Tug on anything at all and
you'll find it connected to everything else in the universe.
(John Muir,
environmentalist, preservationist and known in the U.S. as the
“Father of the National Parks,” 1838-1914)
In the beginning
At the present time, with
7.2 billion self-absorbed humans wandering around on the Earth, we're
probably at least 4 billion over the carrying capacity of the planet
to support all life, sustain itself and insure a viable ecosystem.
Simply put, our technology has easily outstripped our evolutionary
development. We Homo-sapiens have just barely climbed down from the
trees and begun our cautious journey across the savanna.
But as hope springs eternal
in the minds of us humans, there are a few faint signs for cautious
optimism in a handful of locations on the planet. There are
indications that where there is good governance and control of
corruption there is some decrease in environmental pressures. As
well, regions of high urbanization may have positive effects in that
housing and infrastructure needs are not spread across the larger
landscape. This is the good news.
The bad news is that at the
present time more than 70 percent of Earth's eco-regions have shown a
large increase in their human footprint. For those interested in some
of the specifics a good place to begin is a study in NatureCommunications.
Being anything you want to
be
Of course it's in the realm
of possibility that a Silicon Valley billionaire will come up with a
product to save all of us in the nick of time or some software
engineer in Mumbai, India will create the "miracle code or maybe
an obscure scientist in Shanghai, China will transform the primitive
Limbic system in the brain, allowing us to make a “quantum leap”
into the 21st century.
Last but most certainly not
least the Kurzweillian-phantasmagorical-transhuman-cum-cyborg,
brought to us by the futurist Ray Kurzweil, could arrive at the last
possible moment and save the planet.
More than likely, however,
there will be no techno-fix, no Libertarian John Gault galloping in
on his unicorn, and most assuredly no bronze-age invisible sky god
that will make the bad things go away.
This is the way the world
ends.
This is the way the world
ends.
This is the way the world
ends.
Not with a bang but a
whimper.
(From The Hollow Men by
T.S. Eliot)
The world is this way
Excluding the Syrian
apocalypse of course at the present time … well, possibly Somalia,
maybe Sudan, and yes Libya, and how can we forget Iraq … actually
most of the Arab world in general to be fair. Then there is
Afghanistan maybe Pakistan in South and Central Asia, the former
Soviet republics and those island nations sinking beneath the sea
because of rising sea levels, and....
Asia is where the action is
today. In Southeast Asia Indonesia is destroying its rainforests as
fast as possible to create more and more palm oil plantations, the
ingredient that's used by the snack manufacturers and personal care
products and cosmetics, among others. Greed, corruption and human
ignorance make everything that much easier of course—anywhere.
Moving up to Northeast Asia,
Japan's aging population is continuing to practice its cultural
cuisine. It's a sideshow in the global scheme of things but a telling
commentary on humankind. In addition to the hunting of whales for,
er, scientific purposes, there is the annual bloodbath festival that
may have been going on for a thousand years. Dolphins are rounded up
in a cove, the “prettiest” sold to aquariums and the rest clubbed
to death for the meat.
Zhonggou—The Middle
Kingdom
China right now, with its
rapidly increasing economic and military might and strict
authoritarianism, has perhaps become the tarnished gold standard for
much of the world. Its overriding historical imperative, in addition
to the reinvention of some modern day Middle Kingdom, seems to be the
creation of a vast global plantation, sort of an updated 16th
and 17th century European mercantilism. Africa and South
America are its current targets and the ends are sure to justify any
possible means for the billionaire technocrats who run the “peoples
republic.”
One of the grand Chinese
proposals is to build a 3,300 mile-long railway line through the
Amazon rainforest to access soya plantations and mining regions, a
potential environmental disaster of monumental proportions. *
China single-handedly may be
responsible for the extinction of numerous wildlife throughout the
world, perhaps the best known example being the elephant, a keystone
species, hunted for its ivory and other body parts including its feet
that are cut off and used for stools by the wealthy in every sink
hole across the planet.
This is the way the world
ends. But perhaps not.
NEXT: Chasing the carnival
in the U.S., 2016
* Amazon's forests hold
approximately 90-140 tons of carbon, around 9-14 years of current
global, annual human induced carbon emissions.
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