It is impossible to draw up a shared ranking of what the main problems of our time are, but global warming and pollution certainly occupy the top positions. Fortunately, awareness of pollution has grown along with the problem itself, and environmental ideals are now widespread, especially among younger generations. In past centuries, however, such awareness was almost absent and, largely because of the underestimation or ignorance of environmental issues, entire civilizations or populations even disappeared.
The troubling aspect of environmentalism, however, is that it is often equated with the idea of a return to a mythical past. Seen through distorted lenses, this past appears as an ideal environment in which nature and the surroundings were respected and cared for, unlike today, when resources are used without restraint. Nothing could be more false: all past civilizations consumed the natural resources available to them, without concern for the fact that those resources were by no means infinite, and without worrying about the effects of pollution caused by their consumption. Well-known examples include Easter Island, the Maya civilization, the Vikings in Greenland, and many others (see in this regard Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, 2014). The reason why ancient societies did not succeed in destroying the planet is simply that they lacked the knowledge and technologies we have today. Consider, for example, that the excessive use of fossil fuels (gas, oil) began only at the end of the nineteenth century; the large-scale extraction of rare earths and scarce minerals dates back only a few decades; the massive use of plastics began in the 1950s; and so on. The exploitation of natural environments, starting with forests and tall trees, on the other hand, has been characteristic of almost all periods of the past.
Why, then, did the environmental problem manifest itself so dramatically only from the second half of the twentieth century onward? The answer lies primarily in the exponential growth of the world’s population, which increased from about 700 million people in the mid-eighteenth century to roughly 8 billion today—an increase of more than tenfold. This massive growth was made possible by scientific (and technological) development, which at the same time has been an indirect cause of the problem and a means of bringing it to light. In particular, advances in medicine and environmental conditions have allowed a significant increase in average life expectancy, which today exceeds eighty years in industrialized countries. At the same time, the typically Western “consumerist” lifestyle has spread across the entire globe, driving up global consumption and, consequently, pollution and global warming.
In my view, the most critical aspect of these problems is that, at present, there is no real solution: the idea that the use of currently available renewable energy sources (solar panels, wind power, and the like) can completely replace fossil fuels is illusory. Only through technology—indirectly and unintentionally responsible for our problems—can we hope to save ourselves: through the discovery of new ways to produce energy (nuclear fusion, geothermal energy from the Earth’s interior, or some other method yet to be invented), new biocompatible materials, genetically modified plant organisms that are more resilient and require less water to grow, and, more generally, new future technologies that are environmentally friendly. Humanity must nevertheless come to terms with the fact that, in the meantime, the main contribution to solving our problems can only be a reduction in consumption—that is, a reduction in our standard of living.
No comment