Another Earth Day will come and
go. Yet during its twenty-four hours, people around the globe will join
together in a tremendous effort to address a host of varied woes facing
planet. Some will pick up trash along highways and beaches. A few will
build bat and bird houses for their neighborhoods. Others will pitch
in to do a greater job in recycling. However and despite their good
intentions, the stark backdrop surrounding these special events will
not go away.
At present, some scientists pose that more than a million species, even
up to one-fourth of them, will likely be dead within fifty years due
to habitat loss and other impingements. They, also, state that traditional
sources for energy (coal and oil) will likely run out during this century*.
Likewise, they surmise that global warming will, initially, increase
food production worldwide and, then, a dramatic drop is slated to ensue
due to extreme weather, such as alternating droughts and floods, warmer
winters and so on. In addition, the overall air quality will continue
to worsen due to increased pollution of oceans and other waterways,
which effects the plankton **. (The majority of the world's oxygen is
generated via phytoplankton photosynthesis.) Meanwhile, massive human
migrations will increase on a staggering scale away from countries that
cannot, due to war and poor economic opportunities, support larger numbers.
At the same time, the human population will continue to increase so
as to produce many more consumers, and most of these will want to live
as extravagantly as possible, ensuring that the dwindling resources
(fish, trees, nonrenewable kinds, etc.) will even be more severely annihilated
than is currently transpiring.
In the same vein, many up and coming nations, such as India and China,
have every intention of radically increasing their energy consumption
by any means possible regardless of dire predictions relative to global
warming. And why shouldn't they want to achieve this aim? Why should
it be the exclusive domain of only European and North American countries?
One can blame all sorts of myriad causes for this grave situation. One
can, for example, cite that there are simply too many humans too quickly
using up resources (which are, for the most part, composed of other
living entities) for the latter to be replenished. One can evoke greed,
suggesting that too many people expect to live with wanton disregard
for their over-consumption of material goods and the carbon loading
that follows suit. One can even assign inequitable resource use for
the fact that second and third world countries have higher population
growth than do most first world counterparts. However, one draws slightly
different conclusions (although not mutually exclusive in causality)
when looking at the data from an evolutionary standpoint.
In other words, this is not to imply that population expansion isn't
positively correlated with poverty, etc. It is just that the members
of every species that are most successful (resourceful in terms of acquisition
of materials), also, are the ones who most likely have the greatest
number of offspring that survive into maturity. Moreover, the ones from
this group with a proclivity to breed (i.e., possessing a strong sex
drive) will produce the most offspring, of whom many will, also, carry
this trait.
Factor in that modern medicine (i.e., antibiotics) and nutrition have
helped ensure that a larger portion of the overall population will survive
to breeding age (as did not occur in earlier centuries) and the population
will continue to explode regardless of whether universal access to affordable
means of birth control exist or not. Indeed, it will do so regardless
of whether there is more level resource distribution globally or not.
In other words, the upward trend will continue despite that global population
growth is slowing largely because of increasing mortality due to diseases
like AIDS and other awful impacts.
Indeed, roughly 300 people are born, 120 die and world population grows
by 180 each minute. Now, this might not seem like a lot, but the annual
exponential growth rate is such that humanity will probably bulge to
8.5 billion from today's 6.59 billion by 2025 despite that wars, plagues,
floods, starvation and other disasters will continue to decimate our
numbers.
Factor into this additional mass, another problem that our species has,
for a long time exhibited. It is that, relative to many other species,
we are wildly successful -- maybe even too successful for our own good.
The suggestion being put forth is that we are perhaps overly adept at
finding ways to use up just about anything at all in practically all
our diverse environments regardless of the item's composition. For example,
we can turn blocks of stone into bridges, wood into piles of advertising
flyers, animal skins into shoes, palm fronds into roofs and on and on.
How creative and ingenious while, simultaneously, predatory and devastating
to our surrounding world! In short, we thrive at the expense of most
other species and, inevitably, the overall planetary survivability.
So, how are we to cope with this set of dangerous circumstances that
we inflict upon the earth? Some people, the self-serving rapacious sorts,
will just continue as is with abject disregard for the overtly brutal
devastation that they deliberately render to their fellow man and the
environment. We all know who they are and from which economic tier they
largely derive. Yet others snap under the strain and either lash out
with great violence or quietly despair while sometimes immersed in the
fog caused by anti-depression and anti-anxiety medications. Still others
avoid taking action by focusing in la-la land -- the myriad stream of
banal offerings presented by fatuous, lighthearted and mind numbing
TV programs, the latest fashion wear, celebrity gossip, and other forms
of personal entertainment that dull awareness of perils inherent in
their apathetic malaise.
Yet others are striving to make meaningful change -- any change for
the better -- as they understand the grave imperative to do so. And,
I'll throw my lot in with them despite that they often are myopically
off each in their own separate little areas of overriding interest.
As such, there is often an ensuing lack of coordination, neglect in
analysis of common root causes for diverse social and environmental
ills, and paucity of dialogue to identify the plausible measures that
ought to be be taken to be resoundingly successful. Consequently, even
while peace marches, memos on school security, volunteerism at soup
kitchens, demonstrations near IMF and WTO meetings, and countless other
efforts to bring assistance to those in need are all constructive, an
overriding vision is needed -- one so undeniably and forcefully convincing
that it mobilizes the various splintered groups into a spearheaded to
revamp the social structure. I am not sure as to the topic that could
serve, but I do know that without it, conditions are unlikely to radically
improve any time soon.
All the same, they, at least, resist the cheap thrills of La-la Land
-- the inane outlook that all is going just fine since one can gas up
and drive over to WalMart or MacDonald's any time that they please or,
as an alternative, sit in a vapid stupor before the boob-tube. They
refuse to be lulled into thinking that all is well simply because their
day to day circumstances seem roughly unchanged for the moment. They
do know what is coming and they refuse to accept that vision without
a huge exertion to soften its consequences. All considered, we owe each
and every one of these heroes and heroines a great debt of gratitude.
Emily Spence lives in Massachusetts and deeply cares about the future
of our world.
Please do not include any of my contact data. Thank you. It is Emily
Spence, 22 Elm Street, North Grafton, MA USA 01536, Tel: (347) 217-1948,
[email protected]