Humans are supposedly the apex of the animal kingdom. But what animal consciously destroys the resources it needs to ensure its survival? Viewing the matter more charitably, perhaps we perceive the world’s land, air, and water as essentially unlimited and that no care and preservation is required.
Whether our attitudes are the products of perverse stupidity, willful ignorance, or a mistaken belief in the planet’s abundance, the effect is the same: Mother Earth is in some sorry shape these days. So are laws and policies designed to ameliorate the ecological damage we’ve inflicted upon the planet and ourselves.
Here’s the latest problem. Times are tight. We’re spending more and receiving less for just about anything you can think of. The CEO Magazine describes the situation: “When families are struggling to keep their homes warm or put food on the table, they might be less focused on the efficacy of energy policies, no matter how effective such policies are at limiting carbon output.”
This “greenlash” is causing “elected officials…to turn their backs on environmental policies, reversing previous accomplishments and dismantling future-focused efforts.”
It’s not only happening in the U. S. The Continent is awash in anti-green sentiment and activity. The BBC recently reported on center-right and right-wing European politicians’ widespread hostility to policies concerning pesticides, gasoline- and diesel-powered cars, and carbon emissions, among other eco-subjects.
Time magazine – never a bastion of liberal thought – clearly indicates the way reactionary politicians in America are misrepresenting the government’s well-intentioned but modest ecological legislation.
The Republican Party’s 2024 Presidential candidate’s policies “harp on the green transition, saying it has damaged American workers, led to an abandoning of U.S. natural resources, and ceded U.S. geopolitical might to China.” The environment’s a hot-button issue that – like our oceans, like our forests, like our weather patterns – is only getting hotter.
CEO magazine urges America’s business leaders to take the initiative in green issues, urging them “to stomach the short-term discomfort of self-imposed constraints” and look at the larger picture. Possessing vast technological resources and the ability for rapid transformation, America’s businesses could play a decisive role in saving the planet.
They’d best get busy. Short-term convenience will always be in conflict with long-term sustainability. One fears that only a huge, undeniable ecological emergency – and the hardships and death that will follow in its wake – will finally convince the climate-change deniers that the problem is all too real. Something like melting glaciers, for instance. Vanishing shorelines. Increasingly violent and aberrant weather patterns. Escalating wildfires. Disappearing species.
That’ll wake us up, won’t it?
Won’t it?…
