To learn the truth about a sustainable environment, you don’t need the Internet or a library. Simple is best. Which means, why not ask your grandparents? If your grandmother or grandfather is no longer alive, you could always “borrow” one. It’s a common fact that our older generations often enjoy company, and that they tell good stories about their childhood memories.
If you do this, you will hear stories about fishing trips where even the worst fishing luck would not stop the fish from biting. When you could go fishing and come home with fish for your whole family, and not just your cat. Best of all, you didn’t have to feel guilty for bringing the fish home, especially not a cod. You would hear crazy stories, about times when we only ploughed our fields, and not our seabed. How you back then could point out different stars and constellations on a cloud free midnight sky, because you could actually see them with your own eyes. A childhood where you could build a tree hut or ten, make some wooden bows and arrows, and it would still be trees left.
A bit over dramatized maybe, but for how long? Turn back the time less than 100 years and you see a sustainable environment. Take the same time travel, but this time into the future. What type of environment will we have 100 years from now? Will there be any fish left in the ocean, any trees to build houses, any energy for our cars and industries. If you can answer yes to this question, and yes again when asked the same question, but this time referring to a 1000 years later, then we got a sustainable environment.
A sustainable environment is about letting people live within environmental limits whilst maximizing quality of life. Basically, take only what you need. If someone however takes more than what they need, someone else will get less than what they need. It’s an evil circle, in this case called greed. Which basically goes like this: Take all you can get your hands on and get ridiculously rich, even if it’s not yours to take. By some also called survival of the fittest. Which in today’s modern society is like saying: “ if I won’t do it, others will, so why should I feel bad?”
Mother earth is our home, a globally shared bank account storing our global resources. Meant to be divided equally between us. The problem with this bank account however is that we cannot completely control who deposits resources from our account. Which also means, we cannot control the interest we get of our global resources. With no interests, we cannot use any of our resources without our bankroll decreasing. Unless we of course deposit the same amount back: like preservation of rainforest’s, stopping fishing in extra exposed areas for a few years to let the fishing population grow etc.
An ideal situation would be to not have to make any deposits. Mother earth has good interest potential, up to 100% or more for some resources, depending on how well we spend our resources and in what rate. If we spend our resources correct, meaning no bankroll decrease over a long period, we have a sustainable environment.
Unfortunately, according to numerous scientific reports mother earth its almost bankrupts. At the moment, mother earth is gaining no interest and our bankroll in constantly decreasing. One question is, will it hit zero, or can it be prevented? The most important question however is: if it were your personal bankroll, with enough money stored to be able to live off interest alone for the rest of your life, would you let it reach zero?
