We are getting used to calamities!

Almost every week in the world there are earthquakes, floods, landslides, volcano eruptions, tsunamis, fishkills in rivers and lakes, decreases in the numbers endangered species, smaller areas of ice-caps, higher ocean levels, etc. Although the list slowly gets longer, the calamities have recently become more frequent.

There can be no doubt that life on earth would become extinct sooner than we comfortably accept. The continuous degradation of the environment at an increasing rate is undeniably the crux:

1. Commercial progress is anathema to the protection of the environment, and the spiralling population is the both cause and the effect.
1.1 Every business needs a growing market;
1.2 Every non-business institution needs an increasing number of followers and believers;

All businesses, aside from snatching the customers or clients of competitors, base their projections on the increase of new products/services for old and new buyers.  On the other hand, every non-business entity owes its existence, not only on the continued support of loyal members but more importantly, on the allegiance of new and a growing number of followers and believers.

The geometric increase in the world’s population is directly related to the exponential degradation of the environment.  If we don’t limit population growth by earnestly decreasing the birth rates of countries in the third world, our living earth will violently limit it through calamities.  Forget what the Catholic papacy and business expansionists say.  Limiting population growth is the long-term solution.

2. Every person possesses the latent desire to aspire for better existence in the hereafter, not in the here-and-now. Ironically, there is an opposite mentality which is quite visible yet ignored: “…I will enjoy everything and whatever my power and wealth can bring me today. Let the next generation worry about the bad effects of what I endeavour to achieve. I won’t be here anyway…” This is the perpetually accepted dictum of the human race; and,

3. We delude ourselves that science and technology can catch up with the earth’s environmental degradation. Our greed for bigger incomes (euphemistically called and universally ingested or gulped as the “aspiration for higher standards of living”) would always come ahead of our financial allotments for saving the earth.

The lure of investing in the more profitable technologies, no matter how low their efficiencies, is much stronger than the need to shift investment into the most efficient ones.  A lot more should be invested in the research and development of the most efficient technologies and away from the usual mainstream like solar panels, wind turbines, etc. This investment bias or preference will be very difficult to eliminate.

The parting words of the actor Keano Reaves in one of his sci-fi movies “…At the precipice, we change…” is another Hollywoodic nonsense.  At the precipice, it is too late to change.

We are simply too callous about the above 3 issues.

I had previously written a longer essay, below, about this subject (Fear of Immediate Death: The Singular Solution to Man’s Indifference –Part 2).  This is my last article about environmental degradation.  I am not a bit alarmed in a different way, unlike those who deliberately manipulate the solutions to continuously profit.  Anyway, after another 100 years, the earth will just be a big ball of ice. Nothing else would matter.

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Tags: callousness, growing market, increase followers & believers, latent desires, long-term solution to calamities, progress vs. environment protection, reverse psychology, technology & environment, the bottom line of calamities, the bottom-line issue of environment