The war in Ukraine is but one small sign of the numerous rumblings reminding us that huge changes are awaiting us all as this globe becomes – mentally – smaller and smaller. Many people with just a little foresight can see that these rumblings, unless attended to, will become major explosions.
It is a major platitude to say that the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer but this fact is one of the basic issues of the world today. Our income in the West (and a few other countries – parts of China, Japan and a few other areas in Asia, the Golf and Latin America) gets fatter and fatter while levels of living continue stagnating on the level of extreme poverty in huge areas of the South. The major environmental statistic is the ecological imprint: what an individual “consumes” of the environment per day. For the planet to survive, it should not be over 1.8 hectares. In many Western countries and a few others, it is well over 5, but in a good many countries of the South (especially Africa) below 1. The summaries of the GIEC (the famous UN committee of high-level scientists regularly issuing reports on the world environment) are becoming more and more alarming and leaving us less and less time to get our act together and start doing something really serious about the environment.
And I could go on citing page after page of disturbing statistics. (There are also some very positive ones but that will be for a future blog).
The only real remedy is for each one to examine her or his lifestyle, modes of consumption, travel habits and locomotion, use of water and so many other areas which, when added up, will make ALL the difference. I/we are running this globe much more than the politicians or even economists by our lifestyles, down to the smallest detail.
Do I realize this? And what am I going to do about it?
Pierre Pradervand
May 2022
“May we understand that our huge environmental predicament is a wake-up call for humanity to treat Mother Earth with the deepest respect and this or that regional war a call to us all that we may build the necessary economic, social, cultural and political structures so as to enable us to grasp our oneness as a race and act accordingly.” PP from https://pierrepradervand.com/365-blessings-to-heal-myself-and-the-world/
