Saturday 23 June 2007

Economic Growth and sustainability, are they at the same side?


The last minute says it all!

Mankind faces now a dilemma: go green or go dead. Which one would you choose? Even though a five-year-old could answer that question, still is not clear if we have perceived the urgency of the matter. China and US have their private contest of who pollute the most; developing countries fight for their right to destroy earth; we still have a locust-swarm behaviour devouring careless all the planet resources.Is there any hope?

In the last two years, especially after the Katrina disaster, mankind seems to have awoken of its golden dream of infinite growth with no consequences and have opened its eye to the nightmare we brought ourselves in. DVDs like Al Gore’s inconvenient truth, the enlargement of Bush’s vocabulary adding to it the word global warming, the growth of the media space upon ecological issues, it has increased the awareness of the problem. But what can be done to amend it?

First of all we have to change the mindset that has lead us hear. We must get rid of those economics models that do not consider our most precious possession - our home the mother earth. Economists love to put a price on everything, why “d´a hell” they think all nature resources are for free? That is the reason why they created the false trade-off between economic growth and care about preservation. Everything we consume is underpriced and companies that do not care about the pollution their value chains generate are getting rich by destroying the world. Our responsibility on this process is to start to demand green companies, if they do not carewe do!!!

Second, we are a major part of the problem; our ways of doing things also gives a hand to the destruction of the planet. We must start to analyse what we can change in our behaviour to make a better world, the first step is to discovery what is our ecological footprint and then start to reduce it. There are several sites on the Web that shows how with a moderate effort we can help to change the world. Always have in mind you are one, but we are 6 billion, so if we all push to the same side, who knows what we can do !!!

Would know the difference between fly and fall if you could not see the ground? Right now our society is on a free fall thinking that it is flying. And if it do not wake up soon it will hit hard the cemetery of civilizations. A great quote I have seen about that it was on Al Gore´s DVD and it was said by Churchil.

“The time of half-measure has passed. We are entering a period of consequences,"

Think about that!!!

Cool websites about it:

Incovenient Truth web site
Natural Capitalism web site (You can read some chapters of the book - it will blow your mind)
EcoWorld web site (good articles)
Footprint Calculator

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