Some people consider it to be a funny world as they strive
to cope with the behaviour of the economy and what the pundits have to say
about what the future holds. Those who consider what is actually happening
rather than the hype of politicians, economists and the media see nothing
laughable about what society and its tools are doing to the natural support
system, the terrestrial and marine environments. These rationalists have no
doubt that decisions based on the flow of intangible money will continue to
dominate the decisions, often unwise, being made about which possible tangible
operations will be implemented. The elite in society will ensure that their
leverage of money will largely support their agenda despite the cost to the
rest of society or the natural life support system.
This is the way society, especially in the developed
countries, has operated for centuries with innovative technology increasing the
production of goods and the provision of services as well as the construction,
operation and maintenance of the vast infrastructure that society has become so
dependent on. Many of the millions who live in cities enjoy comfortable living
and working conditions and the convenience of virtually unlimited land, sea and
air travel. Ironically, this development is only one side of the balance sheet!
The ecological cost has not been offset against the financial cost. Even worse,
society has deemed it has the right to consume many irreplaceable natural
resources, including the fossil fuels, without paying for the divestment of natural material wealth. Freely
using these resources has been and still is the dominant policy. The mining ,
shipping and processing of these resources is a major application of technology
at an energy, material and environmental cost of this unsustainable process in
the long term, despite the contrary propaganda.
The current volatility
of global financial markets are the main concern of investors who have made
money, often out of thin air rather than by physical effort, and they lust for
more. The employed public continues to strive for a high material standard of
living even though it means going into more debt. And industry is only too
willing to oblige as it makes more money for their management as well as for the
investors.
However, governments have the range of the usual political, economic,
ethnic, military, territorial and resource problems to deal with as best they
can. They are only slowly coming around to understanding that there are
irrevocable symptoms that nature is fighting back. Climate change is now on
their agenda but it is still not given the warranted treatment by even the
media. The cries of the scientists are still largely falling on deaf ears due
to the rustling sound of dollars.
Knowledgeable online groups are sounding out about the numerous other symptoms
of what civilization has and is doing wrong but they are also being drowned out,
but by the online social media revolution.
So ocean warming and acidification continues to devastate
the marine ecosystem. Soil fertility
continues to decline as nutrients continue to be flushed into rivers and oceans
even as the more common floods add to this devastation. Fracking to extract oil
is not the only process that is deleteriously affecting ground water in many
regions. Rapid species extinctions are causing concern in many communities but
few understand what that is doing irrevocably to biodiversity.
These symptoms of what the operations of civilization are
doing to nature are bad enough when all the dots are joined to provide the
holistic view. But that is only one side of what is irrevocably happening. As
noted, society is very dependent on the infrastructure of industrialized
civilization. That infrastructure is irrevocably aging as its sustenance
declines. The skyscrapers that are now
dominating so many cities around the world will become very vulnerable as
electricity becomes scarce because of the demise of the generating stations and the associated grids. Trade
globalization will decline as the fuel oi used by container vessels inevitably becomes
very scarce. But how will tourists, scientists, politicians and business people
cope with the inevitable loss of airline
services. The public at large will find it hard to get over their love of the
convenience of using cars for commuting
and leisure but the elite will welcome
the disappearance of traffic congestion.
These symptoms of the intractable disease of the current
industrial civilization provide a
worrisome diagnosis that society will have to try to cope with.
