It’s a million degrees here in Perth, absurdly hot for this time of year, so naturally my fan decided to pack up on me. It was one of those cheap ones from Target and I’d had it a couple of years. The new one is a different brand, but still made in China. It came with all this packaging, mostly made of oil-based foam and cardboard. Hmm, oil and wood, I thought they were both running out…
This is globalisation in action. Ridiculously cheap goods that are shipped round the world gobbling up increasingly valuable natural resources for packaging and transport. They are cheap, but they just do not last.
My mother had this clunky, ugly metal fan than probably cost a bit when new that went for forty years and never missed a beat. I won’t say anything about the irony of buying a fan that is so cheap because the production system that makes it cheap is warming the planet.