Our Generation's Cause

 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.