally-sound approaches to obtain our basic needs. These approaches will include wider solar energy use and a greater reliance on the bounty of green plants. Individual actions, education and community alliances are needed to work toward a future which we can look forward to and live with, all over the Earth.

This is what's really important.

Living on the Earth thanks our listeners for their support over the years and for making these important changes a reality in their lives and communities.

This is Bill Duesing, Living on the Earth

This page and its contents are copyright © 1997 by WSHU-FM, Fairfield, CT, and by Bill Duesing.