“Creation destroys as it goes, throws down one tree for the rise of another. But ideal mankind would abolish death, multiply itself million upon million, rear up city upon city, save every parasite alive, until the accumulation of mere existence is swollen to a horror.”
D.H.Lawrence
A parasite is an organism living in or on another and benefiting at the expense of the other, based on this definition and the qualification that the other, in this case, is the Earth, I believe we must consider ourselves to be a parasitic creature. I am not aware of any other living creature which produces toxic and non-biodegradable waste and whose very existence is detrimental to the entire ecosystem of which it is a part. The growth of the human population over the last 300 years has been little short of biblical in proportion. It took approximately 180,000 years for the human population to reach a quarter of a billion and since the late 1800’s the population has risen from a billion to today’s 6.9 billion with the last one billion of those being added in less than 12 years. Furthermore the global population is predicted to rise to in excess of 9 Billion by 2050.
Irrespective of our polluting ways and the consequential impact on the environment, the earth simply cannot support so many human beings without significantly damaging its ability to produce sufficient food alone in future years. We must recognise this as fact and take action to reduce our population over the next century, with a goal of achieving a global population of between 0.5 and 1.0 Billion people within 150 years. In the meantime, we will need to recognise that we must drastically reduce our consumption of absolutely everything and develop products and materials which are truly recyclable and preferably organic; in so much as they can quickly be returned to the ecosystem, as the original natural resources from which they were fabricated.
Another dire consequence and contributory cause of the population explosion has been the urbanisation of our species. When once we were wanderers who moved with the seasons and in response to the availability of food, we have now built permanent cities and have our food produce by relatively few people in the agricultural industry. This has left us vulnerable to changes in climatic conditions, changes in sea levels, storm patterns and ocean currents which can completely undermine the entire infrastructure of cities designed for entirely different conditions. I believe that as the more devastating impacts of climate change become manifest, millions upon millions of people in cities all around the world will be radically affected. I fear that the citadels of the 20th century are destined to become the mausoleums of the 21st.
Albert Einstein suggested that a problem could not be solved at the same level of thinking which created it, how must our thinking now change?
Showing posts with label sustainability. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sustainability. Show all posts
Monday, 11 January 2010
Monday, 28 December 2009
Growth, Development and Sustainability
"One thing is clear to me now, ...... our values must be compatible with the exigencies of the natural world we live in and depend upon. They must implicitly recognise the laws of thermodynamics, energy’s role in our survival, the dangers of certain kinds of connectivity, and the nonlinear behaviour of natural systems like the climate. The endless material growth of our economies is fundamentally inconsistent with these physical facts of life. Period. End of story. And a value system that makes endless growth the primary source of our social stability and spiritual well-being will destroy us."
Thomas Homer-Dixon
I couldn’t agree more with this quotation, at the very root of the problems we are creating, is our seemingly insatiable appetite for all kinds of growth, the most damaging of which is economic. I feel it important to declare here that I believe that money is nothing more than a human construction, used as a token for the exercise of control over others and as such, can and should be repositioned to facilitate the changes necessary for the survival of our species. Money can attribute value but it is not a value in and of itself yet it can and should be used to do valuable things. The problem is not money but the economic system it enables. Beneath the economics lies the radical issue; that of human greed and the desire for power and prestige, whether this is a natural phenomenon or simply learnt behaviour is becoming irrelevant since our survival instinct trumps status every time. My question as to whether or not we are writing our epitaph or that we are indeed awakening, arises from the doubt I have about our willingness to put collective and generational survival above our individual short term desire for personal gratification.
WIn addition to economic growth other types of growth are cause for concern. Growth seems to be the watchword of our global community, when we speak of development it is invariably linked with growth, it's about becoming bigger, more influential, having more, all quantitative rather than qualitative terms. We seem to relate our very identities to how much we have compared to others, this leads to a deep splitting between individuals, communities, nations and most importantly from the rest of the ecosystem and biosphere. We seem to see ourselves apart, as the consumer of all things, here to have our needs met at the expenses of everything and everyone else. It resembles an addiction, the more you have, the more you want but the more you get the more fearful of loss you become, leading to an absolute need to continue to get more. This makes for deeply unhappy people who become increasingly unable to relate appropriately, this then leads to truly dysfunctional thinking and behaviour, in fact, one becomes deluded. I believe that collectively we have become deluded and have lost our true identities and our ability to relate appropriately to the world around us. If one looks back at some of the aboriginal cultures, irrespective of their origin, there is much to be learnt about how we might once again connect to the greater whole. I shudder every time I hear about the so called progress and aspirations of the developing nations and am reminded of the old adage; beware of what you wish for, you might actually get it.
Development of a different kind will be crucial to our future, we must use our innate ability as a problem solving animal to develop solutions to the problems we have created. These problems must include the point issues of dealing with today’s burning platforms such as climate change, environmental degradation and the population explosion but it has to be recognised that these are symptomatic of a much greater malaise which is rooted in our social and political structures, simply put we care about the wrong things and unless this changes we will continue to self destruct as any reformed addict will attest to. To achieve true sustainability Man must once again become a complimentary participant in the web of life and value the good of the whole above simply his own. If we were to achieve this we might actually begin to develop as a species rather than developing ‘stuff’ at the expenses of all around us. Sustainability is not simply about finding carbon neutral ways of continuing to do what we do, it is about becoming something that is not only sustained by but is sustaining of, the larger field of which we are a part.
Thomas Homer-Dixon
I couldn’t agree more with this quotation, at the very root of the problems we are creating, is our seemingly insatiable appetite for all kinds of growth, the most damaging of which is economic. I feel it important to declare here that I believe that money is nothing more than a human construction, used as a token for the exercise of control over others and as such, can and should be repositioned to facilitate the changes necessary for the survival of our species. Money can attribute value but it is not a value in and of itself yet it can and should be used to do valuable things. The problem is not money but the economic system it enables. Beneath the economics lies the radical issue; that of human greed and the desire for power and prestige, whether this is a natural phenomenon or simply learnt behaviour is becoming irrelevant since our survival instinct trumps status every time. My question as to whether or not we are writing our epitaph or that we are indeed awakening, arises from the doubt I have about our willingness to put collective and generational survival above our individual short term desire for personal gratification.
WIn addition to economic growth other types of growth are cause for concern. Growth seems to be the watchword of our global community, when we speak of development it is invariably linked with growth, it's about becoming bigger, more influential, having more, all quantitative rather than qualitative terms. We seem to relate our very identities to how much we have compared to others, this leads to a deep splitting between individuals, communities, nations and most importantly from the rest of the ecosystem and biosphere. We seem to see ourselves apart, as the consumer of all things, here to have our needs met at the expenses of everything and everyone else. It resembles an addiction, the more you have, the more you want but the more you get the more fearful of loss you become, leading to an absolute need to continue to get more. This makes for deeply unhappy people who become increasingly unable to relate appropriately, this then leads to truly dysfunctional thinking and behaviour, in fact, one becomes deluded. I believe that collectively we have become deluded and have lost our true identities and our ability to relate appropriately to the world around us. If one looks back at some of the aboriginal cultures, irrespective of their origin, there is much to be learnt about how we might once again connect to the greater whole. I shudder every time I hear about the so called progress and aspirations of the developing nations and am reminded of the old adage; beware of what you wish for, you might actually get it.
Development of a different kind will be crucial to our future, we must use our innate ability as a problem solving animal to develop solutions to the problems we have created. These problems must include the point issues of dealing with today’s burning platforms such as climate change, environmental degradation and the population explosion but it has to be recognised that these are symptomatic of a much greater malaise which is rooted in our social and political structures, simply put we care about the wrong things and unless this changes we will continue to self destruct as any reformed addict will attest to. To achieve true sustainability Man must once again become a complimentary participant in the web of life and value the good of the whole above simply his own. If we were to achieve this we might actually begin to develop as a species rather than developing ‘stuff’ at the expenses of all around us. Sustainability is not simply about finding carbon neutral ways of continuing to do what we do, it is about becoming something that is not only sustained by but is sustaining of, the larger field of which we are a part.
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