Friday, December 10, 2010
In the Land of the Blind...
There are finite resources we have at our disposal. At the same time, the human population has a net growth rate of 229 thousand people a day. Every day, the people that already exist use more and more resources than they did, on average, than the day before.
We are living in an unsustainable way. Environmentalism isn't a matter of being liberal or conservative. However, denial is all to often a choice made by many. We as a species have an abysmal record of looking to the future and dealing with problems like this. We tend to be incredibly shortsighted. Sure, we knew how to create a tsunami warning system for the indian ocean. However, it would have cost us tens of millions of dollars to install and implement.
So we didn't. Then after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed a quarter of a million people and did untold billions of dollars of damage we decided maybe we should put one up after all.
I'm reminded of Jared Diamond's excellent book "Collapse" and his observations. He wondered if there was anyone on Easter Island who felt a bit uneasy as they cut down the last tree on the island to make the mechanisms to create/move their statues dedicated to their gods.
This sort of behavior happens over and over. History is littered with cultures that used of their resources and died because of it. In the past, this was limited to groups, tribes or at most nations like the Inca Empire. However, what we're looking at now is something much larger and much more devastating.
What would you pay to save society as we know it?
We are living in an unsustainable way. Environmentalism isn't a matter of being liberal or conservative. However, denial is all to often a choice made by many. We as a species have an abysmal record of looking to the future and dealing with problems like this. We tend to be incredibly shortsighted. Sure, we knew how to create a tsunami warning system for the indian ocean. However, it would have cost us tens of millions of dollars to install and implement.
So we didn't. Then after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed a quarter of a million people and did untold billions of dollars of damage we decided maybe we should put one up after all.
I'm reminded of Jared Diamond's excellent book "Collapse" and his observations. He wondered if there was anyone on Easter Island who felt a bit uneasy as they cut down the last tree on the island to make the mechanisms to create/move their statues dedicated to their gods.
This sort of behavior happens over and over. History is littered with cultures that used of their resources and died because of it. In the past, this was limited to groups, tribes or at most nations like the Inca Empire. However, what we're looking at now is something much larger and much more devastating.
What would you pay to save society as we know it?
