A River in Summer [70x40] and a few thoughts on our environment
Hey everyone, I'm very sorry to bother you or burden you with this topic.
I don’t know about you, but in the region where I live, this summer has been terrible so far.
Rivers like the Rhine are dropping closer and closer to zero, and that’s really scary. And the whole area here has a yellowish tint. Meadows, shrubs, and the ground are completely parched. Recently, thick smoke drifted through the area for two days because a nature reserve nearby was on fire. In Europe alone, many many thousands of people have died as a result of this summer’s heat waves.
I’m writing this because the issue is important and because it’s also taking up a lot of my time and energy. I wrote my master’s thesis in history on climate change, and it would be a massive understatement to say that things don’t look good when it comes to our global environmental problems.
I’m currently writing a book to help people understand the reasons why humanity has been warned about exactly these things for more then 50 years and hasn’t managed to address it—and why, under the current system, it’s highly unlikely to succeed.
I’m writing about bad explanations and why this whole issue has absolutely nothing to do with any necessity of “human nature” and it isn’t due to any moral failings on the part of humanity either.
Our environmental problems and our lack of a global response are a necessary consequence of the rules of the global economy and systems of power —that is, capitalism and nationalist competition among states.
Once the book is finished and translated into English, I’ll make it available for free as well.
It's so darn important that this planet remains habitable in the future.
Regards and nothing but love for all people and the rest of nature from AtaraxianBear
Here is the first warning from the scientific community to humanity, issued in 1992, with 1,700 signatures (including a majority of the Nobel Prize winners in the natural sciences who were alive at the time): https://www.ucs.org/resources/1992-world-scientists-warning-humanity#.WjFjcVWnG70
Here is the second from 2017, with 16,000 signatures: https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/67/12/1026/4605229
And the third warning is currently being prepared; its first sentence refers to a “planetary emergency”: https://scientistswarning.forestry.oregonstate.edu/sites/default/files/Third_Notice.pdf
Comments (2)
You're absolutely right that the current way we do things is not 'human nature'. Societies existed for a lot longer than our current industrial society has without doing this damage, or were even beneficial. Braiding Sweetgrass is a fantastic book on the subject I recommend to anyone who has heard those arguments or felt that hopelessness that humanity is just doomed to destroy our world and ourselves.
Thanks for the book recommendation! :) It fits perfectly with what I’m writing about. This idea that human societies necessarily have to take more from nature than they can give back is deeply ingrained in some people’s minds—and it’s so wrong. Only when we realize that, we can begin to ask ourself what the real material practical constraints are, that lead to humanity doing what it does