No matter what we do or how we do it, with 7+ billion people clamoring for 'power' we are going to compromise what is left of the Earth's viable biosphere--which is exactly what we can't afford to do. Any action we do take in these numbers amounts to smoking in the cancer ward. With about 6.5 billion fewer people, none of this would be much of a problem, but projections run to the population's topping out at anywhere from 20-50 billion before we're done exploding, population-wise.
--But oh yeah, that's coming, one way or the other. Pursuing a global and unsustainable agenda means that at some point vast numbers of people have to die of starvation, war, plague and poison. Either we limit our own population, or Mother Nature, the Unforgiving One, will do it for us. I can’t tell you how sad this makes me, for my son, for all of our children.
The dirty deals have been made in board rooms as a matter of course, and we all are suffering the consequences.
Here's me wondering what the plan is for the ultra-rich to
escape the hellscape, now that they've played the ultra-largest role in
creating it. I have a friend who claims
that the billionaires are in fact concerned about all this, and want to do
something about it, but I can't believe they won't be following an
escape-the-consequences action plan as a default. This is what spoiled children and adults do,
and the corporate economy has been ultra-protected from the consequences of its
own actions for a long time, buying in exchange for cash the illusion of
creating lasting wealth for their countries.
The dark sci-fi author in me is picturing an orbiting space
colony from which the ultra-rich can watch the rest of us perish from a biologically
engineered anti-human microbe (in my book, they don't enjoy this, but do see it
as a necessary evil) . Unlike the Black
Plague, this microbe goes away as soon as the last earth-walking human
does. Then the obscenely 'rich' return
in triumph to inhabit the few islands of purity left.
But wait—even in this scenario, radical reversal of the
damage done would be necessary. If no
man is an island, then no island is an island, either--if you follow. Islands are intimately connected to the rest
of the ecosphere. 'Escape' would just be
buying time and nothing more. At some
point we all have to clean up our mess and, what’s more and what’s crucial,
rebuild the Earth's original fertility--not commandeer even more of it to
produce energy, even if labeled 'green' energy.
On some level, some of even the ultra-rich have to know that, even
though they (and many of us) have defined 'success' and 'wealth' in certain
specific ways that utterly exclude the most basic and necessary
consideration--the long-term health of the Ecosystem.
In other words, for a global economy based on replacing Nature
(the Life that makes possible our lives) with resource extraction and artificial
construction, all bets are off—but almost everybody still wants to keep gambling. Though we may be doing so more soberly,
kindly or gently—all bets are off. All
bets are off. We must not only return to
Nature, but return Nature to ourselves, first.
A huge job. A global job. But not one we can do with the same tools
that got us in this mess in the first place.
One last thought: the Ecosystem is the biggest problem in
the world, because it IS the world.
