("The known deadly side effects of prescription drugs are the fourth leading cause of death in the industrialized world, surpassed only by the number of deaths from heart attacks, cancer and strokes," according to Journal of the American Medical Association, April 15, 1998 [5]. Dr. David Bates, associate professor of medicine at Harvard University School of Medicine, told the "Times" "... these numbers translate to 36 million adverse drug events per year."[6]) Surely, it is hard to fiscally support unconscionable companies like these without having some degree of reservation.
In an analogous vein, should I stop eating certain foods because the Frankenseeds and the poisonous pesticides used to grow them came from Monsanto [7] and other vile agro-firms? How would I even know about the foods to place on my rejection list? Likewise, should I stop driving my car to visit an aged relative living in another state because it is a frivolous waste of oil given that my act of doing so contributes to climate changing effects and more rapidly uses up a non-renewable, critical energy source?
Similarly, should I stop using paper and other wood based products because I know that, with our rising population ever in demand, more than three millions hectares of forest have been torn down in Africa over only fifteen years (1990 to 2005) and forests are not being replaced nearly as fast as they are being obliterated? Meanwhile, they ARE being decimated at an increasing and appalling rate all across the globe.
For example: "During the 1990s, it was estimated that 214,000 acres (86,000 hectares) of forest worldwide were being destroyed every day � ��" an area larger than New York City. In the mid-1990s, the World Resources Institute reported that more than 80 percent of the world's natural forests had been destroyed. Much of what remained was in the Brazilian Amazon and in the boreal areas of Canada and Russia.
"Deforestation has a variety of causes. It is in part driven by worldwide demand for wood products. Deforestation can also accommodate population growth and the desire to create new agricultural land or grazing land for cattle. However, deforestation has serious consequences for the global environment and for the continued existence of human life. It can lead to soil erosion, flooding, and the loss of animal and plant habitats. The world's tropical rain forests, which occupy only 7 percent of the dry surface of the earth, hold over half of the earth's species. As these forests are cleared, species become extinct at an estimated rate of up to 137 species per day. Deforestation also contributes to global warming, since the burning of forests releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide traps the sun's heat and causes temperatures to rise.
"Ecologists warn that if current rates of deforestation continue, rainforests will disappear from the planet within 100 years, affecting global climate in unpredictable ways and eliminating a majority of the world's animal and plant species...[8]."
This all in consideration, I have to, in the end, consider myself somewhat in a different way than my Quaker friend views herself. It is because I recognize my deliberate culpability. I use up a vast store of finite and renewable resources, maintain the grotesque and enormous inequity of wealth distribution in the world by being directly engaged in the economic and the social systems promoting it, am responsible for an incredible amount of assorted environmental damage (such as pollution of waterways) of which I do not see direct consequences, as well as am caught up in an American way of life that is largely structured by self-serving governmental, business and other interests, which are undeniably outside of my control. In a similar vein, I personally create the climate change outcomes through my purchases, which depend on fossil fuels for their manufacturing and transportation, as well as by my very use of products and services (such as utilities).
All of this certainly is cause for unqualified remorse. Yet, I cannot figure out a way to avoid much of the harm for which I am liable even though my complicity in the above circumstances is not entirely welcomed by me. So, the best that I can do is to try as much as possible to minimize my ecological footprint, strengthen natural environments where I can through community sponsored measures (such as the building of bat houses and planting of trees) and actively seek out other opportunities wherein I can have a positive impact on behalf of other life on this planet. As such, I realize that it is, also, a moral obligation for me to help others, who have not had the opportunities in life to which I have had access.
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