Industrially altered landscapes

I’d like to think otherwise, but just take global warming: can anyone seriously imagine that within a few decades the world will be cooperating on this and getting serious?

I can’t picture it. Nations are unwilling to cede complete autonomy on anything from what I’ve seen so far yet the environment is literally a global problem. I predict a lot of meeings with increasing hand wringing, kind of like at the UN – another organization that nations have refused to cede real power to.

From what I’ve seen, big trouble is inevitable for our species. We refer to ourselves as “intelligent life” but “conscious” or “semi conscious” might be more accurate. Scientists have been trying to get governments to start responding to this since at least the late eighties – from my own direct memory – but Exxon Mobile and other profiteers acted with all the integrity of big tobacco.

We see it coming and just stand there. My prediction is that’s basically what we continue to do for at least the next thirty years. With the example set by the biggest polluter the world has ever known, I can’t see China and India going “Let’s curb our own consumption for the sake of the planet while the US keeps on with business as usual.”

I hope I’m wrong.

As David and Paul say, countries such as the US and Britain have passed through their Industrial stages, and now have vibrant ‘post-industrial’ economies which rely on two main factors – an ‘Outsourcing Economy’ of manufacturing to countries such as China and India, and a ‘Restoration Economy’ at home. In his seminal book on the Restoration Economy from 2002, Storm Cunningham mentions the economies of rebuilding landscapes devastated by the industrialization of an economy, but does not take into consideration the cynical approach that many ‘Nimbies’ in the western world assume with their ‘Get Rich Here, Pollute There’ mentality. It is not an easy problem to assess fully, and much less to begin to correct. These photographs of Edward Burtynsky are real eye openers for all of us to contemplate on the real condition of the globe in an ever increasingly altered nature of our landscape through industry. But it is easy to blame the Chinese, The Americans, or the ‘whoever. Perhaps each and every player in the global economy can blamed for some of the global problems, but as David says, there are so many signs of optimism on how we can incrementally help in improving the situation with global solutions. I personally find it amazing just how interconnected everything really is!
Just two very different sources to help us understand better this idea of ‘interconnectedness’: ‘Babel’, a 2006 film and ‘The Tao of Physics, a book from 1975.

I am glad to see that some are beginning to perceive and state the obvious in regards to the long standing and rapidly growing cycle of resources-rape and
conspicuous consumerism which is figuratively and literally cunsuming our world.

We desparaetely need to get a grip and take some real responsibility as stewards of this glorious life sustaining world of ours. We are the most intelligent of primates …. are we not ? We like to consider ourselves somewhat sophisticated …. do we not ?

The question is this ….. ‘ what is a reasonable level of consumption per being ?’ Are we willing as individuals and as a culture to virgorously eveluate our present habits and make the necessary moral and ethical committments to a meanigful future for all ?