Tackling Global Climate Change is not Enough
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 11:30
Tackling Global Climate Change is not Enough!
J. T. Trevors and M. H. Saier
Tackling global climate change is not enough to move humanity in the correct direction. In fact, it is not even the minimum to sustain our singular, common, shared biosphere. Why is it not sufficient? The answers lie in the following facts.
1. 7 billion humans are simply too many people on our planet.
2. Increasing the human population at about 75-80 million people annually is not sustainable.
3. Of about 193 countries in the world, too many are not democratic or are failed states.
4. Non-democratic countries and failed states violate the universal declaration of human rights. Some pseudo-democratic and democratic countries also violate human rights.
5. Over 1 billion humans do not have their basic daily needs met.
6. There are too many conflicts and wars ongoing in the world.
7. Too large a percentage of the human population are not educated.
8. The political-industrial-military complex does not serve the needs of humanity.
9. More outbreaks and pandemics will occur.
10. Discrimination and racial, religious intolerance are still widespread.
11. There are simply too many people on the planet doing the wrong thing (crime, violence, conflicts, corruption, wars, greed, control to name a few).
12. Most countries have immense debts.
13. 7 billion humans produce too much waste from non-renewable resources.
14. There are no guarantees that agriculture can meet the food needs of more humans.
15. Political and economic solutions to total global pollution are incorrect and will fail.
16. Most countries lack any visionary leadership but have elected managers.
17. Countries do not share their resources.
18. Capitalism may not be the best form of economics to use in democracies.
19. Many humans are greedy and selfish. They are also ignorant.
20. Most educational systems are failures. They often produce consumers not educated humans and scholars.
21. Many citizens in democratic countries do not vote and protect their democracies.
22. Basic infrastructure is lacking in too many countries.
23. Laws protecting the environment are often non-existent or enforced.
The list is not complete but it does include some of the priority challenges/problems that also need to be solved, in addition to the current global climate change crisis. Seeking and putting in place international solutions to a single problem, does not work with 7 billion humans on the planet. There are no simple global problems, only complex, interconnected ones. Sometimes we do not know how problems are interconnected until confronted with the actual facts and events. We rest our case. Dealing with global climate change pollution is simply not enough!
J. T. Trevors
School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada, N1G 2W1
E-mail: jtrevors@uoguelph.ca
M. H. Saier
Division of Biological Sciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0116, USA
E-mail: msaier@ucsd.edu
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