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The old button from the Environmental Club days which I just happened to find on Earth Day! It is a little beat up (particularly the ends of the ribbon), but no worse for the wear, I think. And it is one of the few items that I have left from those days, so it carries a lot of great memories for me! Nothing Changes Until You Do!
Here is a picture of a very similar logo, with the same message, that was on the t-shirt that I purchased from the BCC Environmental Club and, if memory serves me correctly, may even have helped to make. There were a few projects like that which club members, myself included, were regularly involved with. It has been so long, however, that I no longer recall specifically if I actually helped to make these or not, although I do believe so, since I remember seeing the process of the t-shirts being dyed. In any case, I loved this t-shirt, and have kept it ever since, even if I do not regularly wear it. Since it was part of my experience with the BCC Environmental Club days, as well as more generally having an environmental theme, it seemed appropriate to share it here.
"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed."
~Mahatma Gandhi
"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."
~John F. Kennedy
By and large, I hesitate to jump on the bandwagon of doomsday scenarios that are within a relatively short amount of time. I did not really believe it when there was a supposed report by the Pentagon which was leaked in the early 2000's, and which predicted that the Netherlands would be underwater by 2007. I did not really believe that oil production would reach it's zenith in 2015, and that it would diminish every year after that. Where there is money, there always seems to be a way, and they keep actively working to find new holes to drill for oil everywhere, which should be an alarming though in and of itself, but that is another discussion.
And right now, I am skeptical about this report, because the world as we know it completely ending in approximately 30 years seems a little too precise and assured. That is not to say that it is impossible, and that is not to say that we collectively (rather than individually) would deserve that kind of fate if it should befall us.
Still, I am going ahead and publishing this, even though it is not exactly a new article, and even though I remain skeptical about the precise timeline, because nonetheless, it seems obvious to me that what we are doing in plundering the planet is completely irresponsible and unsustainable for any great length of time.
It is not even like many prominent climate change deniers even disagree with this. While Donald Trump keeps waffling back and forth on the issue, claiming that climate change is a giant Chinese hoax to derail the American economy many years ago, then denying that he denies climate change during the debate with Hillary Clinton, and now going back to thinking it is a hoax now that he is in public office (gee, who could possibly have seen that coming?), his own EPA head does not deny the reality of climate change. But he would take exception to the timeline, recently suggesting that the real impact will not be felt until another 50-75 years. So in other words, he is basically assuring us not to worry about it, and to carry on like we always do, even if this is contributing to the impending disaster, or that it might make it worse. I guess what he and other mostly conservative American climate change deniers seem to be saying is that we should let future generations suffer, so long as we do not have to sacrifice even an inch of our present levels of comfort, convenience, and material wealth. The world might come to a horrific end, but at least we are enjoying ourselves in the meantime, right?
Simply stated, we cannot expect to keep going at the rate that we are going at, hungrily exploiting and devouring our precious natural resources, all so that a few wealth addicts can continue to hog still more money and power and privileges, at the expense of the rest of us.
Nor can we expect capitalism to truly continue to expand and enrich more and more people, as these people will also use more of those resources themselves, adding to the demand and thus encouraging further exploitation of precious limited resources.
Certainly, that is especially true when one does simply mathematics. As Daniel Quinn pointed out, the world population is growing far too much, far too rapidly. Think about it: the world population was approaching one billion people right around the time of the French Revolution. By the time that Napoleon took full power in France, it had reached one billion. It had taken thousands of years following the agricultural revolution for it to reach that first billion. But it reached two billion in between the end of World War I, and before the beginning of World War II, in 1927.
In other words, it doubled in a little over one century. By the time that I was born in 1974, it had doubled from that number, reaching four billion people. Another billion were added by 1987, and the world population reached 6 billion just in time for the new millennium. It is now 2019, and the world population is fast approaching 8 billion. That would mean that in about less than half a century, the population of the world would have doubled from the 4 billion landmark that it reached when I was born, in 1974.
Surely, it does not take a genius to understand that this will exhaust our limited resources, and that we really are heading towards a disaster, unless something drastically changes. Increasingly, we seem to be expecting something drastic, as evidenced by the growing number of books and movies and television shows dealing with some kind of apocalypse or another. It almost seems to me that we are actively flirting with this idea of having done with the whole thing, as if we know we are doing something wrong, yet cannot quite put our fingers on it, although the answer seems to be right there in front of us.
Just do the math.
If the idea of capitalism, at least in theory, is that everyone gets richer, then that means that they will be using up more resources. It feels like everything is growing worse now, when we still have relatively few countries that are rightly regarded as having developed economies. But what if we add the over billion in China, the world's rising superpower of the moment? What if we add one billion and change more in India? What about the billions - yes, billions with an "S" at the end that are expected to soon inhabit the continent of Africa?
Perhaps that is why the ultra-wealthy are hording all of the wealth for themselves, doing so in the name of capitalism, knowing full well that this has nothing at all to do with it in actuality. Perhaps that is why it seems that predominately white, often former colonial nations are also hording their wealth and privileges. Maybe they feel that they are, in fact, doing the world a favor.
It seems that these elitists generally try to hide all of this before the general public, as well they should.
However, it seems that in this day and age, they sometimes feel comfortable not putting any great effort anymore in really trying to do so. Trump's EPA Head Andrew Wheeler, claimed that the real danger that climate change poses is still “50 to 75 years out.” He then suggested that there are more immediate concerns, which has more often than not meant from prominent Republicans that we should continue doing pretty much nothing about it. One of those pressing concerns was access to clean drinking water, as if this were somehow mutually exclusive with efforts to combat climate change and promote a healthier, more balanced environment.
The first two links below are to this story, and the second link is to a similarly careless moment, when Stephen Moore, a conservative pundit picked by President Donald Trump to serve on the Federal Reserve Board, having declared his opinion that "Capitalism is a lot more important than democracy." This was something that he said during an interview in Michael Moore's 2009 documentary, "Capitalism: A Love Story." To my knowledge, he never apologized or complained that he was misquoted.
It seems rather telling that Trump would pick him.
The final, and most important link, is the one that suggests that the current brand of capitalism as practiced here in the United States (and enthusiastically supported by a large percentage of the people, obviously including President Trump and Stephen Moore) is on course to starve the planet within 30 years time.
Forbes is hardly known as a bastion of liberal thought, focused on money, money, and more money as it is.
Yet, every now and then, there is a piercing bit of journalism that comes out of there.
And so it is that I encountered this rather remarkable article that predicts that, unless things change, capitalism as it is practiced currently will starve humanity as soon as 2050.
That might seem quite distant into the future, but it really is a little over thirty years from now. And anyone who is my age or older knows just how quickly that time period can pass.
Now, this also reminds me a bit of other articles that were meant to shock. I am remembering a supposedly leaked paper from the Pentagon some years ago that predicted that the Netherlands would be underwater within just a few short years.
Obviously, that did not happen, but it was sensational enough to make some headlines at the time. It also surely went some distance towards discrediting climate change/global warming, in the eyes of the skeptics.
Another whopper that was told was that oil production was peaking in the very early part of the 21st century, and that by 2015 or so, we would begin to run out of oil. This was another prediction that seems to have been greatly exaggerated and overly sensationalist.
Still, this was interesting enough that it seemed worth sharing here. I cannot vouch for the reality of this, that indeed, humanity will starve itself within a generation and change.
Yet, clearly, we seem to be seeing some warnings with ever severe storms and record hot temperatures which, if anything, are even worse than what scientists predicted. I also published an article yesterday suggesting that the ice in Greenland and parts of the arctic is melting much faster than scientists had believed, which also is obviously troubling. We can see some mountain ranges losing their ages old glaciers, as well. So, maybe attention should be paid, which is the reason that I added this final link.
EPA head says climate change threat '50-75 years out' BY ZACK BUDRYK - 03/20/19
Trump's EPA Head Said Climate Change Is Not a Top Threat Because It's '50 to 75 Years Out by the Associated Press, \March 20, 2019:
Trump Federal Reserve pick Stephen Moore once said he's not 'a big believer in democracy' William Cummings, USA TODAY Published on April 23, 2019:
Unless It Changes, Capitalism Will Starve Humanity By 2050 by Drew Hansen , CONTRIBUTOR to Forbes, February 9, 2016:
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