CREDIT: THINKSTOCK
While Ontario spent the winter under an arctic vortex, other parts of the planet endured severe drought, a symptom of a sick planet.

Drive anywhere outside of London and you can see the signs anywhere. You find small, older farm buildings abandoned. Gas stations and convenience stores alongside of inhospitable roadways long ago began to dominate decaying villages and hamlets where once a church, a rural grocery and general goods store, a village hall, and a few other establishments helped centre the community.

Or consider the expression, “farms dotting the countryside.” This means that farms are few and far between. Where in the past a family farm might consist of 40, 60 or 100 acres, these modest enterprises are more and more becoming things of the past. We have left the farm and headed to the city for college or university, and to find jobs. And more recently we are migrating to the west, where the promise of oil sales drives the economy.

All these are symptoms of our increasingly corporate economy. Corporations dominate our world, flooding our landscapes with box stores, huge inventories of goods at bargain prices, factory farms and investment opportunities.We love our brands, our hockey franchises, and a federal government whose main agenda appears to be to “open up markets” in the east — or west, if you live in British Columbia. The Olympics have become a mega-billion dollar enterprise, even while, as often as not, just a few kilometres outside of the Olympic village, the citizens of the host country live in poverty.

If we play our cards right, we will be able to travel south every winter, gobbling up copious amounts of jet fuel and precious atmospheric oxygen. And if we get a really good hand, we'll be able, in our later years, to spend large chunks of time — months even — in, say, Florida, having acquired a condominium at a bargain basement price brought on by the economic misfortune of the previous owner.

The dominance of manufacturing, investment, and retail corporations, while we love it, is perhaps our greatest enemy. We buy, consume, travel, and enjoy. Meanwhile our communities are dying because of our transience, our disconnect from each other, and our belief that we are in constant competition with every country on the planet and every province in the country.

And finally, another set of symptoms. Recently a CBC interview with Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, revealed that extreme weather systems are at work around the globe. Unprecedented droughts in Australia and the American Southwest are matched by severe long-term cold in Canada and the United States. Tropical storms are increasing in number and intensity. The Aral Sea in Russia, once a huge body of water, is no more. There is no good news on the environmental front. All the monitoring of the oceans, ice fields, and atmosphere indicates that alarming changes are taking place that threaten catastrophe. Our reliance on corporation- driven consumerism is not only destroying our communities, but also the physical basis for human life — the home God created for us — this planet.

But is there an alternative? Near the end of each school year I like to dwell on the work of Wendell Berry, a most important thinker — a theologian, a farmer, and economist. He is one of the key people offering an alternative way of thinking, living, and economic planning. It's his reflections on the corporation- driven consumerism, and especially the alternatives he presents, that I will be exploring in the last few columns for this year.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.