Throughout history, humans have been looking to consolidate what they possessed and enlarge it. From the cavemen of the stone age to the modern man of today, we all still depend on the environment to grow our economies. The environment has been humanity’s archaic benefactor which some civilizations worship while others take for granted.
In modern society, we are part of the latter civilisations mentioned; we take the environment for granted. It seems the meaning of life today for most people is to increase your wealth by any “respectable” method, or otherwise. The problem with humanity is our anthropocentric stance. Robbing humans is considered a crime, but taking what you want from the environment is deemed fair game. If a human were to knock down another house without permission would be considered vandalism, property damage and malicious mischief. However, major logging companies like West Fraser Timber cut down forests every day housing dozens if not hundreds of different species. The Amazon rainforest is home to almost 10% of all known species (plants, insects, animals) in the world. Yet during the past 40 years, almost 20 percent of the Amazon rainforest has been deforested [National Geographic]. We cut down these forests not because we are inherently evil, instead we do so for economic growth. Much of the Amazon has been cut down to clear space for cattle ranches and the trees cut are used for everything from houses to furniture to paper.
This is a typical account of our society’s anthropocentric stance, disregarding the environment in favour of economic growth. While humanity’s coffers get bigger, the size of forests, number of fish in the ocean, variety of animal species, they all grow smaller. Our current method of growing the economy is unsustainable and while the environment may be the first casualty, humankind will be the final victim.
This is not a problem we can easily solve. The Native Americans used to constantly move around to allow the land around them to regrow, thus allowing for a good balance between growth and environmental sustainability. They could do this as North America was a huge country with a small human population. However, this solution is not one we can use nowadays. Humans live almost everywhere in the world. With a population numbering upwards of 7.5 billion, there is not enough space left on the planet for us to be truly nomadic.
So what can we do? Having a stagnant economy will do no good for humankind, yet at the rate we are going the environment supporting all life on Earth will be no more. That will also do no good for humankind. With humankind being predominantly anthropocentric as opposed to being ecocentrists, we would probably find no compromise acceptable, as all we want is wealth, and more of it. It is in our nature to be selfish, and ignorant of the consequences of actions we like doing.
As of yet, I myself see no solutions that can actually happen, and work. Politicians requesting we limit our carbon emissions fly all around the world and their countries releasing multiple times more carbon dioxide than expected of everyone in the world. The President of the United States, Donald Trump, arguably one of the most powerful figures currently in our world, is a skeptic of climate change. This can have consequences limiting governmental funding for climate scientists trying to find solutions to our desperate problem. This means that even being technocentric won’t help find a problem, as you cannot develop technology without adequate funding, which only comes from economic growth.
To appeal to everyone’s anthropocentric side, perhaps the message should not be saving the environment but saving humankind through environmental sustainability instead.
