Al and his ilk will have us believe that this great, green rock that we ride so ungratefully round the sun is in some type of imminent danger. It is the rising temperature, they say, human activity is knocking mother earth to her knees.
Now, I don’t contest that human industrial and agricultural activity is pumping more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and as a result skyrocketing the earth’s fever; what I don’t get is how that kills the planet.
The reality is that temperature change is nothing new to the planet. The earth is in constant flux, a flux generated by a wonderfully complex symbiotic relationship where changes in the planet are both a result and cause of changes in its organisms; both nudge and prompt each other to change in a complicated chicken and egg dance. The planet’s atmosphere is influenced by its organisms to behave like a schizophrenic kitchen electronic that swings from thinking it is a freezer to an oven and these changes in turn force its organisms to change and adapt to the new environments or die. The planet is obviously in oven mood right now (prompted by human activity) and no doubt will one day swing back to freezer mood. The question is ‘will we still be here, will we adapt or die?’
The planet is not in any danger; we are! This great seemingly selfless fight to save the planet, this great go green movement that is sweeping the globe is in reality a great selfish fight for self preservation. We are not fighting to save our planet, as Al would have us believe, we are fighting to save ourselves.
Up to date, no species has adapted better to its environment than man has and as a result no species has had a greater influence on the environment. Our successes in adaptation have led our numbers to skyrocket. The real reason why there is a strain on our natural resources is because we are simply too many (there, I have said it). The more people there are on the planet, the greater the need for industrial and agricultural activities to accommodate them which in turn leads to more greenhouse gasses. In short; because of our great success in influencing our environment, we have managed to poison it against us. Our activity is causing the environment to change to one which is not conducive to human life to check our growth (true to our symbiotic dance with mother earth).
The green movement, championed by people like Al, have attempted to stop this change. This is their strategy, this is how we save the planet; by arresting its natural process, by attempting to stop or slow down its flux, a flux that we prompted. Cutback on industrial and agricultural pollution, lower greenhouse emissions and then maybe we can arrest the warming. But there within lies the sweetest irony.
If our fight is successful, we would have, once again, managed quite successfully to influence our environment; we would have made it, once again, more conducive for our existence. A conducive environment means we will prosper even better which in turn will mean that our numbers, the size of our population, will only get bigger and we will be right back where we started. More numbers mean more agricultural and industrial activity (the increase in numbers will offset our cutbacks), which in turn means more greenhouse gasses which means planet earth goes into oven mood.
Yes, the great irony of the green movement is the more we succeed, the more we fail.
i kyambadde
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