The Environmental Roadblock

Most people, when hearing the news of a company tearing down a tract of rainforest, would cry out in protest. Images come to mind of thousands of acres of trees being cut down, wildlife running desperately for life, streams being polluted in the wake of the machines causing such carnage, and a public outpouring of sympathy would follow. To hear of environmental devastation evokes compassion in most people, and many of them will fight to prevent such a thing.

Every day we hear of bills going to congress on clean coal technology, protecting endangered species, drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, climate change, pollution, and many other environmental issues. Millions of dollars are poured into creating such change or preventing it. Mostly, we know that preserving and protecting the environment is the right thing to do.

But at what point do we really fight for it? I’m a huge environment proponent, but I admittedly do several things I could stop doing to really help the planet. I have increasing anger for the practice of mountaintop removal (for those not familiar with mountaintop removal, it’s a process where the entire top of a mountain is stripped of trees and blasted off, or removed, to extract coal to keep our electricity flowing) and the environmental devastation it causes as well as the serious health risk posed for residents around such operations. Yet, this post is coming to you from my laptop, plugged into my outlet, underneath an electric lamp, as I watch TV and listen to the TV on the stereo plugged into it. In the corner, my roommate’s snake basks under its heat lamp, and I sit cross-legged on my couch in my comfortably heated home, eating soup heated on my electric stove.

In an ideal world (well, at least mine) we would live in houses we built ourselves, tending to our own personal gardens, hunting for our own meat using natural tools, under natural light or candle light, cooking over fires and being completely self-sustainable. Not to mention our population would be reduced by several billion because of smart, voluntary population control.

This is not an ideal world. Humans are ever prevalent and will continue to be. Most, if not all, of us will not be able to give up what luxuries we have in order to prove a point. We have come to rely on technology, transportation, mass-farming practices, electricity, and convenience to get us through life. And why shouldn’t we? We as humans have the capabilities of creating these things, why not embrace our intelligence?

Let’s revert back to the ideal world situation. The houses we built must be made by wood from trees we must cut down. Our garden plots must be made by clearing even a small portion of land. Many of the vegetables and fruits we’ve come to know and love today are some sort of genetic manipulation and do not occur naturally. These gardens might even give way to future exotic, invasive species. Our candle light must be made by some type of wax, which would involve the exploitation of bees. Ways to counter disease would be sought after, starting the medical and pharmacology industry. The point I’m trying to make here is that our ancestors did start here at one point. The growing population gave way to these new technologies and more land to be cleared, making way for bigger and better things. No matter where we start from, it will inevitably lead to the same point.

I’m not saying that this technology will save us, or that our human nature is an excuse for the state we leave the world in today. Our gross waste of nearly everything has put us in a pollution nightmare across the globe. Our growing technology leads to greenhouse gas emissions that threaten our climate to possibly catastrophic conclusions. We are in danger of losing our natural resources, which no one can ignore is very finite.

The problem here is how we curb this very severe problem. It’s unrealistic to think that humans can change 360 degrees and stop waste altogether. Our growing population demands more energy use, and that means more coal. If it’s not coal, it’s wind turbines with a threat to avian creatures, or solar panels which will only work when the sun is out. Nuclear power is the next option, which is a serious health and pollution problem. No matter what we choose, any “solution” will lead to the use of some sort of natural resource and not be 100% foolproof.

The unfortunate thing is that one would think the technology we’ve amassed so far would find a way to remove the waste we’ve amassed, to solve our problems, allow us to keep this planet living for longer and more naturally. It seems that human compassion has left those who are in every position to get a head start on these possible solutions, and instead replaced with greed, indifference, and ignorance. What energy that could be used to turn the world around instead fuels the drive for bigger, better, and more profitable. Some even say that more people in the world would be the best thing to happen to us; the more minds on the earth, the more possibility of developing a magic solution to cure the world’s ills.

Politics play a big role in how our environment and planet survives underneath our growing population and technology. Economics is a very close second, if not first. As people continue to inhabit this earth, our resources to continue living must come from somewhere. We argue that we shouldn’t drill in the ANWR, yet there is no doubt in our minds that we need oil to make the gas for our cars or the plastics that we’ve come to depend on. Our increased dependence on foreign oil is something we all agree we need to curb, yet we also don’t want to destroy a wilderness to get a few million, finite gallons of oil to satiate our consumption. It raises the question: why do we care about this wilderness? Does the wilderness, that relatively few people ever trespass upon, have any direct effect on us? Isn’t it true that the oil underneath the wilderness is more useful to us, as humans, than the plants and animals within it? This goes into an entire philosophical debate that could take pages and pages to ponder, but it’s something to think about.

There’s no denying that humans are here to stay, and that our needs have to be met. No one is going to volunteer him or herself in order to reduce the population to stop the exploitation and consumption of resources so that fifty years from now we’re not all in some serious trouble. We all recognize this problem; yet in a sad twist of fate can do almost nothing about it. People recycle mostly for the “feel good” factor, to feel like they’re doing something good for the planet, when in reality it’s a very, very small piece of the puzzle. It’s a rather daunting scenario and difficult to tackle. It’s this frame of mind that fuels the bigger corporations and companies to exploit every resource possible.

There is no simple solution to any of this. I’m not suggesting that our exploitation and resource use is OK by any means. We, as humans, have become disconnected and greedy. The earth is no longer about balance towards all things on this planet, but solely on the human race. We desecrate land in order to support ourselves without regard to other organisms that might depend on it. We’ve not only eliminated all competition against our resources (the removal of predators against deer, for instance), but we’ve begun to turn on our own kind. While people in big corporate or political offices are shouting phrases like “drill, baby, drill”, people suffer and die from lack of adequate food, water, or housing. Plants and animals critical not only in each other’s food chains, but ours, are disappearing and becoming extinct at rapid rates due to our expansion and destruction. How much or how long will it take before we reach our limit and realize we’ve gone too far? Can we really rely on technology to pick up the slack once we’ve destroyed everything? It is these natural places, these plants, animals, and natural phenomena that keep us as humans inspired to look at more than just ourselves, beyond just the human race. It seems to me no coincidence that those of us in the life sciences are more compassionate, more willing to help out each other and other organisms while those who are money-interested are self-involved and only look within.

So what do we do? We can’t focus on what we’ve already done; that ship has sailed, and we can’t change the past. Yes, we need to reduce our waste, but we also need to find a way to convert what waste we’ve already made into something usable. The earth won’t be able to support us forever, no matter what technology we might depend on to save us. Eventually humans will discover their carrying capacity, and we need to be prepared to deal with the consequences and handle our mistakes. How we go about doing that is no easy answer.