Not a Global Green

Black clouds of pollution in China, overfishing off Japan, forest destruction in Brazil, poaching in Ethiopia. Worldwide, there is no doubt that there is substantial destruction occurring to the environment. This does not even factor in the impact of third world nations on global carbon emissions. We have to ask ourselves – what do we want to save? It is not possible to save everything; from an economic standpoint we are faced with a scarcity problem. With only a limited amount of resources and an unlimited demand something is doomed to be lost. The real question is what we want to save the most.

Unfortunately, this question is not being asked in the halls of the US congress, the UN, AU, or really any other governing body. Instead issue usually gets diverted to bickering about responsibility, blame, funding, etc. What really needs to be decided is not who caused the problems up until this point but rather which problems we want to solve in the future. Germany recently decided to phase out the use of nuclear power plants and there is fear this could set off another wave of anti-nuclear backlash across the globe. Yet there is an interest group that has a problem with everything. Coal and other fossil fuels have their obvious critics. But some dislike wind because is kills a few birds and solar because it is hard to dispose of the panels.

As can be seen, the lack of consensus is doing more harm to the environmental movement than good. The rise of globalization has only encouraged this problem with people being less able to focus on local problems which are actually solvable. Unless consensus grows in terms of which issues are most important to be solved the international community risks not solving anything - which could ultimately endanger us all.