THE CONTEXT FOR PERSONAL ACTION
What if, by some miracle, the problems of global climate heating are solved, and harmful greenhouse gases are eliminated. If so, the nearly universal goals of the nations of the world remain to increase goods and services everywhere, to support healthier and longer lives, and to make it easier to travel more and farther–even to Mars. But all these activities still require energy, whether sourced from fossil fuels; nuclear fission or fusion; hydro, solar, or wind power; or hydrogen cells.
Ah, there’s the rub. All useful energy, whatever its source, ultimately leads to the consumption of earthly materials. Additionally, the extraction and disposal of the waste both of producing energy and of providing more goods and services places huge demands on the Earth’s land, waters, and biota. This results in greater disruption of already endangered natural ecological networks such as biodiversity and oceanic pollution.
An even greater problem is that human population now exceeds 8 billion and is projected to reach nearly 11 billion in 2100 (It was only a little over 2 billion when I was born. It reached 4 billion–half of today’s number in 1974, 6 billion in 1999.). However, no untapped agricultural lands and irrigation waters are available; and new agricultural technologies which temporarily refuted Malthus’s gloomy projections have run their course. The most dramatic agricultural innovation of the last decades has been the “green revolution,” which depends on fossil fuels as fertilizers and results in the depletion of the organic character of natural soils and in extensive monoculture of a few crops. Thus, we must again consider Malthus’s major thesis today. Can food production and distribution keep pace with continued population growth? Can 11 billion people be supported by new agricultural technologies? Are, grazing lands, water and soils for growing food still adequate? Possibly more important, is there still time to implement new “green” technologies before millions, maybe billions, of people starve?
The big question remains: How will we face the future? I believe that within the next two or three decades, catastrophes of a magnitude and frequency, almost unimaginable today, will occur. And the lives of every person on Earth will change radically in unforeseen ways. Ultimately, each of us must ask our self how can I express my deepest human feelings when the world’s ecosystems, in which I am embedded, are collapsing around me?