Most of the bad things happening to the world are driven by financial considerations. It’s not out of pure spite but for the sake of larger profit margins that workers in the Far East are being exploited and rivers polluted. In the age of the free market can this be changed?

Consumers are obviously what drive businesses, although the efforts of the advertising industry may often make it seem to be the other way round. Consumer attitudes are steadily changing and are leading to changes in production. More organic and fresh produce is on our supermarket shelves; there are recycled and environmentally friendly alternatives to almost everything, and there is labelled free range food. With greater information and choice comes greater responsibility and we are rising to that challenge.

Protests are going on world-wide over big business and third world debt which cripples those countries that most need our help. Slowly things are changing for the better, and more caring attitudes are pervading even government circles as a result of grass-roots pressure.

Even if you are not an active campaigner for these things, if you want to help, you can. The important thing is to be constantly aware of the consequences and implications of your actions. Small things such as using a bank which invests ethically, boiling only as much water as you need and being aware of product choice can help greatly, and this is how we can practise Reverence for Life, all life, in our everyday lives.

We have recently made so much technological progress so fast that we have an ever greater problem to assess the consequences of our actions. Knowing this we must make renewed efforts to predict problems and to act as fast and sensibly as possible when they arise. We must try to persuade scientists and technicians working in these fields to operate on the “precautionary” principle and to take responsibility for the consequences of their innovations. This will require a fundamental shift in the terms of contract of many of them, and an awakening to the ethic of Reverence for Life of their employers. Because it is ultimately we, the consumers, whom they have to please, we are not powerless and we must use our power.

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