Environment: a boat with many holes

So many environmental arguments seem like people arguing over which hole is causing the boat to sink.

Or worse, arguing over whether one hole exists, whilst ignoring the many others! The boat only needs ONE hole to sink. And the solutions will be the same, regardless of which hole is the main cause!

When it comes to our sustainable future, if you agree with ONLY ONE of the following causes, then you to HAVE TO move towards green solutions:

• Over-population
• Over-consumption of resources
• Resource-hungry infrastructure  (eg. energy-inefficient buildings, thirsty motors, etc)
• Resource-hungry consumer habits
• Biblical Justice: over-consumption of the richest third, at the expense of the poorest third.
• Biblical mandate to steward the earth sustainably
• Over-farming of arable land
• Over-fishing / lack of marine reserves
• Water availability
• Pollution – air, land-fill, toxic wastes, etc
• Lack of sustainable energy supply
• Peak oil supply (sooner or later)
• Carbon dioxide levels
• Global warming
• Global particulate shading
• Economic bubbles / stock market manipulations
• Government corruption
• Business corruption
• Public and private apathy
• other

If you think there’s even ONE problem, then we need to get off fossil fuel dependency, and onto a sustainable, green economy, ASAP. If we can agree that we have unsustainable future, regardless of which cause, then lets get on with some agreed solutions!

With our physical health, we know that a myriad of health issues are solved by the same healthy diet & exercise. Same with the environment: a myriad of causes can be solved by the same few green solutions. Like:

• a green economy (not oil-based economy): move off fossil fuels, onto sustainable energy sources
• research and development, of sustainable energy sources
• investment, and deployment of sustainable energy sources
• stringent public policy, to…
• …restrain short-term business interests (greed), in favor of long-term, environmentally sustainable businesses
• stringent government incentives and methods, to stop short-term political interests. (eg. Use parallel thinking methods to uncover all the data, not oppositional methods which short-circuit good thinking.)
• low-consumption infrastructure
• reduce, re-use, recycle
• population restraint
• Justice, sacrifice
• Mercy,
• Humble submission to God
• Establish and maintain marine reserves
• Permaculture
• Healthy diet, exercise and community development
• other…

These solutions apply whatever the cause of un-sustainability.

Increasingly I see people debating as if their reputation depends on it! It’s not about our reputations! It’s about the future of billions of others! If I go down in history as the one who was wrong about a particular cause, at least we’ll have had a history for me to go down in.

There are enough of us to plug the holes in the boat  if we get on with it and work together.

Let’s get on with agreed solutions.