Are we in a planetary endgame?

// added November 04, 2008 // 13 comments //
Image...
jubal

more from Green:

http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/80/planetary_endgame.html

Three trends bode ill for our future: the increase in weather disasters, the black market in organs and the growing demand for drinking water.

This chart at the link above illustrates a staggering fact: The last 30 years have yielded four times as many weather-related disasters as the first three quarters of the 20th century combined. Tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, floods. You might say that the earth is throwing ominous tantrums.

Unfortunately, our reaction to such natural outbursts – as well as to the problems of skewed data on CO2 emissions, resource annihilation, and latent toxicity in our land and water – hasn’t spiked nearly as dramatically. Instead, we seem content to simply refine our existing patterns of consumption. If a mass-produced plastic label promises that a product is “green”, we’ll likely buy it and feel satisfied for having done our part.

We may owe our collective lack of environmental consciousness to the convenience of invisibility. We dispose of our waste in neat receptacles, rarely bearing witness to its grim deterioration. We marvel at the efficiency of the industrialized world yet seldom glimpse the colossal infrastructures that make such modern efficiencies possible.

But the taxing effects of the Western lifestyle are becoming more globally conspicuous than ever. And yet still, we’re largely unable to admit to the problem. Perhaps the world is experiencing a complex state of collective denial?
  1. groups:
    Green,   News and Politics,   Politics
  2. tags:
    News and Politics,  Politics,  Green,  Environment,  10 more

13 comments // Are we in a planetary endgame?

  • rasting
  • stopnoise
  • beep
    • 0
      beep  

    • absolutely! green technology is certainly welcome, provided that we also come off our consumption-based system. otherwise, we'll just delay the problems.
      btw, congratulations for your new president!! i personally was so overjoyed by his election that i had trouble working today...

    • 1 year ago
  • jubal
    • 0
      jubal  

    • Your points are well taken Beep.

      However, I agree with msjsmith. We have have technology. If we had spend 10% of what we spent in Iraq, we could have moved mountains in Africa. We could have done a lot to raise the standard of living for many millions of refuges in Africa. We could have prevented the deaths of hundreds of thousands.

      Yes America, we can! We can bring the solutions to the so called "third world". It just takes the attitude of willingness that says "Yes We Can!" I believe Obama demonstrated that very clearly in this election.

    • 1 year ago
  • beep
    • 0
      beep  

    • @ mjsmith11
      even if anybody wanted to irrigate the Sahara... let's not forget that technological solutions to water shortage require massive inputs of other resources, such as energy, and as you yourself mentioned, massive infrastructures. in a world plagued by peak oil, general scarcity of resources (because oil and water are not the only resources that have been mismanaged), climate change, and political and social instability, such solutions may not be that easy to implement.

      @ jubal
      thanks for the interesting posts.
      a short comment on the term "the developing world". this widely used expression is western-institution *newspeak*. in fact, the regions in question have been plundered and poisoned, and their populations enslaved and subjected to massive debt to the WB. in the west, we have been made to automatically equate industrialized with developed and money with riches. but what if they are/were more developed than us in ways that are not industrial or technological? what if they are/were richer than us in ways that have nothing to do with money?

    • 1 year ago
  • PoisonTheMonkey
  • Denica_Cassandra
  • mjsmith11
    • 0
      mjsmith11  

    • Well, I think most of the fresh water supply is in Canada. I do not think the USA will have much trouble winning the "Water Wars".

      Seriously, I think we have the solutions to irrigate the Sahara Dessert. It will take massive engineering and International cooperation.

    • 1 year ago
  • dagos
    • 0
      dagos  

    • posti uno leggi tre
      finalmente leggiamo qualcosa che non sia Obama o Mc Cain.
      .................
      finally read something that is not Obama or Mc Cai

    • 1 year ago
  • F7
  • jubal
    • 0
      jubal  
    • F7:

      Thanks F7, I was reading their website and thought it would be very pertinent to many of the recent discussions I have been participating in.

    • 1 year ago
  • jubal
    • 0
      jubal  
    • Image...

    • Water Wars?

      According to the World Bank, global demand for water is doubling every twenty-one years, and water supplies, especially in the developing world, can’t keep up. The growing problem came into focus recently in South Africa.

      Jennifer Makoatsane lives with eight other family members in Phiri, Soweto. They survive on her mother’s pension of approximately $115 a month. The family’s water is rationed through a prepayment meter, which means they receive a fixed amount of free water every month, but they must prepay for any additional water, something they can’t afford to do. Instead, every member of the household shares the bath water, and the toilet is flushed with water used for laundry or cleaning. Despite these conservation measures, her family usually has enough water for only half of the month.

    • 1 year ago
  • jubal
    • 0
      jubal  
    • Image...

    • Livers for Sale....

      Driven by donor shortages in their home countries, ailing Westerners are traveling to places like India, China and the Philippines, where a burgeoning biological black market promises a plethora of fresh organs available for transplant. In the US and Canada, patients can languish on waiting lists for five to fifteen years before a kidney is donated from the deceased. On the black market, a kidney can be made available within hours of a finalized financial transaction. How? Preying on areas of extreme third world poverty, highly organized rings of organ brokers dispatch agents to seek out men and women desperate enough to part with “spare” organs in exchange for cash.

    • 1 year ago
  • krush_productions

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