By now, most of us recognize that our
planet is facing environmental catastrophe in the coming century.
It's not a pleasant thought, but at this point a vast majority of us
have come to terms with this inconvenient truth, and those who deny
it in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus seem increasingly
out of touch with reality. The public now recognizes that those who
do so typically do so either because they have personal, vested
interests in fossil fuel use, or because they are paranoid conspiracy
theorists who place little value in science. The time to argue the
existence of climate change is done, and it is clearly time to act.
My generation largely came to terms with this years ago; we have
adopted this cause as our own, and now it is simply a matter of
getting everyone else on board.
Those of us who are now picking up the
reigns of power from the Baby Boomers recognize that it will be up to
us to clean up the mess that they have left us. This is not to say
that it has been exclusively the fault of the previous generation
that we are currently standing on a climatic knife edge – everyone
has had a part to play since the time of the Industrial Revolution.
However, the insatiable lust for economic growth that has driven the
previous generation, and the willingness to sacrifice our long-term
prosperity for their own short-term gains, has left deeper scars on
the world than any other generation has ever inflicted. It will take
a change in our thinking, and most likely a new generation at the
helm, to undo many of the policies and practices that have lead us to
this point. The entire system that has been engineered to bring us to
this point is deeply flawed, and so we must be unafraid to question
it on a fundamental level. Capitalism itself, which at its core is
driven by consumption, teaches us that this is the only way to find
fulfilment, but many now recognize how deeply flawed this mentality
is, and how destructive its ramifications can be. Yes, a free market
offers an explosion of choice that a Communist state cannot, and for
this it has been celebrated for the past century, but we let this
obscure our ability to see its flaws. As a result, they have run
rampant, and today we are facing the hard consequences. Perhaps it is
because of this that we are starting to recognize where improvements
must be made, and we are mustering the nerve to make them, in spite
of the challenges that this may pose.
We need not grow our civilization at
the expense of the environment...indeed, we can no longer afford to.
This is at the core of what we are now learning, and as a result,
technologies and social policies are emerging that look to stimulate
growth in sustainable ways. Nature provides us with many solutions
and alternatives, but only recently have we been driven to consider
them. Now that we are, we are discovering that they do work in
practice, and that if we can only wean ourselves from the poisoned
teat of the oil industry, we will survive and flourish. In the end,
our ability to do so boils down to 3 factors: resources, energy, and
the political will to adapt quickly as better means of producing both
are discovered. It is only the latter that we are currently lacking.
As it happens, technology is
increasingly able to make better use of the resources we have, with
innovations announced every week. Scientists have developed
innovative ways to extract resources from environments previously
considered too hostile (including asteroids), make consumer goods
more biodegradable, create valuable resources from what were
previously considered waste materials, and process those wastes too
toxic for recycling into inert and harmless by-products. There are
technologies for high-efficiency water purification and desalination
with a minimal energy cost, for farming vast amounts of produce
indoors without the need to clear forests for farm land, and for
producing animal protein synthetically, without the need for factory
farming. If these were all widely implemented, all of humanity's
basic needs could be accommodated, at a fraction of the economic and
environmental costs that it would cost in today's terms.
Perhaps it is energy however that is
the more fundamental part of this equation, as all of our technology
and innovation must have reliable and non-polluting energy sources if
we are to have any hope of sustainability. A society can remake
itself with clean and energy efficient homes and businesses, but if
the power plants that fuel them spew toxins into the atmosphere, all
this does little good. Luckily, science is advancing rapidly in this
area as well. Today, the options are many and rapidly increasing in
terms of how to draw energy from our environment, and most of these
options become more efficient with each passing year. Enough sunlight
falls on the surface of the Earth every hour to satisfy global energy
needs for an entire year, and we are beginning to unlock this
potential, but in addition there is wind, geo-thermal, biofuels,
nuclear fission, and the holy grail, nuclear fusion. If we were to
fashion region-specific energy plans with tailor-made combinations of
these technologies, in tandem with legislation mandating
energy-efficient consumer devices and energy-efficient manufacturing
processes, our global energy woes would soon be over. While there is
no single substitute in weaning ourselves from fossil fuels (yet), it
does become possible with a more diverse approach, utilizing every
innovation at hand. This way, if a certain strategy or technology
becomes more advanced and desirable, a country need not completely
overhaul a power grid to embrace this technology, but may instead
merely shift the mix to include a higher proportion as time goes on.
Eventually, fusion promises to supply humanity with near infinite
power at minimal cost, but until then a diverse energy mix would be a
wise strategy.
Nuclear fission power has been
demonized, but it is an option that we cannot afford to reject based
on fear alone, if we hope to bridge the gap to the perfection of
fusion. The media enjoys playing up the dangers of fission in order
to gain publicity, but despite all the media attention given to
incidents such as those at Chernobyl and Fukushima, there are far,
far fewer deaths attributable to nuclear power than there are to coal
and oil. Furthermore, the newest generation of reactors are orders of
magnitude safer than those of thirty years ago, often running on
entirely different nuclear fuels. Thorium reactors, for example, have
a number of advantages over traditional uranium or plutonium-based
reactors. They cannot be used to create weapons-grade material, they
have zero chance of meltdown, and thorium is widely available. It is
theorized that widespread conversion to thorium reactors would lead
to complete energy independence in any country that did so.
Nonetheless, they are merely one option in a broad palette of alternative options to fossil fuels, each of which should be explored fully.
To do all this, of course, requires
the aforementioned political will. In a perfect world, politicians
would always have the interests of the public in mind, but
unfortunately we don't live in that world. In many places, due to the
influence of the marketplace and of lobby groups, politicians must
think about their own bottom line if they want to win elections, and
as such, corporate interests often trump public ones. This is simply
unavoidable in a capitalist system, and so although maintaining a
healthy society requires the ability to adapt to new technologies
quickly, old systems are often left until they stagnate, because
vested corporate interests fight any change that they cannot profit
from. This simple fact sums up the essence of why corporate interests
have no place in the public sphere, near essential services, or
mixing with politics in general. Private profit, for them, will
always come before the public good, and in an individual (which
corporations insist they are), we would describe this as sociopathy.
I wouldn't vote for a sociopath, I wouldn't want one talking in the
ear of any politician I do vote for, and I certainly wouldn't want
one making public policy. True progress is going to require striking
out in new directions, not dwelling in the past, and it is my hope
that the next generation will be the one capable of truly
understanding that. If our political systems are stagnating, then we,
the public, must become involved and force change, or risk watching
as our societies collapse under the weight of their own decadence and
complacency.
I don't want to sound like a downer - I'm truly hopeful that we can bring about change, but we must face the hard consequences of inaction if we are to be motivated to do so. We can't afford to rest on our laurels anymore in the Western world, and as the first generation to face a poorer economic outlook than the previous one, we should understand this. If we want prosperity, we have to fight for it, and recognize that true, long-term prosperity is synonymous with sustainability.
