Sustainability.
That’s the popular word today in discussions of food production and
the environment. Sustainability is about meeting the requirement of
the present without compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their needs and all about achieving an overall balance. But for
farmers, ‘sustainability’ means not only those practices that are
good for managing soil, water, and land, it also means a few things
practical to the business side of the farm, such as having enough
land and feed to sustain the cattle, or managing the farm to stay
profitable and in business, or managing the land in a way that brings
opportunities to future generations. At its basic level,
sustainability can mean maximising the land’s potential to produce
more forage per acre and more milk per cow. Profitability. Whatever
the specific definition of ‘sustainable,’ one thing is for
certain: economics drive solutions within capitalism.
Scientific
and technological advances have been enormous and thanks to
breakthroughs in communications, millions of people globally
routinely conduct live, visual conversations with one another. In
medicine, replacing damaged or diseased parts of the human body has
become commonplace. In biology, scientists have mapped the human
genome and are well on their way to understanding the structure of
the brain. When it comes to transport, it is relatively easy to
travel the world, while spacecraft are now being designed to take
tourists into orbit. Computers have dramatically improved the
acquisition of knowledge, the storage of information, and
dissemination of it at incredible high speed.
Yet
there is a glaring discrepancy between these kinds of advances and
the social institutions that can ensure that they are used for the
benefit of humanity. Despite very substantial progress in modern
medicine, vast numbers of people receive no medical treatment or, at
best, inferior medical care. The internet's ability to transmit
knowledge, culture, and understanding around the world is employed
primarily to distribute mindless, shallow entertainment and peddle
commercial products. The ravages of climate change are ignored and
instead, corporations roll out plans to further destroy the
environment through additional extraction and use of fossil fuel.
Stimulating consumer demand through the latest advertising
techniques, capitalist corporations churn out a vast number of
quickly-discarded throw-away gadgets whose manufacture fills the air,
the water, and the soil with dangerous contaminants. Drawing upon the
science of robotics, business is beginning the displacement of
millions of workers, condemning them to unemployment and poverty
rather than extend leisure and reduce working hours. While
governments press into service the latest scientific and
technological knowledge to spy on the public, as well as to produce
new weapons and other high-tech means of destroying millions of lives
in war.
Capitalist
greed has stunted social impulses. The real question is whether
people can muster the political will to reshape society to meet the
challenges of today and tomorrow. Overpopulation
is blamed for the destruction of the planet, yet have we ever thought
of pointing fingers at the unsustainable practices WE continue to
perform in the name of “profit” despite the many existing
alternatives? It is not a question of the number of people inhabiting
our planet, it is a question of the laws of capitalism. When
researchers started looking at whether we could increase our
population numbers and economies without using up more of the Earth's
limited natural resources, they expected the answer to be “no”.
But their findings suggest it can be done. What if we used all of our
manpower, creativity and intelligence for the betterment of all life
instead of using it solely to empower the few at the top? What if we
united forces not for war and destruction, but for peace and
creation? What if we instead used this same potential to create
sustainable technologies, beneficial products and harmonious systems
that would allow humanity and the earth to thrive? Imagine if we
united as a people, stopped complying and created a more beautiful
world—not because of some piece of paper we would get in return
but, because it only makes sense.The
truth is, if we all shifted towards an earth-friendly lifestyle and
designed sustainable cities that would allow for self-sufficiency and
collaboration for the good of all, we would no longer be considered a
threat to the planet. We would work with nature and not against it.
We are a part of nature after all and it is about time we stop
feeling guilty for existing. What we should be critical of are our
actions and destructive system we continue to uphold – not our
species itself – which can all be changed if we stop pretending we
are separate from nature and each other. The
world is abundant of resources and could provide for everyone’s
needs. The
world isn’t overpopulated at all. It’s just very badly managed.
We humans face a choice. As populations grow and earth resources come
under near-intolerable pressure, we have to decide how to feed
ourselves.
Our
fight is to show that for our current and future needs we have enough
already. Abundance already exists. If faced by a shortage of one
material we have alternative sources which does not involve the
intensification of the extraction process for the original source to
the detriment of the environment. Report after report explains that
more conservation and less waste is a better solution than constant
growth. Our case against capitalism is a "holistic" one yet
many still wage all their individual battles and wars as isolated
individual campaigns. We are not anti-GM or anti-fracking and we are
not pro-organic and pro-local food. We are anti-capitalist because
commercial vested interests is the fundamental problem of the
science, not the particular technologies.
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