The Devouring Dragon by Craig Simmons is a gripping account of what the future holds if the developing world plays on the same playing field as the United States. China with its billions of people see the Madison Avenue coke soda ads and what it too.
I’ve been thinking about natural resources and as an elder, with an expected longevity beyond my parents time that means I would be using more natural resources for possibly an extended life. This is not good when you think of how many of us there are.
It is reasonable to think that with billions of people needing natural resources, there will be a great strain on the natural world to provide raw materials to house, cloth and feed more people than ever before.
What is going to happen? Edward O. Wilson wrote in The Future of Life, “The juggernaut of technology-based capitalism will not be stopped. Its momentum is reinforced by the billions of poor people in developing countries anxious to participate in order to share the material wealth of the industrialized nations. But its direction can be changed by mandate of a generally shared long-term environmental ethic. The choice is clear: the juggernaut will very soon be either chew up what remains of the living world, or it will be redirected to save it.”
Many of us are on the side to save it. I wish so for governments of all nations. Native nations, environmentalists, citizen scientists and scientists are teaching and trying to reach the masses in order to educate the public about the preciousness of natural resources. I teach on the wings of a butterfly. Jason Graham teaches about building natural nests for native solitary bees. Karen Oberhauser teaches about Monarchs in the Classroom and Journey North. There are countless others.
We simply can’t put our heads in the sand. We must plant seeds of wisdom in the hopes of regeneration of the earth.
Sources:
Simons, C. The Devouring Dragon (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2013).
Wilson E. O. , The Future of Life (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), 156.
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