Adbusters magazine has been trying for quite some time to get public-service announcements on the air in Canada that would say such heretical things as “cars are major contributers to global warming”, “GDP growth comes at the expense of the environment”, “buy nothing” and other statements which fly in the face of media and business orthodoxy on this continent. There is an appeal in the works for a lawsuit that was thrown out of court, one that has been generally ignored in the media, naturally.

I would hope that Canada is more enlightened than this. The UK showed its cultural maturity recently by allowing a controversial atheist ad campaign that asserts that “there is probably  no god”. Certainly not all agree, but even church leaders in the UK welcomed the attention, noting that it causes more people to discuss God. Perhaps those that are not comfortable with the message will end up going to church more often, while those that agree can feel that they have a voice. Everyone is happy, once they recover from the shock of seeing a taboo broken.

If only we could do the same here in presenting an alternative way of life to that of consumerism and GDP growth above all, but there is zero tolerance for such views. At best, they are presented in the mainsteam media as coming from the “loony left” or “crazed environmentalists”. This CNN interview with Kalle Lasn, on the topic of Buy Nothing Day, shows just how deeply entrenched the idea of “buying stuff” really is and how far the media will go to perpetuate it.