As I look around me at where this country is headed I wonder what our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren will think of us as they look back to the turmoil of the 21st century. Will they be sympathetic to what they learn of the politics of this era or will they condemn us for being so short sighted and for selling out our future for short term profit and gains? Let me rephrase that…for selling out our children and grandchildren’s future for short term profits and gains. Let’s face it most of my generation or even the generation that is coming up behind me will have to face the absolute consequences of the choices we make in the here and now because we will be dead and buried by the time that some of the more serious implications of our actions come due.
I’m sure that many of you have seen the 4th movie in the Star Trek series called The Voyage Home and what the main crisis was that Kirk and his crew were trying to fix. For those who haven’t seen it a quick synopsis. There was a crisis in the future caused by our hunting humpback whales to extinction in the 20th century. Kirk and crew were traveling to the past to bring a couple of humpback whales back to the future to repopulate the species to solve the future problem. My point is that our actions now will have repercussions on future generations well beyond what we can imagine and we won’t have time travel to fix it with. Watching the actions of big business, of politicians, and of consumers I wonder if anyone is thinking about anything beyond the next week, month or year.
About a week ago I was reading a story about the extinction of the black rhino in West Africa due to being hunted by poaching gangs for their horns and I just had to stop and think about what that meant for a second. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/11/11/black-rhino-extinct-in-west-africa-in-new-red-list-what-animals-will-disappear-next-115875-23553018/ Due to actions that we took as a race we have wiped this species out in a particular terrain forever. We have deleted it from the future so that the only way future generations will even know this animal existed will be from images and videos that were recorded of them before they died out. This is only one example and one species that recently came to my attention through an article I read but it is by no means an isolated incident. There are many such species that are close to extinction and unless we take action now to protect them they too will be just a memory for future generations that they can read about in a book because they no longer exist in the wild.
So here we are in the 21st century and whether we admit it or not our actions will have consequences for future generations that will occupy this land long after we turn to dust. We are so desperate not to give up our addiction to oil and move on to a green energy that we are drilling just about everywhere regardless of whether it is right for the environment or not. The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was not enough to deter us from continuing along this destructive path. We have no idea of what damage we might have done to the Gulf with the millions of gallons of oil that we allowed to spill out into the water but we are sure that we have to continue to do deep water drilling. Why not have oil companies invest some or a lot of their record profits into developing green energy alternatives? Oil is not a limitless resource and some day it will run out. Is that just another thing we are going to stick future generations with?
The Republicans denying that climate change is happening and that we are responsible for what is happening. We are seeing a rise in extreme weather events, we are watching the average temperatures each year climb just a little more and we are watching the draught stricken states burn with wildfires because of the extremely dry conditions. The ice is melting at an unprecedented rate in Greenland and the Antarctic and these politicians who are in a position to address the situation simply deny it and continue to take payments from their big oil buddies to leave them alone and open new areas for drilling. So are these politicians and these big oil executives so consumed with the need to make a profit next quarter that they really don’t give a s**t about the future? That is how it looks to me. Making money now trumps any concern or any possibility that they might be destroying the future for their grandchildren and their great grandchildren.
So as I look at all of these things that we are doing to the planet I wonder what will be left for future generations to look forward to. We are deforesting the rain forest, we will continue draining oil from the planet until the very last drop is gone, we pour our garbage and our chemicals into the environment like there was no tomorrow, we put off moving to some form of renewable energy for our cars, we rip off the tops of mountains in pursuit of coal and on and on. We live like none of this has a price tag that will eventually come due. We may not be the recipients of the bill when it is delivered but you can bet that there will be a bill for our selfish actions here in the 21st century. I think that the future will judge us all quite harshly for not doing what was right but doing what was profitable for the short term instead.
I think in terms of oil and energy as the most evident examples, but in reality everything else too, development must be focused on creating sustainable alternatives so that we can maintain our level of comfort and not pollute so much. People at large are not going to change their lifestyles if it means less comfort, fewer luxuries, less money, i.e. a harder life. If we can find a way to transition our lifestyle into something more green and sustainable, without too much effort, then a new generation will emerge in terms of pollution, oil and energy. Basically, it has to be; “you can still buy a car and drive it, but it goes on water” rather than “you cant own a car anymore, and much less drive somewhere”.
Glenn