The Lights of the City Aren’t the Same to Me Any More

As a young man I sometimes drove to a high spot in town after dark, a park from which you could look out over the city, and parked my car to enjoy the twinkling of the city lights spread out before me.  It was a beautiful sight, and I could only marvel at what humanity had created.  I’ve learned a lot and thought a lot since then, however, and it all looks different to me now, or least, it provokes different thoughts and perceptions. 

Why Do So Many Deny Global Warming Could Be Occurring?

Why are so many people determined to deny that we are facing some daunting problems? I can understand that scientists interpret data differently, and don’t expect that scientific opinions will all agree.  The denial I see, however, is mostly not coming from scientists.  

Why and How Do We Avoid Addressing Global Warming and Similar Problems?

A brilliant article opened my eyes as to how and why we keep ducking our biggest problems. I recently came across an article by Dr. Albert Bandura that is simply a brilliant analysis of human behavior as relates to the need for sustainability, and I put it in my sidebar of favorite links.  Since then what I read has kept coming back to me, as I think his paper explains a great deal about why we are where we are today.  I have long been perplexed about the fact that the main stream media almost never brings up overpopulation as a problem, and only global warming has gotten anywhere near the attention such problems deserve (though energy shortages are an up-and-coming second, and water shortages not far behind).  Dr. Bandura’s article is deep and scientific, and not the easiest to read for a variety reasons, perhaps more than anything because it describes us, but also because it is written in the language of the science of psychology.  For that reason I have written this entry to try to break down into simpler language what is going on.  Why do people keep doing things we know are bad for our future, and why do they ignore or dispute the facts?

Civilizations Rise and Fall Due to “Global Warming”-like Problems

If We Must Fall, Can We Manage to Do It Gradually? Every civilization in history has fallen except the current one. That is simple truth, and we have no reason to think that we can carry on indefinitely as we have been. In fact, there are many indications that we are headed into a decline of our own: population exceeding the global capacity in more and more aspects, significant signs of negative impact on the ecology, the accelerating extinction of many species in our highly interdependent environment, overuse of important resources leading to exhaustion. All this brings up the important questions: Are we any smarter than our predecessors, and can we understand what is happening and work together effectively to control the decline and mitigate the suffering involved?

Achieving Sustainability Will Involve Birthrate Reduction, But How Can That Be Achieved?

Let’s face it: the earth has too many humans, using natural resources up too quickly, and the population will be forced to decline to a sustainable level sooner or later.  Achieving a sustainable situation will require that there be a lot less humans, especially when fossil fuels become scarce.  That means the human birthrate must decline.  For population to be reduced without a birthrate reduction would mean that average lifespans would have to decline to near the minimum childbearing age, which I think is highly unlikely.  Before sustainability is reached, however, there will be a long period of change, of probably 70 to 200 or more years.  How will population most likely be reduced during that period?

Incremental Change Towards Sustainability and How I Maintain My Lawn

Lawns are a relatively recent historical phenomenon.  Lawns didn’t exist except around the palaces of the world (think Versailles) until the 19th century (link), and even then only in the more affluent places like Great Britain.  In North America, though there were some modern lawns in the early 18th century, a good grass seed wasn’t found until around 1930, and due to the more extreme weather lawns had nowhere near the smooth appearance of those in the UK.  While lawnmowers appeared in the 1880’s, the North American lawn didn’t come into its own until homeowners had both hoses and sprinklers for use in the hot summers, and gas-powered rotary lawn mowers, and until the American Garden Club gave lawns a lot of publicity.  With a manual push-type lawnmower people could only keep a relatively small lawn, but powered mowers and irrigation made it possible for many to have huge lawns, especially in the prosperity-driven move to owning huge “McMansions” that occurred at the end of the 20th century.  So how will things change from here on?

Can the Media Change Minds World-Wide Quickly Enough?

It is obvious to me that the great majority of humans will need to have a significant change in thinking, an epiphany, around the global environmental situation and the part humans play in it, before we can make serious progress towards sustainability. Trying to figure out how that might occur, or be caused to occur is a daunting task. The trick to making large scale predictions on the future seems to mostly be in separating what may change from what will probably not. Some things, like basic human nature and form, change quite slowly, while some things, like human ideas and feelings, can change in minutes. This capacity for rapid change is only increasing with the continual development of electronic media, and without it, I don’t think humanity would be able to avoid serious, large scale problems in the next few decades.

Currently, 20% of the global population are thought to be on the Internet (link). That number has grown by 265% overall from 2000-2007, and by rates between 600% and 1000% in the developing countries. I can’t find any good figures from a Google search, but I have to believe that other electronic media (TV and radio) have a much greater penetration, perhaps to as much as 80% of world population. (Though a 2005 estimate indicated 2 billion humans did not have electricity, I believe that number is dropping rapidly in China and India.) Thus, I believe rapid changes of direction can be achieved in our pursuit of sustainability, as long as they don’t require changes in human nature (or form … but this item is not intended to go in a science fiction-y direction – “shape shifting” is not going to help us). What can bring about rapid change, though?