Sustainable Shopping 4 - It's Common Sense

 

Common Sense Behaviour in the Modern World

• 2 – 3 centuries ago in the early industrial revolution the horrible pollution poured out in a few valleys by newly invented industrial processes wasn't enough to have a worldwide impact. It more or less hung around and made life nasty for the locals.

• It's difficult to know what the world population was back then but estimates vary between 600 and 900 million. Let's say below one billion anyway. See https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/international-programs/historical-est-worldpop.html

• One century ago my granddad was age 30, my dad was a baby and the world population had doubled in the meantime to 1.8 billion, roughly a quarter of what it is now.

• Then, only a small fraction of that quarter sized population were living as we do now, as consumers, requiring many resources and industrial processes to service their lifestyle.

• Only a tiny percentage of that small fraction of that quarter sized population travelled by car, using fossil fuel and spreading exhaust gases around.

• Only a miniscule percentage of that small fraction of that quarter sized population flew in aeroplanes, pouring gases out into the atmosphere. Compare this to 2020 when the number of passenger flights 'plummeted' to 1.8 billion - a number equal to the entire world population then - because of the huge decline caused by coronavirus. (According to the business statistics provider Statista.)

• Then, plastics were in the early stages of development, and had (and have) much to offer, but weren't yet known to create mountains of indestructible litter.

• Then, it made sense for an ordinary person to aspire to benefit from these things. Certainly, half that time ago, by which time the population had almost doubled again (3.4bn), I did.

But I look now at our vastly expanded population – doubled yet again - and I think, seven billion of us haven't room to chuck shit about like a few of our ancestors had.

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We have to dramatically clean up our act so that we can all enjoy a quality standard of living without suffocating in our own crap. Those new technologies being exploited by our forebears were early versions, primitive by modern standards, and usually dirty. 'Where there's muck there's money', as they used to say in my part of the world. That was all they had back then. Building from those beginnings we have reached a point today where we have the expertise to do things in much better, more refined, ways. So let's do it - it's common sense.

What I don't think is common sense is a belief that we should remain tied to those old technologies because "I'm making money/I've always done it that way/I don't want to think about it".

What I don't think is common sense is a belief that a nice beardy man in the sky has it all under control and will rescue us from the consequences of our actions.

What I don't think is common sense is a belief I can buy an island and hide from it all.

What I don't think is commonsense is a belief we can all jump on a space ship and go and live on Mars.

What I don't think is common sense is a belief that we can all go and live under a plastic dome somewhere.

What I don't think is common sense is a belief that the planet will rebalance itself in a way to suit our convenience. (I have posted about this:
https://whysgetsserious.blogspot.com/2015/02/about-environment-1-one-liners-and-off.html?m=1 )

We have a choice - behave like the species which has the gift of being able to learn, see ahead, plan, innovate and organise for the future - or behave like just another dumb animal that obliviously grazed chomped and shit its way through the landscape until it was all used up and the next dumb animal came along.