How to direct the environment towards modernity and avoid falling into rejecting possible solutions simply because they do not involve punishing and demonizing the market economy and the Western way of life. If not science, listen to Greta
there Climate and environmental crises It is one of the most important outcomes of the success of our species and one of the greatest challenges we face as a community of individuals who understand the consequences of our actions.
However, as is always the case for topics of particularly high impact and therefore of great importance, even a simple discussion of the data that science presents us immediately leads to very strong emotional and social consequences, which include even the extreme positions of rejecting scientific data in favor of hypotheses. More appropriate to align our cognitive processes with our ideological, economic, and even psychological interests and perceptions.
Although we tend to stigmatize – rightly – the rejection of scientific data in that they reflect the progress of environmental degradation and its consequences, already begun but also in the future, there is in fact a second side, the harmful habit of rejection that specifically affects the part Most aware of the ongoing crisis: Rejecting the possibilities suggested by science and technology, trusting that they can be found, because they do not entail punishment and almost moral demonization of the main driver of disaster, i.e. habits. Consumption and life, especially for the most advanced and wealthiest of the population.
However, there is no hope that, with our approaching ten billion people and the stratospheric number of animals and plants needed to sustain them, as well as basic resources such as drinking water, it will be possible to emerge from the crisis, even if it is possible. With a wand we can magically make the hated disappear Market economyvery guilty Western lifestyle And with them the scientific and technological knowledge that feeds it: Instead, our extinction and the extinction of a large portion of the species on our planet will be acceleratedBecause no one would accept to die in an orderly manner in the interest of conserving resources, as we can already see by looking at the wars and unrest caused by simple inequalities in access to wealth.
Pessimism is a state that can also stem from calm and rational observation of things, taking into account the current situation and its possible evolutionary path; but Optimism and confidence in science and technology is the only thing that can allow us to change the status quo and the most likely pathin favor of solutions that science already points out to us today as possibilities and useful attempts to be made (to be clear, there is no certainty and we will never have any).
So it is enough to deny the environmental crisis or the human origin of climate change, but it is also enough, finally, to resort to simple condemnation and fairy tales about good nature, about the balance of creation and the happy decline of growth: It is time to ask instead, as Greta did, to fully embrace science and its way of workingNot oblivious to the interests capable of influencing it, of course, but precisely for this reason, by building a stronger and greater interest, the interest of citizens and the masses, To direct the environment towards modernity, and push for the adoption of the best technologies available to us as we study more future technologies, rather than rejecting even the simple idea that there may be — even partial, but multiple — cures for the most pressing pollution problems, such as energy. Efficiency, hunger, nutrition, recovery, waste treatment and disposal.
No more evil choices that lead to closure or rejection Nuclear power plantsIt pushed the consumption of gas and coal to rise, as happened in green and highly developed Germany; Sufficient prior rejection (not counting fair and justified rejections) for Waste-to-energy conversion plantsSystems of all kinds, railway transportation, Genetically modified organismsNuclear technology and all the useful technology in our country, only to end up in the hands of sellers like France for energy, Canada for GMOs, foreign countries and the mafia for waste transportation and disastrous disposal and so on.
It is time for science deniers to show this door, both when they deny the existence or importance of the crisis and its human origin, and when they claim that the solution is to eliminate from the beginning every possible way out of it.without going through a punitive bloodbath, with predictable consequences for our species and for many others.
If not science, listen to Greta when she asks to follow her.
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