The future (Part 4)
Inequality and overpopulation have been the first two major problems the world and mankind face, that have been talked about. The next one I will talk about is pollution. Often connected to the last issue of overpopulation. Something I will comment on a bit later.
So what is pollution? To find the definition I found the Wikipedia page for pollution. The definition is, "The introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change." That was easy! Reading on I found out that I am way over my head, trying to cover this in a blog. And this is why: "Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light. Pollutants, the components of pollution, can be either foreign substances/energies or naturally occurring contaminants. Major forms of pollution include: Air pollution, light pollution, littering, noise pollution, plastic pollution, soil contamination, radioactive contamination, thermal pollution, visual pollution, water pollution."
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution
This is deeper than bad behavior. Basically humans interact with nature in two major ways. We gather resources, probably on a bigger scale than nature can provide. And we pollute as part of processing, use, or discard those resources. This means we can't have a civilization without pollution, and we have to live with the guilt of pollution. I think this is one reason so many ignore or deny environmental problems. The problem is just too big.
Better to give up then? Accepting it, ignoring it, or assuming it just go away, is probably a comfortable way of handling it. But it obviously not going to be solved that way, and it may even shorten the time, until your own life is face to face with the inevitable.
Ok, so recycle, drive less, fly less, eat less meat. We all know what we can do. It's hard, and not very fun. Even if you can't manage all, try to do some. This problem isn't just up to individuals, even if we all should try to do some.
A lot of the problem is on a national, global and even economical level. We need to switch fossil energy for renewable, and the world is on its way. Green energy is setting records every year, and wind and solar is on everybody's lips. But this may not even be the biggest problem. I am from Norway. I and my countrymen got all we need, and we are envied by the hole world. Yet we still want economic growth. We NEED economic growth! Why? Because stagnation or negative growth will give a recession. A negative growth won't just give us a lower standard of living. It will give mass unemployment and a broken economy. We live in a system where constant growth is the only way to keep it health. And to grow we need to produce more, buy more, use more... pollute more. We actually need a new economic system, if we want to save the world from pollution. I may go deeper into the economic system in a later blog.
But now back to overpopulation. I often read comment about solving pollution with population control. The logic being, less people, less pollution. What I read between the lines are, "If those people don't exist, I can keep living like I do". So completely self-centered and unwilling to chip in. My reply to this mindset, is that it's human thinking power that will solve all our problems. The more people that are free from the fight for survival, the more people that get access to education and knowledge, the more thinking power humanity got to use on science, research, technology, ideas and solution. This thinking power isn't only gone solve pollution and energy problems. They gone improve everybody's standard of living, without a necessary correlation on resources needed and pollution made. Most people think standard of living is equal to wealth. And even if that is true at one point in time, think about all the technological most people have access to in their life today, that King Louis XVI with all his wealth had to live without. Money can give you the best available at this point in time, but thinking power will give even better possibilities for everyone at a later time. And the speed we get there get shorter for every human free to take us there.
That's why I think the more humans that exist, the better, but they need access to food, shelter, healthcare and education, and if the rich need to use a bit less of everything to solve this, we all will profit in the end!