Earth Time, a collection of old and new writings on the environment by David Suzuki from 1985 to the present, is perhaps more significant for the questions it asks than the facts it proffers. As we rush into globalisation and the information revolution, Suzuki takes time out to ponder, "are these changes happening too quickly? Is there another way?

Consumption can be augmented by multiplying the population, by increasing the wealth of the population, or by generating demand where none existed before. We are encouraged by conventional economics to purchase what we don't really need but only desire.

As Paul Wachtel says in The Poverty of Affluence, "Having more and newer things each year has become not just something we want but something we need. The idea of more, of ever increasing wealth, has become the centre of our identity and our security, and we are caught up by it as the addict by his drugs."

Can it continue indefinitely?

People poisoned by the polluted water and hospitalised will need the services of doctors, nurses, and lawyers, as well as goods like medicine and flowers, all adding to the GDP. When the polluter is made to clean up the problem, often with government subsidies, that too is added to the GDP!" An organisation called Redefining Progress has proposed a new measure of progress. The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) calculates the negatives as well as the positives, and contains adjustments for resource depletion (a negative), income distribution, pollution (a negative) and long term environmental damage (a negative).

When redefined this way, although GDP per capita in the USA rose steadily from an average of $7,865 in 1950 to $16,414 in 1992, the GPI reveals a different picture moving from $5,663 in 1950 to a peak of $7,441 in 1969, then falling to $4,426 in 1992!

Technology is the means with which we are to increase our ability to consume (and therefore our wealth). Ever since the Industrial Revolution, forests, freshwater systems, insects and plants - instead of being subject to the vagaries of the weather, natural cycles and planetary change - have through science, come under man's "domination."

With technology we are able to farm, water, nourish and control large tracts of land. Often only a single crop is planted in this simplified system, and agricultural scientists are able to perpetuate an illusion of control and productivity - the harvests exceed any "natural" scales, and there is food aplenty.

More food means more people can be fed. More people translate into increased consumption.

But reality intervenes in the form of diseases, parasites, and the weather: the single crop system ultimately fails because the natural system of bio-diversity and interdependence is ignored.

In the Information Age where the sound bite is all, we are further detached from nature by the barrage of information and sensory experiences that we are expected to absorb in seconds. "In cities we are distanced from the natural world, spending more and more time in search of stimulation in shopping malls, electronic games and television. In lieu of the experiences of the real world, we now have all of the gut wrenching, adrenaline-rush, and sensory overload of "virtual reality."

Priority is being given to the technology necessary for around the clock interactive shopping. Television sets are being transformed into electronic mail catalogues. The goal is to allow viewers to buy anything in the world, any time of day and night, without ever leaving their living rooms.

Technology isolates us from one another, and "cheapens" the meaning of the actual experience. Clifford Stoll, author of Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway, puts it this way, "no computer can teach what a walk through a pine forest feels like."

Earth Time suggests that global economics and the technology it spawns is at conflict with the natural world. In a finite system, increasing consumption cannot continue unchecked. The solutions are not to be found within the economic system that we have created, but from a revision of our system of fundamental values. Suzuki looks instead at a return to a slower pace of life, local rather than global economies, and the simple pleasures of communing with nature.

Economists may beg to differ. But are you ready to change?

S. N. O. Flake David Suzuki is founder and director of the David Suzuki Foundation, an organisation dedicated to addressing environmental issues worldwide. He is a broadcaster, host of CBC TV's The Nature of Things, and is internationally renowned for his numerous newspaper articles and television prgrammes.

He is the author of:

- The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature, Allen & Unwin 1 864489 27 8 RRP $19.95 [9781864489279]

- Inventing the Future, Allen & Unwin 0 044421 93 1 RRP $19.95 [9780044421931]

- Wisdom of the Elders, Allen & Unwin 1 864485 99 X RRP $19.95 [9781864485998]

Other works on same/related theme:

- David Lloyd Jones, Architecture and the Environment:Bioclimatic Building Design Laurence King UK 1 856691 03 9 RRP $135.00 [9781856691031]