Lesson 10: Environment
Watch this 20min video first: The Story of Stuff
The world can satisfy the needs of everyone, but not all their wants.
~ Mahatma Gandhi.
Long before the words "environmental issues" were coined, Gandhi had already understood the unsustainable pace of modern civilisation.
As you write down all your goals and dreams in life, it is very important that you assess them from an environmental point of view.
How does your (planned) way of living impact the big picture? What concrete steps can you take to lessen your "ecological footprint"?
There are many small habits that you can improve or start with that will make a big difference (recycling, turning off the lights when not needed, bicycling to work, etc.). You will find more ideas about small things you can do on this website: 50 Ways To Help
But the world now also badly needs more people who take even more proactive steps to invent and commercialise environmentally sustainable technologies and solutions.
Most of the solutions already exist, but they are maybe not always the solutions you might expect. For example, the current solar or wind technologies are not very "green": low output, need a lot of raw materials, need a lot of maintenance, pollute landscapes visually, are expensive, etc.
Have a look at the following websites to get a glimpse of what the future could look like:
We believe that the world is heading towards an eco-affluent society, but to reach this state of advanced civilisation, people need to change their mindset and work together for the good of all.
This might sound like utopia when you read the news, and see the world around you. But we only have two possibilities:
- EITHER: we work together for an eco-affluent future
- OR: we might need to deal with environmental and social issues of big proportions.
The good news is that most solutions already exist, we just need to work together in non-bureaucratic ways to implement them.
What regards most of the research done in the world today, we want to write a few lines about why we think the results and the creativity are so low. Follow the money and watch the pride:
Who sponsors research?
-most of the time governments or big corporations.
Who decides who gets the money?
- most of the time committees of old professors or corporations.
1. Big corporations will not invest a cent into research that could threaten their business or interests.
2. Governments are not known to be particularly creative and risk-taking and most of the time the committees that allocate the research money are composed of old school professors and scientists, most of whom have not made any big difference in the last decades. So if you are a young researcher with new, daring ideas that threaten old school's thinking and theories, guess what your chances are of getting funding? Fortunately, there are a few exceptions to these rules, and these exceptions make the world advance.
3. Even if both of the abovementioned problems can be avoided, innovators struggle against the lack of motivating support from friends, family, colleagues, and society in general who tend to look down on people who think and do things differently.
The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.
~ Chinese proverb.
If you told someone a few decades ago that you build a system so that you can turn on and regulate the temperature of your sauna in Sweden wirelessly and instantly while sitting in a café in Sydney, most people would tell you that it is completely impossible and think you are cuckoo... Now, this is normal reality today.
So how would you react if somebody today would come to you and say that they work on a system to teleport people instantaneously Star Trek-like from A to B?
Your ego fears the unknown, but the real you never kills another person's dreams, even if they seem far-fetched according to your own understanding.
There is just a time lag between science-fiction and reality.
Let us dare to dream of a brighter future and to make those dreams a reality for ourselves, for our children and for generations ahead.
~ Arnold Schwarzenegger (in the foreword of "Dare To Dream").
This 30-page report is a very welcome positive message in sharp contrast to the main media negativity.
Thank You!
Healfi Cards
Exercise
Information pollution and overload is part of your daily environment. Take any daily newspaper and analyse the percentage of articles that are:
- negative vs. positive
- useful vs. useless
Of course some articles might be useful to other people, but count the ones that are really useful for you.
Now it is up to you to take your own conclusions: is it really worth reading the newspaper every day? Or at all? Could you find the specific information that was positive AND useful somewhere else (Internet, books, magazines...)?
