Before I begin a very intense rant, I think it’s important that you watch this video. 

Okay now that you’ve done that I suggest you take a five minute break until you’re able to close your jaw that I know is hanging open right now. If you’re jaw isn’t hanging open right now, it’s either because you’ve seen that video a billion times or you’re what Andy Revkin would refer to as a “climate ostrich” meaning that you’re in denial of man’s impact on this planet. It could also just be that you’re simply not aware. That’s okay too. This is what I’m here for.

Let me start by saying that the video is not an exaggeration. The speed at which all it occurs may be a little fast, but nothing else is exaggerated. It all starts quite small, with one insect and some snake boots, but quickly escalates to alteration of the Earth’s systems, destruction of many ecosystems and mountains of manmade, trivial objects collecting and polluting the planet. The ending is probably the most impactful of the whole video. The man collects all these objects and then suddenly everything goes quiet. Now that he has wiped out just about every living thing on the planet, he doesn’t know what to do with all these things. He just sits around on his throne, staring at the mess he made. What did all those things really bring him in his life? All he did was destroy the very thing that gave him life: the Earth (the aliens were so appalled by his behaviour that they essentially killed him). 

This is what we call unsustainable living and overconsumption. It is a lifestyle that cannot be maintained over a long period of time. Here on Earth, there exists two worlds: the developed world and the developing world. Here in the developed world, we have problems of overconsumption, and hold 20% of the population and 80% of the world’s wealth. This is an unrealistic standard to hold the rest of the world to. If all 7.4 billion of us consumed this way, I’m pretty sure the Earth would implode or something. The developing world holds 80% of the population and 20% of the world’s wealth and experiences problems of deprivation.

These two worlds are two separate extremes, neither are sustainable or appropriate, but they do have one thing in common: the future. Both worlds need to develop further (in different ways) in order to reach a sustainable middle ground, a point of convergence. They both need to work toward, the same, more sustainable future, one that does not over-exploit the planet’s natural resources, and one that leaves the Earth in better condition than found.

In order to reach this point of convergence, change needs to occur in both worlds. This cannot be done by changing the systems and substances of the Earth, the very thing that contains us and allows us to live, but by changing the human role in it. The environment cannot be managed appropriately without first understanding and changing the cultures that are embedded in it. This topic in and of itself could compose dozens of posts, but I’ll leave it at this. We don’t need to change nature so that we can live in it, we need to change our ways of living so that we can live with nature and use its resources in a non-destructive manner.