明治政経2008 II

We are in trouble. Put simply, we are destroying the natural systems on which our lives depend. The pollutants that we've pumped into the air, water, and soil have fundamentally changed the earth's ecological balance. Much of the damage is irreversible. The destruction of the earth's ozone layer, the acidification of our ( 1 ), the poisoning of our rivers, lakes and oceans, the depletion of our soil, the devastation of our forests, and large-scale extinctions intensify one another, creating a devastating attack on the earth's capacity to support human life. In the short term, our treatment of the earth as a toxic waste dump will lead to mass environmental destruction and tremendous human suffering. In the long term, if unchecked, it will kill us all. We won't be the first to go; many species will precede us into oblivion. But make no mistake: if we do nothing, we will go.

It's tempting to oversimplify the problem, to say simply there are too many people, too much consumption, or too many factories. These easy claims don't really get at the trouble we're in. It's true, the rate of population growth is troubling; but we are ( 2 ) producing enough food for every person on the planet to be adequately fed in a way that does not destroy the global ecosystem. In fact, 78 per cent of all ( 3 ) children live in countries with food surpluses! It is also true that overconsumption of the earth's resources is clearly a problem; but the large majority of the earth's people do not consume great amounts of resources. Nearly half of the earth's population survive on less than $2 per day. These people certainly are not overconsuming! Similarly, there are clearly too many industries pumpiiig out too much pollution; but much of the world lives without industry, without adequate employment, without a livelihood, and lacking the resources necessary to survive.

To really understand the trouble we're in, we need to ask not only 'what's being destroyed?' but also 'by whom?' and 'why?'. [ X ] that the current system is physically unsustainable because we are consuming far more  resources than the earth can sustainably provide, and we are producing massive waste and pollution that the earth's ecosystem simply cannot continue to absorb. The current system is also morally unsustainable because this environmental devastation is being wrought by a small, privileged minority of the earth's residents who live in excess, consuming huge amounts of the earth's resources, while a large number of the planet's population go without the basic necessities of life. These aren't separate problems: the destruction of the global ecosystem and the violent inequity in the distribution of wealth and resources are two sides of the same ( 4 ); we cannot address one  without addressing the other.

The moral injustice of the current world order is ( 5 ). Roughly one in four people in the world lack adequate food and other necessities of life. The average person in the world's most impoverished countries will die 27 years younger than the average person in the world's richest countries. In fact, less than half of those born in the world's poorest countries can expect to live to the age of 65. In southern Africa, an infant has less than a 1 in 7 chance of reaching its fifth birthday. In the most impoverished areas of the world, over 40 per cent of infants are underweight; and 10 per cent of infants will die in their first year of life. While these conditions are improving in some countries, in about an equal number of countries these conditions are worsening.

The gap between the world's rich and the poor is dramatic. The 20 per cent of the earth's people who live in the wealthiest countries consume 58 per cent of the world's energy; the poorest 20 per cent consume 5 per cent. The wealthiest 20 per cent consume 84 per cent of all paper products; the poorest consume 1 per cent. The wealthiest 20 per cent own 87 per cent of the world's vehicles; the poorest 20 per cent have less than 1 per cent. More disturbing still, the gap is getting larger. The gap in access to energy and natural resources has more than doubled in the past three decades. In 1970, the number of infants who died before their first birthday was around five times higher in the world's poor countries than it was in the wealthy countries of the world; it is now about ten times higher.

Not only is this expanding gap between the world's poor and rich morally intolerable, it cannot support an environmentally sustainable world. The consumption by the world's rich minority and the associated gross disregard for the earth's ecological balance have brought us to a point where business as usual simply cannot continue. Even if we in the wealthy countries of the world choose to ignore the tremendous suffering of the earth's majority, even if we agree to overlook the fundamental injustice of the current order, we cannot choose to disregard the physical consequences of this system: the current world order is destroying the earth's capacity to support human life. Closing our eyes to this fact will not make it go away.