True sustainability
Source: jbl
One of the greatest fallacies of our time is the idea that we can tweak our way out of the environmental crisis by simply doing things a little more sustainably.
This is complete nonsense. The damage already done to the environment is so enormous that all experts agree that only massive changes in our behaviour can prevent an apocalypse. But no such changes are being made.
Sustainability has become a very popular word in all the wrong places. It has been embraced by big business, politicians and the media to suggest a deep concern about the state of our world and an ardent desire to do something about it. Unfortunately, they don't have a clue what they are talking about.
Sustainability is a state that we already abandoned thousands of years ago, when we started to plunder the environment. Before we appeared, the natural world had been fully sustainable, thriving for billions of years, especially during the last 500 million years, creating life in an endless variety of forms that evolved into ever greater complexity, in a miraculous and highly dynamic balancing act.
Now almost everything we do and make is unsustainable, because it depletes, destroys, degrades, pollutes and/or poisons the environment. This means that our modern, over-developed civilization is entirely based on unsustainable foundations and therefore certain to collapse. In fact it is already collapsing. The hair cracks are visible everywhere.
Global warming alone is developing into a problem of such magnitude and danger that we should drop everything and treat it as the worst emergency we have ever faced. If it is not stopped and reversed, we are all doomed within a matter of decades, perhaps even less.
And global warming is just one of our existential problems
To illustrate how bad things really are and how important it is that we act now, we have collected some of the worst - and by no means all - problems that are facing us.
Unsustainable activities and products
This is just a selection. The list goes on and on, from Big Pharma to landfills and from clothing to genetic engineering. As said before, almost all our activities harm the environment. It is beyond insanity to believe that this can go on much longer without the direst consequences. They are already becoming visible. And yet, little or nothing is being done. It is time to prepare for the worst.
"The climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected. It is more severe than anticipated, threatening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity."
World Scientists' Warning, 5 November 2019
"The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide."
Chairman of IPBES (UN), 6 May 2019
"We will only be able to keep global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels if we effect unprecedented transitions in all aspects of society, including energy, land and ecosystems, urban regions and infrastructure as well as industry."
IPCC (UN) report, 25 September2019
"Infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility."
E.F. Schumacher
Source: Derkaoui
