Global warming, population growth, resource depletion and pollution - all of them share a common element that we're going to have to change if we're going to save this planet. They all are fueled by a myopic, self-destructive way of thinking that has plagued us for decades. We have to go back to a different way of thinking, a long past time, when posterity was an essential factor in our thinking.
In the the post WWII years, the issue of posterity began to fade from our way of life. We became self-absorbed, thought in terms of the "here and now" and "how much and more." We so filled our world with our immediate wants that we left no room for the needs of those who would have to follow us, who would inherit our world. As Lewis Lapham suggested, our society became unhinged in the early 70's when we began to equate wealth with virtue.
When wealth becomes a dominant value or virtue it motivates us to pursue growth. Because we see wealth of itself as virtue, how we achieve that growth is less relevant. The end surely justifies the means, right? Today it's all about growth whether that is in the form of larger workforces or increased production or more and better clothes on our backs of bigger houses, bigger cars and yachts.
This seemingly universal thirst for growth has afflicted us as individuals and as societies and nations. Look at Canada. Our government encourages immigration as a means to grow our population, ensuring an ever greater number of future taxpayers to fund what we, today, think we'll need. Who is going to provide for these future generations?
If you're reading this you have a computer. Take a minute and find a spectacular NASA photo of the earth taken from space. From a distance of thousands of miles our planet is a stunningly beautiful place. But the earth you see from the moon landing pictures of the 60's and the earth you would see from there today is pretty much the same, at least in size.
We're not growing the earth because we cannot. We are not growing non-renewable resources because they're, well, non-renewable. We're not creating more air to breathe, more water to drink or more land to till. In fact, we're rapidly depleting or degrading many of these core elements of life itself and yet we still cling to the pursuit of growth.
The United States of America just passed the 300-million population mark. That population is expected to grow to 400-million by 2050. Some time ago I read a study that suggested another 100,000 Americans had the environmental footprint of a million new Africans. Why? Because Americans live better and consume more resources and products. They drive cars, fly to distant holiday spots, have 3.5 TVs and consume vast amounts of meat and delicacies. A hundred million Americans equals a billion third-worlders, that is to say another India or another China.
I doubt the situation is much different up here in Canada and yet we are determined to grow, every day, in every way. Imagine a sea of lemmings racing toward the cliff's edge. See any similarities?
It's not just us rich folks who have an insatiable bent for growth. Look at India or China or most of Africa. Those people have it a lot rougher than we do in the privileged west but that doesn't mean they don't want to consume more today than they consumed yesterday. Their populations continue to grow, rapidly, and they need more of everything because they have so many more in need. Precisely because they don't have the resources of the wealthier societies, they deplete what they have much more quickly. Water becomes scarce and what there is becomes contaminated. Once-fertile farmland becomes exhausted and, incapable of supporting plant life, dries up and turns to desert.
When we ignore posterity, we avoid seeing the growing dangers. Instead we look to quick fixes. We learn to be more efficient at food production, for example, getting constantly higher yields per acre; using better fertilizers and herbicides; improving our transportation systems to get more food to the consumer before it goes off. We just keep increasing our dependence on these quick fixes instead of considering how we can cope when these fixes run out, when they no longer work, when the problems outgrow the fixes.
What of the coming generations, those who will be charged with providing comfort and security for our generation in the immediate future? How much growth will be necessary to play this shell game for them? Where will they come up with the quick fixes they'll need to keep their societies going smoothly? Unfortunately they're going to have to figure that out for themselves because we can't be bothered to help them even as we expect them to help us. Neat trick, eh?
Posterity is really nothing much more than inter-generational harmony. It's an existing generation, the one that is in the decision-making position, recognizing what future generations will need and accommodating the future in the present. We have to accomodate the future in the present because we won't be around in the future. Those future generations - our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren and their children in turn - need us to be making these accomodations for them right now. If we don't, they'll pay dearly for our selfishness and neglect.
When our pursuit of wealth blinds us to this truth, wealth becomes a malignancy not a virtue.
How do we accomodate these generations yet to come? The key is to accept that we, all of us, at all levels - individuals, communities, nations - have a duty to posterity. Just as so many generations past built the society that serves us so generously today, so must we ensure that the foundations for a healthy society will exist for those who will follow us. That's a grand statement but how do we achieve that goal?
We have to break our addiction to growth. We have to learn to do with less. As James Lovelock would put it, we have to give up the illusion of "sustainable growth" and embrace the necessity of "sustainable retreat." We don't have to go back to living in mud huts but we have to realize that we must shift the focus to our needs, not our wants. We have to find our accomodation of posterity, our contribution to future generations, in the gap between our needs and our wants. How well we adapt to this new reality will be reflected in the world we leave behind us.
Some of this adaptation will be of necessity. Soaring gasoline prices this summer caused a drop in demand for big SUVs and an increase in demand for fuel-efficient, economy cars. There are still, however, plenty of folks who continue to drive their Hummers to the store for groceries.
We can't be building 5000 square foot houses for two people. They consume too many resources in construction and far too much energy to heat and cool. We have to discover that we can live modestly - in comfort.
We need to take real action to address global warming. Better we do it now while we can have maximum control over the process than to wait until the cost and consequences of extreme weather conditions take our options away from us. The sooner we get on with it, the more we're going to save and the easier the time we'll have of it in decades to come. It's like a contagion in its nature. You have to go after it aggressively now because, if you don't, it will surely spread.
We need to understand that there are powerful forces that are even now working furiously to try to prevent us from attacking global warming. These are the forces of the "here and now" of the "how much and more". They have names like Exxon and they're working hard to throw you off track.
Think I'm making this up? Do a couple of Google searches on "global warming" and see how many, many climate change denial sites pop up. They're all over the place because there are enormously powerful and wealthy companies who see it in their best interests to fund these miserable sites.
In coming posts I'll get into more detail on the global warming denial industry. It's time to fight back hard against these people. They need to be dragged out from behind the cover of their fake institutes and bogus foundations and brought out into the light where we can all get a real good look at them and see them for what they are. They're waging a war against you and yours. We have to hit back.
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