"For the children! Save the children!"
We've all heard this common rallying cry behind many public demands for government at all levels to enact and enforce certain policies.
And rightfully so.
Yet while issues such as drugs, bullying, neglect and abuse as well as access to education seem to get almost all of the attention ó which, for the record, are all indisputably worthy causes in need of discussion ó rarely ever making a blip on the public radar screen is the rather deplorable condition in which we're leaving them the planet.
The human population shows no signs of waving or faltering any time in the foreseeable future ó and neither is its unquenchable thirst for more. With this ceaseless increase of people around the world comes an exponentially growing demand for resources and energy.
However, the Earth and her resources are finite and cannot sustain infinite growth. More and more are we going to see the effects of insatiable, shortsighted consumerism as well as 24-7 industrial activity around the globe that dwarves the amount of emissions spewed by all the planet's volcanoes combined.
The evidence is all over. Extreme droughts in areas not prone to such conditions, unprecedented wildfires in other regions, back-to-back one-in-100 category 5 hurricanes wreaking havoc, and growing numbers of people around the world succumbing to deadly heat waves (while some people have always historically perished during heat waves, it will only get worse). The vast majority of the hottest years since records began in the early 1800s have occurred post-2000.
As increasingly frequent and powerful storms pummel and decimate lives and property, killing scores of people around the world and costing economies countless billions of dollars, the climate conversation has even shifted from "Whether or not it's actually happening" to "Oh yeah, it's happening all right ó but it's not our fault!"
However, human kind most certainly does have an impact, substantially accelerating a naturally occurring climate cycle.
Just more than a century ago, there were barely more than a billion people on the planet who consumed but a mere pittance the amount of resources we do now. Fast forward to today, and we're closing in on eight billion with all indications that number will only continue to grow. We cannot pretend such exponential growth won't have any negative repercussions and ramifications.
The question at this point should be "To what extent is human activity accelerating this natural cycle, and how can we reduce it?"
Of course there certainly is an argument to be made that Earth will unquestionably recover from our indiscretions and misguided priorities in the galactic long run. The planet has over the eons indeed proven its resiliency time and again, having rebounded from far worse than humans throughout its multi-billion year long lifespan. But would we not prefer to be part of that future?
There have been five mass extinction level events discovered in the fossil record entombed in the Earth's crust.
Let's not be a part of the sixth, let alone the cause.
If not for us, then what about the children?
