How to stop Global Warming: our choice.
What is behind climate change?
Climate change is a result of our non-sustainable economy. It's more than just the problem of fossil fuel emissions. History shows that when people find a resource, they are apt to exploit it with little regard for the consequences.
Why do we tolerate a non-sustainable economy?
Why do humans have so little foresight? Why do we commit ourselves to an economy based on fossil fuels when we all know that it cannot last? Why? Because we are greedy and selfish. What else do you call it when someone consumes (a) more than they need and (b) more than their fair share of the world's resources?
More than we need?
We may try to justify our levels of consumption as being necessary, but the truth is, physically at least, all we need is food, clothes and shelter.
We might want more, but we don't need it.
More than our fair share?
It is estimated that if everybody in the world consumed at the rate we do, we would need between five and twenty Earths to support us.
Do we want a 'fair' world?
I want a fair world. I don't want to live in a 'dog-eat-dog' world where bullies and tyrants rule. However, there are those that feel that a fair world would not be in their interests. They want to hang onto whatever advantages or privileges they have. They claim that it is the natural scheme of things for the 'strong' to dominate the 'weak'. They claim that their advantages are the reward for being more 'competitive'.
The conclusion to this line of 'thought' is that we should all fight eachother for the world's resources and 'to the victor the spoils'.
So here's a choice:
- We carry on regardless. The world continues to heat up. Crops around the globe fail. Food prices rise. Stock markets collapse. Unemployment becomes universal. People at home and abroad begin to starve. Only the rich can afford to eat. Hungry people with nothing to lose stop at nothing to find food. Bloodshed ensues. The 'weaker' ones perish. Perhaps for a while the 'stronger' survive until finally the environment can no longer support even them. Humans shuffle off into extinction along with most of the other lifeforms, leaving the Earth to the ants and the algae.
- We wake up from our silly dreams of winning the rat-race. We admit that we were a bit stupid and selfish. In a spirit of loving kindness we pledge to ensure that no one in the world ever goes without the necessities of life and we resolve to curb our competitive instincts so that no one need live in fear of the backstabbing bullies. Secure in this knowledge, we find it easy to cut unnecessary consumption and with the concerted efforts of a united world, the warming trends are reversed. Mankind lives on in peace with fellow man, and in harmony with nature, free to pursue its higher goals.
Before you roll your eyes and dismiss this as new-age claptrap, consider this: Our present evolutionary strategy, dog-eat-dogism, cannot solve our present problems: it is the cause of them. In this rat race, there is no spaceship waiting on the finish line to take the victors off to some new garden of Eden. Either we all win, or we all lose. Which will it be?
Choose wisely.