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Chris Staysniak
HR300 Progress and its Critics
Prof. Hodgson and Prof. Dykeman
November 23, 2008
It’s the End of the World as We Know it…and I Feel Fine
Humanity is at a most critical juncture in time. Looking at the facts as they are, the global
community currently finds itself situated at the precipice of disaster on a scale previously
unimaginable that must be understand as the most serious obstacle the next generations will have
to face. The reason for this looming crisis is that the world of today, with all of its advances and
wealth, is the fruit of unsustainable practices in regards to the use of the world’s environment
and natural resources. The result is a planet that stressed to its limits, and verging on various
levels of ecological collapse that may pull the rug out from underneath civilization and society
on a worldwide scale; leading to chaos, upheaval, and a regression of any notion of progress for
the human race. Looking into the 21st century the imperative question facing mankind is how to
grapple with the consequences of creating a world built off of “ecological credit,” and how to act
before it is too late and everyone has to pay, regardless of the role they played in exploiting and
depleting all that this earth has to offer. It is a time where everyone must become an
environmentalist, and become mindful of the impact their lives have on this planet and those
around them before the basis for life itself buckles and gives out under the burden of current
practices and trends.
One of the rallying cries of modern environmental and sustainability movements today is
the famed seventh generation rule that dictated much of the decision making for the First Nation
peoples of the Iroquois Confederacy. This guideline stated that, “In every deliberation we must
consider the impact on the seventh generation.” This rule, as it does now, provides a simple
model of sustainable thinking. For the Iroquois nation, it was a reminder to tribal leaders to
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practice a greater degree of mindfulness and purpose when making large decisions, especially in
respects to the utilization of the bounty that the earth had to offer. Thus, their actions would not
imperil future generations and ensure the continued survival and progress of their tribe and
people. Today, seventh generation-type concepts provides a model for sustainable thinking and
planning. It forces individuals and especially leaders to think and plan harder more thoroughly
up front, as to not mortgage the fate of tomorrow’s generations with short-sighted actions and
utilizations of necessary resources today.
Unfortunately, the present world as it is has not been fashioned on similar principles of
sustainability. Rather, the current state of the planet is the result of practices and structural
systems that are largely antithetical to notions of sustainability and environmental awareness.
Seventh generation planning is a pariah in a world economy that operates on a quarter-to-quarter
basis, where any decrease in profits over a three-month period is seen as a failure. Furthermore,
much of today’s population has entered a state of alienation in regards to nature. There is a lack
of understanding of how one’s own personal or even national consumption may affect the planet,
and as such, affect everyone else around them and everyone in years to come. Between the
current systems of natural resource utilization, and a general ignorance of its impact, the result
has been a dangerous anti-conservation cocktail that has had awfully detrimental affects on the
planet.
No one will argue that the 20th and 21st centuries have been times of great advances and
progress. Technology has progressed exponentially. The standard of living worldwide has been
significantly elevated, and the worldwide economy has expanded exponentially, especially since
World War II. Between 1950 and 1999 alone, the gross world product jumped 583 percent from
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six trillion dollars to forty-one trillion dollars, and the per capita GWP still almost tripled from
$2,500 in 1950 to $6,750 in by the end of the century. 1
Though the fiscal returns of recent history have been almost mind-boggling, they have
not come without a price and a cost. The economic growth, progress, and creation of the current
global society has been underwritten by the over-exploitation of the totality of the planet’s
resources and ecosystems, as this mismanagement has strained the planet and ecologically
assailed it on all fronts. Even the most peripheral of glances at the effects and consequences of
humanity’s manipulation of the earth reveals that right now mankind is riding a ship into stormy
ecological seas at full speed. It is a time where humanity must take action, weather the storm at
hand, or continue its present course until the ship of human civilization is swallowed whole by
something much larger than itself.
While this sort of street corner, soapbox prophet rhetoric has its merit; it is in the cold
hard facts that the gravity of the situation can truly be seen. These statistics allow one to begin to
grasp the scale of the damage that has been done to the earth, and the possible impending
disastrous consequences that may strike in future decades to come. To further highlight the
seriousness of the planet’s peril the favorite bloody shirt of environmental activists and pundits,
global warming and climate change, will be largely excluded from the discussion. Instead, the
danger the earth, and subsequently mankind, is in will be illustrated through some interconnected
and dependent ecological venues less studied and focused upon on a level of national
consciousness; deforestation, over fishing the world’s oceans, freshwater supplies, and the
depletion of the worlds limited oil supplies. Though viewed as lesser threats than rising oceans
and increased incidences of extreme weather, these four natural spheres alone have enough
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potential to seriously impact and jeopardize the fate of man should their over utilization be taken
too far.
The overview of ecological strain and destruction non-sustainable practices have
wrought on the earth begins with the phenomenon of deforestation. Whether it is for new
pastureland, cash crops, suburban developments, or to make toothpicks, the tree coverage of the
planet has taken a tremendous hit, especially in the last one hundred years. first off, this should
be a disturbing trend for everyone aware of it, considering how trees act as, among other things,
“the lungs of the planet,” 2 providing so much of the oxygen necessary for life. Everyone seems
to be a big fan of oxygen, but the benefits of forests and trees don’t just stop with their
production of that which fills our lungs each and every moment we are alive. Trees serve to
stabilize local climates, preserve wildlife habitat, prevent soil erosion, sustain soil nutrient levels,
and provide enough medicines such that rainforests in particular are known as “the pharmacy of
the future.” 3 Yet, in light of these benefits and necessary roles, the planet’s wooded areas are still
under constant continued assault, spearheaded by lumbering corporations that can quickly and
efficiently eradicate forests to meet the needs of companies, nations, and people, alike. In the
place of lively, important ecosystems, one is left instead with barren, useless, dead moonscapelike landscapes that serve to embody and symbolize much of the stresses that pain the planet at
present.
The sheer volume of trees lost is daunting. Though forests still cover an estimated thirty
percent of the world’s surface, every year swathes the size of Panama, approximately 30,000
square miles, are lost, mostly to multinational lumbering corporations. 4 Since the beginning of
the twentieth century alone, over twenty percent of the world’s forested area has been removed,
as what was five billion hectares of world forest cover in the year 1900 has shrunk to just under
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3.9 billion hectares in only a hundred year’s time. 5 More specifically, at current rates of
deforestation, the entirety of the world’s rainforests will completely vanish in slightly less than a
century’s as well, 6 exterminating one of the most diverse and important ecosystems on the planet
and wiping out countless species of plants, animals, and creating a food chain collapse with
unknown effects.
Not only does the chopping down of entire forests radically change and shape the land
once occupied by trees, it can also serve to ruin an area's very climate and weather partners, too.
Forests keep soil moist by holding in water, and also tree cover regulates temperature and
perpetuates and facilitates the water cycle by helping to return vapor back into the atmosphere.
Without their presence, soils are quick to dry up, and rain patterns are subject to swift decreases
and changes. Thus, in many documented areas of deforestation “many former forest lands can
quickly become barren deserts.” 7 In the wake of many a lumbering venture, forests can not and
do not grow back on their own, and more often than not wastelands and scrublands take their
place. In former thriving ecosystems, one is instead left with hostile environments unable to
support much life of any sort; and animals, plants, and humans suffer alike.
The ripple effects just from cutting down a few (million) trees do not stop there. Further
results from deforestation include the loss of protection that trees and forests provide as a buffer
to storms, winds, and floods. This is because trees and their extensive root systems anchor the
ground that they grow in. This helps prevent soil erosion, and when storms strike trees help
prevent large scale flooding and the washing away of the earth and everything else upon it. But,
as large scale unsustainable deforestation has continued unabated, in recent years, nations like
Madagascar, Haiti, the Philippines, and China have all suffered greater than normal death tolls
and damage from storm related surges and flooding in heavily deforested areas. 8 While some of
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these governments have since moved to put a moratorium on felling trees in areas now at risk, in
many of these places the damage has been done and for the detriment of all, those lands now
barren of trees have been irrevocably altered and changed.
Though the effects of the loss of the world’s forests are troubling, including the loss of
oxygen sources, the shifting of climate patterns, and increased damage from flooding, no less
frightening and alarming than the disappearance of forests are the emptying of the oceans. Much
like the forests and woods of the planet, current human trends and practices have led to nothing
less than an ecological holocaust, as the fruit of the oceans is being harvested past the point of
rejuvenation, without chance of natural recovery. Fisheries that have feed people for thousands
of years now face depletion, exhaustion, and collapse without opportunity for revitalization.
Fishers across the world, from the largest commercial trawlers to the smallest, subsistence
fishing family are discovering that the once inexhaustible oceans and its seemingly endless
wealth of food are increasingly empty, with untold and unimagined possible consequences for a
world in which its oceans are picked clean of life beneath its surface.
Over-fishing to meet increased population growth, mounting demands for seafood
worldwide (between 2006 and 2007 alone U.S fish sales jumped seven percent), 9 and to keep up
with similar growing needs for smaller fish as use for protein supplement in agriculture feed has
pushed the known fisheries of the world to their limit. With the vast majorities of known major
fisheries on the brink of collapse, so, too are several oceanic ecosystems, threatening the
untargeted fish, sea mammals, and birds caught up in the scavenging of the oceans.
Much of this is situation is due to the capabilities of modern commercial fishing fleets,
now able to cleanse the seas more efficiently than ever before. Larger ships are able to use the
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most modern technology to harness the greatest possible catch, leading to many areas formerly
bursting with swarms of fish to become barren swathes of salt water with as much life as a
common swimming pool. One of the most harmful and indiscriminate of these methods is
bottom trawling, in which huge ships literally coat the ocean floor with gigantic nets capable of
catching almost anything in its path. Not only does this method lead to increased overfishing, but
also increased waste, as up to eighty percent of everything caught by bottom trawlers is
discarded back into the sea dead and dying, encouraging the collapse of marine life. 10
The results have been devastating, and the state of the oceans is grim. Over seventy five
percent of the world’s fish are fully exploited or entering a state of shrinkage and depletion.
Large predatory fish have, on average, have had their average populations reduced by over
ninety percent. 11 These trends all work to push the oceans to a dangerous tipping point past that
it may never recover from. The depletion of fish in the oceans has been further exacerbated by
other consequences of unsustainable practices in relation to the environment by humans. One of
the most biting of these trends is the continued dumping of sewage, waste, and runoff into the
world’s rivers and oceans. The pollution either poisons the water with toxins so nothing can live
in it, or clouds it to the point where aquatic life is literally choked to death and cannot breath.
Between over fishing and the smothering and poisonous effects from industrial, sewage, and
fertilizer runoff, the executive director of the United Nations Environmental Program noted,
“Each of these pressures is bad enough in itself, but together, the cocktail is proving more
lethal.” 12
Furthermore, due to the complex, interconnected nature of ecosystems, when one species
is diminished enough may suffer greatly as well. If one fish were to become extinct, fish
dependent on it follow suit, and so on and so on, precipitating a domino effect of death and
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extinction from which there is little hope for escape once it begins. While humanity continues to
take from the oceans more than can be replaced, it pushes the seas to a point where the oceans
themselves will be beyond recovery. It is a very real threat that eventual feedback mechanisms
born of mass extinction will kick in and help cleanse the salt waters of the earth of life more
efficiently and with more finality than any bottom trawler ever could, which will reverberate all
the way up the food chain to the humans who find themselves on top.
In a sign of the interrelated nature of the devastation of non sustainable practices on the
worth, the emptying of the world’s seas is further encouraged by deforestation. Upwards of
ninety percent of all fish in the ocean rely on the likes of coastal wetlands and mangrove swamps
as spawning areas in which they can breed and lay eggs and ensure the continued viability of
their stock and species. 13 Yet with the loss of over half of these important environmental areas to
commercial development and deforestation, the rapid decrease in fish stocks is only quickened.
These facts all seem to point to the all too real possibility of ecological bankruptcy in the
world’s oceans, with bon- chilling repercussions. As unsustainable, more profitable methods of
harvesting the waves prevail, the future could see the eventual loss of millions upon millions of
jobs for all those affected at some level by a collapsing fishing industry. But more troubling in
respects to the emptying of the seas is the possible loss of the oceans as a food source, and the
risk such an ecological collapse would pose to humanity as an ever increasing population would
have to deal with the loss of a primary source of subsistence. Yet even with such consequences,
the fishing industry remains largely a self-regulated industry, not held to any real standards of
sustainability, and the legalized piracy of ocean life continues to overburden a planet in trouble
enough as it is.
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The crosses our planet has been forced to bear by largely abusive and unsustainable
planning and practice does not cease with the disappearing forests or the limited oceans and their
yield. Even potable freshwater is an ever increasingly scarce resource. The basis of life on this
planet, for all intensive purposes, is being overused to the extreme, and in many places the
unthinkable is already beginning to take place as water, freshwater, is running out and supplies
are running dry.
In regards to the state of freshwater in the world, the most recent statistics are sobering, to
say the least. Over thirty countries face water scarcity, also known as a state of water
“insecurity.” This means the majority of individuals in these nations lack enough freshwater to
meet basic needs like that of hydration and hygiene. 14 More than a billion people lack adequate
access to drinking water, 15 and already every fifteen seconds a child somewhere in the world
dies from a water-related disease, making the leading cause of death for children under five
water related diseases, ranging from water-born parasites to diarrhea. 16 While these initial
statistics convey a clear and evident strain on the world’s freshwater resources, still, worldwide
water demand has tripled over the last half century alone to make up for increased population,
increased industrialization, and the expansion of hydroelectric power to meet expanded demands
for electricity. Water demand shows little sign of tapering to a sustainable level in the near
future. 17
With growing water demand in the world, countries and nations have continued
unsustainable employment of limited water supplies and reserves. The overall results have been
the over-pumping of rivers, lakes, and aquifers, planting the seeds for future disaster to bloom. It
has come to the point where aquifers like those that nourish the breadbasket of the United States
Great Plains are beginning to be pumped beyond the point of recovery, once huge lakes have
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vanished off this earth, and a few mighty rivers that used to roar all the way to the open sea now
struggle to the end as a mere babbling brook their initial selves.
For instance, Africa’s Lake Chad, “once a landmark for astronauts circling around the
earth,” 18 is now a hard find, and from space it is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Since the
heyday of the Apollo missions, the body of water has shrunk by ninety-five percent to a puddle
of what it once was. The phenomenon of “disappearing lakes,” has materialized elsewhere, as the
Aral Sea, the Sea of Galilee, and California’s Owen’s Lake either have shrunk to a shadow of
their former selves or have disappeared altogether. 19 Owen’s Lake in California was connected
to the every-thirsty Los Angeles metropolis, and in a short time became nothing more than a salt
flat basin. The Aral Sea, located in Central Asia, has lost over eighty percent of its area in recent
decades. Many ships that once sailed its routes and powered the region's growing commerce and
trade now sit “stranded in the sand of the old seabed-with no water in sight.” 20 Continuing with
victims of unsustainable water practices, it is now a common for the mighty Colorado River to
not reach the ocean. A similar situation has evolved for the Yellow River in China, the Nile in
Egypt, and the Indus and Ganges in India, where massive flowing bodies of water now sucked
dry or reduced to a trickle before they arrive at their ocean destinations. 21
It is estimated by some that at current rates, close to one hundred percent of the available
supply of readily accessible freshwater will be utilized within the next century 22 With the
depletion of freshwater resources and without a radical shift to better sustainable water practices
and management, humanity is faced with a frightening laundry list of related outcomes, all of
which would have significant destabilizing impacts on societies and nations across the planet.
These include a rise in water related diseases, drought, and the possibility of the emergence of
“resource wars;” actual armed conflict between nations and groups over a resource crucial to a
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nation’s continued survival. All of these possibilities represent tremendous road blocks for
progress, and possible death knells to nations and countries and retrogression into chaos.
Another troubling, potentially devastating affect from the depletion of freshwater
supplies are the negative impact on agricultural crop yields. This is because with any significant
downturn in water supplies and water table levels, an “eventual drop in food production is almost
inevitable.” 23 Nations like China and India, already almost maxed out in terms of what their
countries can agriculturally provide and experiencing incredible drops in the amount of usable
water in many places will soon be unable to feed themselves on their own. Hunger, of course, is
one of the great harbingers of instability, civil unrest, and anarchy thrives off an empty stomach.
The only alternative for nations who cannot longer grow enough food for themselves is by
importing from the other great grain producers like the United States. But, this will only serve to
drive up food prices around the world, and adversely affect nations unable to pay the increased
prices of that which their people need to live, spreading hunger, famine, and instability elsewhere
on the planet.
But even the United States, which helps feed so much of the rest of the world, could be
facing decreasing crop yields, due to the exploitation of the Ogallala aquifer that waters the Great
Plains states. 24 Without it, the nation would be unable to feed itself, much less the rest of the
world. Consider that this possible worldwide food shortage may happen in a world already short
of fish. Also, remember that deforestation, which helps exacerbate fish depletion, also hurts the
water cycle and water retention in the earth as well. It all adds up to a world facing a possible
slippery slope of international crisis after international crisis as, unable to bear the weight of
continued exploitation and unsustainable practices, ecological pillar after ecological pillar may
begin to give way.
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It would be near-sighted to speak of the various ecologically tenuous predicament
humanity is facing from over exploitation and a dearth of sustainable planning for the future in
regards to the world’s resources without mentioning the world’s ever present addiction to oil and
energy.. With each passing year, more and more nations look to achieve the standards of living
seen in developed countries where energy usage is at a premium, and everything seems to run on
oil. Oil fuels the world’s cars, composes the world’s plastics, and seems to have a part in all
aspects of developed society. Yet, it is running out at an alarming rate, but little is being done
about the impending exhaustion of known oil supplies, and the unrest and turmoil it is sure to
bring when an addicted society must suddenly quit cold turkey already faced with the other
possible aforementioned obstacles from other areas of environmental strain.
While corporations like Exxon-Mobil continually make record profits that are
unfathomably large, the great oil reserves of the world seem are on their way out. Within the
lifetime of the current generation, it seems very likely that at current levels of usage and
consumption, from the deserts of Saudi Arabia to the sand tar facilities of western Canada, oil
production will peak, decline, and eventually cease as known reserves breath their last and the
lifeblood of developed society today stops pumping. Generous estimates from corporations like
British Petroleum say that at current rates, there are enough “proven” reserve to keep oil flowing
for the next forty years. 25 But other organizations, like the London-based Oil Depletion Analysis
Center, say that in the next four years the earth could reach “peak oil,” where oil consumption
will catch and outstrip the discovery of new oil reserves, and the planet will see a subsequent
steep decline in oil production, with untold affects on the world economy and societies across the
planet. 26
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Yet oil pumping continues, the profits keep pouring in for corporations like Royal Shell
and Chevron, and little real progress is made to wean the world away from its reliance on black
gold, so crucial considering the vital role this increasingly unavailable fossil fuel plays in so
many ways beyond just the fuel that powers cars, jets, and ships. Furthermore, most fertilizers
and pesticides are made from oil, which is of further significance considering humanity is facing
possible crop declines to begin with due to the dropping of water tables, in a world which may
also loose fish as a possible crucial food source. Additionally, almost all plastics, used in
countless ways every single day, are made from oil. Even certain types of clothing are derived
from oil. 27 Considering how much of society today has a petroleum basis, forty years even seems
like a short time to find an alternative basis for that which makes our food, clothes our back, or
helps for the production of everything from alarm clocks to peanut butter jars.
But even this forty-year time frame is valid only at current levels of oil utilization. The
most recent data from the Energy Information Administration of the U.S government estimates
that world energy consumption is set to increase by fifty percent before the year 2030. 28 Even
with this imminent crisis facing humanity, the pumping continues, and instead of a move to
conserve and sustain the world’s resources, society today robs the societies of tomorrow, and
leaves a generation that will be scrambling to find alternatives to make, well, almost everything.
What presents itself, ultimately, is a global situation where it seems that on all fronts, the
fabric of this fragile, worldwide ecosystem and all of its resources are burdened and strained to
the furthest possible threshold. The state of the planet is even more critical considering that this
paper has only touched upon the state of freshwater resources, oil reserves, forests, and ocean
fisheries. Other symptoms of planetary duress, like the mass extinction many animal and plant
species are undergoing, the loss of topsoil from unsustainable farming practices, and the looming
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danger of global warming and climate change, have gone unsaid and unmentioned in these
pages. Yet they are no less a danger to the ecological foundation of sand on which man has built
today’s civilizations.
While no true earth wide calamity has yet to rock the planet and force a drastic change by
necessity amongst mankind, it seems like it is only a matter of time before one of these fronts
experiences a total collapse of sorts. This is especially important considering the works of writers
like Bill McKibben, who remind us that, “there are six billion of us already, a number the world
strains to support. One more near doubling-four or five billion more people-will nearly double
that strain.” 29 As the above facts seems to reveal, the earth is struggling mightily as it is,
receiving little aid from the human race with such a dearth of ecological foresight.
Now, also considering that our planet is an interconnected system, no single one of the
ecological topics touched upon in this paper can be exhausted and depleted in a bubble. The
exceeding of the tipping point in one ecological arena is sure to send ripples to say the least
across the planet. Tree coverage cannot be diminished to certain levels without affect water
levels, as trees help circulate the water cycle, and help keep water in the ground. Likewise, water
table levels and water sources cannot be emptied and not affect fisheries, as rivers that don’t
reach the seas can’t provide the estuaries and coves necessary for so many fish to breed and
spawn. Oil can’t be used up without adversely harming farming output already being adversely
affected by decreasing water tables already strained by increased demand due to the drop in
fishery yields. It is all linked together in one precarious collaboration.
What then unfolds is a tense earth-wide scenario that resembles an over-inflated balloon
that has filled to just before the point of rupture. Even the tiniest pinprick or an errant corner will
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rupture the balloon and what was whole one moment in the blink of an eye will be tatters and
shreds beyond recovery in the next. Likewise, the earth at present in many ways has been
strained to its farthest possible extent on so many fronts and arenas due to over exploitation of all
that it has to offer. With the continuance of current trends and practices, in the next generation
the tiniest ecological pinprick can cause a rupture of the interrelated and interconnected world
system, channeling feedback mechanisms and processes outside of humanity’s control and
leaving in its wake a broken planet that will make even survival itself difficult for billions of
people.
Even with evident strain on so much of the earth, and with the knowledge that if one
pillar falls the entire system faces almost inevitable destruction, the seas are consistently overfished, the jungle are still being felled with greater speed and efficiency, waters are consistently
overused, and oil wells are being pumped dry to fuel cars and make Frisbees and Tupperware
containers. With each passing day of similar trends and patterns, mankind takes another shovel
full of dirt as it digs its own grave.
Even though a revitalized environmental movement, especially in the United States,
continuously gains steam and clout, the problem is that it is only a movement, a
compartmentalized cell on the greater political and ideological spectrum. The size of the problem
at hand calls for a response on a similarly massive scale, one that goes above and beyond a
populace that just slowly buys more compact fluorescent bulbs, uses less and less plastic bags,
and spends less time on the road when gas prices get too high.
What is necessary to stave off environmental and consequently societal disaster and
upheaval before it is too late is a head on approach to the environmental crisis that goes beyond
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isolated thrusts of “going green,” and cutting back. Ultimately, it is the belief of a writer that the
fate of the planet will be made or broken at the individual level, as the buying and consumption
habits of men, women, and children in their totality compromise how much nations and peoples
as a whole take from the earth. For instance, say that the majority of the population switched
from a meat-based diet to one centered on mostly plants and grains. Minimizing meat
consumption alone would be a great boon to the environment, due to the wasteful inefficiency
that comes with meat production. For instance, while it takes sixty gallons of water to produce
one pound of potatoes, it takes seven times that amount, four hundred and twenty gallons, to
produce a pound of chicken. On an even greater extreme, it takes approximately twelve thousand
gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. 30 One can imagine the easing of natural
resources that would occur with a shift away from unsustainable meat-centered diets on a
societal scale. But, to reach that sort of effective critical mass and tipping point that defines a
successful, and long-last social movement and change of any sort requires a high level of
education, and by itself may take an amount of time that humanity cannot spare.
As such, it is up to governments to lead the way, and, alongside an aggressive education
and awareness campaign, spearhead a global movement towards sustainability with mandates,
legislation, and laws to help heavily regulate the use of the earth’s precious resources, and end
the times of minimal or self-regulation in industries like lumbering and fishing. With the wealth
and breadth of resources that only governments can muster, it is up to national leaders to really
be in the vanguard of driving obviously needed change in respects to how humanity engages
with the environment. The types of specific changes needed, and the practical way in which it
should be done remains somewhat of a question to be debated, but knowing the facts, knowing
the possible future, and knowing the stakes, this is no longer a time for governments and nations
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to sit idly by and in a passive way watch the world literally fall apart around them. At this point,
any sort of change would mark a departure from humanity’s current actions and trends that have
reaped such havoc on the world up to this point.
This is ultimately a time where everyone must become an environmentalist. This is not to
say that the world’s populace must embrace the tree-hugging, granola-eating, Birkenstockwearing archetype that many people attach to the phrase. Rather, this is an age where everyone
must be at least more mindful of the impact of their actions, and the mark they leave on this
planet, and make a shift back towards concepts like seventh generation planning. It is time for
people to start realizing that their actions do affect the planet, and since they affect the planet,
they affect everyone else around them. For the environment, and the very basics of life it
provides like food, water, air, etc., is the one thing that everyone, that every single human being
has in common in terms of shared reliance and shared need to continue to live. Whether through
government led legislation or grassroots level education and awareness building, hopefully both,
it is time for that societal shift, before the sand on which society today is built shifts first with the
worst of results.
The earth is a planet under duress. It is a planet in need of help. Through the lens of
deforestation, oil pumping, freshwater supplies, and fishing the world’s oceans clean, there are
clear signs and symptoms that the earth is shuddering under the impacts of unsustainable human
practices and methods of natural resource exploitation. If such practices and trends are to
continue, dire consequences await the world's populace. This, then, is a time to recognize the
planet’s plight and its possible consequences as the singular most important obstacle facing this
generation, and those to come shortly thereafter. It is time that this world becomes a society of
environmentalists, before the environment reaches a point where it cannot sustain society at all.
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The possible dangers and crisis facing humanity are almost too great and too frightening to even
imagine, but this is all the more reason to spur the women, men, and children of the planet to act
now.
1
Michael T. Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001), 16. 2
Anita Roddick, Take it Personally: How to Make Conscious Choices to Change the World (Berkeley: Conari Press, 2001), 170. 3
Ibid. 4
National Geographic, “Deforestation: Modern Day Plague,” http://environment.nationalgeogaphic.com/environment/global‐warming/deforestation.org 5
Lester R. Brown, Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble (New York: Earth Policy Institute, 2006), 80. 6
National Geographic. 7
National Geographic. 8
Brown, 83. 9
Kimberly A. Wilson, Carting the Oceans: How Grocery Stores are Emptying the Seas (Washington D.C: Greenpeace, 2008). 10
Ibid. 11
Ibid. 12
Ibid. 13
Brown, Plan B, 93. 14
WHO website 15
Roddick, Taking it Personally, 156. 16
Water.org, “Water Facts,” http://water.org/waterpartners.aspx?pgID=916 17
Brown, Plan B, 49. 18
Ibid, 41. 19
Ibid, 51. Staysniak 19
20
Ibid. 21
Ibid, 48. 22
Klare, Resource Wars, 19. 23
Brown, Plan B, 58. 24
Ibid, 43. 25
The Independent, “World oil supplies are set to run out faster than expected, warm scientists,” www.independent.co/uk 26
Ibid. 27
Ibid. 28
Energy Information Administration, “International Energy Outlook 2008,” http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/world.html. 29
Bill McKibben, "A Special Moment in History: the Future of Population," The Atlantic Monthly 281, no. 5 (1998): 56. 30
Duncan Clark and Richie Unterberger, The Rough Guide to Shopping with a Conscience (New York: Rough Guides Ltd., 2007), 104. Staysniak 20
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