This beautiful planet is our home and if we are going to remain living on it, then it’s high time we started cleaning up the place!
Some of the biggest problems we have in this world come from over population, materialistic lifestyles and ignorance. Our presence on this planet and energy-intensive way of life is slowly but surely killing the fragile ecosystems that we depend upon to survive. Simply put, there are too many of us consuming unsustainable amounts of resources. We face a looming catastrophe of unimaginable consequences if we fail to address these problems. There is a ‘tipping’ point and, if we haven’t already reached it, then we will in the next century unless things change. Only now through climate change and other environmental challenges are we seeing how fragile these ecosystems are and the dramatic impact our lives have on the planet’s health. These environmental challenges are the biggest single threat that my generation will face. It could get a lot worse before it gets better.
There is a lot that we can do to help build truly sustainable societies by simply changing our behavior. I believe what’s lacking is not the will, but rather the motivation and inspiration to change. The simple fact is that our current consumption patterns and energy-intensive lifestyles aren’t sustainable and may threaten our very existence on the planet. So, I asked myself what can I do about it?
The good thing is there’s plenty we CAN DO! Enough to fill two lifetimes, and so I decided to unplug myself from this energy intensive and materialistic way of life, travel the world sustainably, learn from other cultures and ultimately find out what is really important. Through this I hope to inspire other individuals.
What needs to happen?
We need to wake up! Get our heads out of the sand. Things need to change. There is a small finite opportunity to turn things around and avoid the perilous outcomes that our new religion, science predicts. What’s needed is an environmental revolution, a whole new approach to the way we view the world, value the environment and live within it. It is about true sustainability and living within our means. It’s unfortunate that politicians are often reactive rather than proactive and, as a result of their short political terms, often have limited foresight . I believe the change needed has to come from a grass roots level.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.“Â Margaret Mead
The great thing is that we can all gear our lives to a truly sustainable way to live. Making small changes over an entire population can have a huge effect on the problem as a whole (like the butterfly effect). Simple discussion, debate and voicing of these concerns by all of us can shape the political economic and social dynamic that is needed to tackle such large scale problems. We have to understand that these environmental systems we depend upon to survive; the social, economic, political and environmental systems are all dynamically linked.
Social change has an exponential domino effect! The more people that make changes, the more others catch on. Once there is sufficient demand from the general population, business and the politicians will follow (and finally start to implement sustainable long term environmental policies). It is not only the social domino effect, but also the economic. Once more people start cycling to work, we’ll get better cycling paths which will encourage even more people to leave their car at home. Once we start using public transport more often, there will be more trains/buses running more frequently, more money to invest in upgrading the public transport and more political will to change.
I remember a high school teacher, while explaining the principles of Newtonian physics, once asked “Does one mosquito hitting a freight train slow the train?” to which our curiosity sparked, yet we all scoffed at the idea. He then asked the class “Would a tonne of mosquitoes slow the train?” (Confused faces stared at the teacher thinking how could you get a tonne of mosquitoes together?). “Then, by the same logic”, the teacher explained, “If a tonne of mosquitoes can slow a train, then every single individual mosquito must slow the train.”
