Problems and their solutions
Resources all have their peculiar problems, but underlying them all is that they are caused by humans. In this chapter, we'll investigate how this happens and where solutions can be found.
Acknowledging a problem is half the way to its solution.
Problems cannot be solved without being strictly honest. | |Environmental problems are not entirely new, but whenever they occur, one can be sure that they have in one way or another, been caused by people. But why is it that they have become pressing only recently? The answer is quite simple. Look at the diagram. It shows two situations, that of a world of plenty, less than a century ago, and that of a world of scarcity today. In the distant past, the amount of the biosphere used by people, was negligible to the total amount available. There seemed to be so much remaining. But nowadays, many scientists agree that we have already overstepped the halfway point. So doubling our use of the biosphere will no longer be possible. And as the remaining part of it (used by 10 million other species) becomes smaller, the ecoservices they provide, such as cleaning up after us, become less, and thus our problems worse. The mathematics of scarcity are scary, predicting an infinity of problems at infinite cost (like run-away global warming).
In the near future (and perhaps forever), we can expect our problems to get worse in the following ways:
• more of: we will see more different kinds of problem. New problems will present themselves with regularity.
• more frequent: problems will appear more frequent, reappearing with the natural cycles of our environment. First every 30 years, then every ten, then every year and so on.
• more intensive: our problems will become more intensive, as the cumulative effects of our actions become felt. At first we will notice acute problems, such as acid rain and chemical pollution, but gradually the slower ones will announce themselves. These are at the same...
