A chance to end the games By Pavel P. Antonov It takes me 40 minutes to drive to my office every morning. Not surprisingly, last year I decided to buy a new car. Some of my environmentally minded friends said I should ride a bike instead, or at least keep the old car. But biking would take twice as long as driving, and the old car kept breaking down. I decided to be a consumer for once. Illustration: Laszlo Falvay CROSSROAD: The direction we take now is vital for our future survival. Almost everyone in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), and the West, has a good reason to be part of the consumer society. New cars, pre-packaged foods, over-use of energy and other such luxuries are tempting and addictive. We only live once, so why not pamper ourselves?And being born in CEE, I remember a time when I could only dream of seeing a full shop or a Big Mac. Is it wrong to have all that now? Maybe it is, if you listen to Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations. “We lead immensely privileged lives, compared to the vast majority of our fellow human beings. But we do so by consuming much more than our share of the earth ’s resources, and by leaving a much larger ‘footprint ’ of waste and pollution on the global environment, ” Annan said during a speech at the London School of Economics in February. He went on to note that the over-consumptive lifestyle of the West, transmitted and magnified by the mass media, serves as a glossy model for the rest of the human race. The organisation Annan works for is calling on more than 100 heads of state and 60,000 delegates from all over the world to gather in Johannesburg Aug. 26 - Sept. 4 to decide how to face the challenges to the Earth ’s future. The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) is seen by some as the turning point, a last chance for the world to address its acute problems and prevent an otherwise inevitable environmental and resource crisis in the next 30 years. But others see it as just another round in the same old game of "Monopoly", where players try to protect the wealth they have already amassed. Many already believe that the summit in Johannesburg is doomed to failure. In his article "No! to the same old story: Sceptics stick it to the WSSD, " German environment and development writer John Bamau quotes activists and scientists who think the summit will be nothing but "a big show for the global rulers, " and "pseudo democracy. " He adds: "The UN-selected groups, as well as some continent-hopping professional protesters, will most likely go and sit, or fight, with participating governments at the WSSD in August, but many hundreds of civil society organisations and individuals have terminated their plans and stepped off the road to Johannesburg." The trouble with our "Monopoly" game is that the rich players already own all the best squares and the poor have little chance to gain anything. If Johannesburg appears to be a continuation of the same game, it's no wonder many players are choosing to sit this round out. But it can be risky to ignore what could be our best chance for achieving sustainability. It may be difficult to break the monopoly powers of the big players there, but without their cooperation, the world cannot make true progress toward sustainable development.