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When Instagram users post pictures of plastic bottles in the sea, what are they saying? Maybe That this view of nature is corrupted and unnatural that rather we should be enjoying an untainted scene devoid of human tampering. They believe that we all share this same vision of nature, that we all want to see the seas, land, and air unmarked by the human stains of our excess, but is this really a dream that connects all of us?
Looking at the top six countries currently polluting our oceans and you will notice Egypt coming in after Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia and the first place polluter, China, do these countries just not care about the world?
Greta Thunberg, the current icon of climate change has implied that if we understood the situation and still are failing to act, "then that would be evil." So are the people of South East Asia, China, and Egypt evil? Are their government evil for not sharing the same concern?
Egyptians have been making strives to ban plastic on the red sea, clean up the beaches and streets, and have planted more than a million trees across the country to soak up more carbon dioxide, not to mention major clean energy initiatives such as the Benban Solar park but still the environment suffers, meat consumption has doubled from 2000, and is expected to increase 400% in the next 20 years due to the rise in living standards.
Industrialization is important, the desire for modern lifestyles of heating, air conditioning, around the clock access to electricity, and transportation are not evil. Since the 90s, China has lifted 500 million people out of poverty, reducing its poverty rate from 65% to less than 7% of the population, a dream we all wish for all countries, including Egypt whose poverty rate still is in the 30-40% range. All this demands increased carbon emissions, and that should be supported.
Perhaps what we should be looking at is how deep rooted this problem is inside all of us because this utopia can't exist, I can't expect people to do whatever I want, we can't impose our standards on society, everyone sees it in a different way and every perspective is necessary for our survival. But also our obsession with power is what led us to doom.
Generally, when people say they want power, what they really want is autonomy. And when they get that autonomy, they tend to stop wanting power.
So how did we get here?
Just 10,000 years ago there were one million of us. By 1800 there were 1 billion of us. There are now 7 billion humans on earth, and by 2050 we're expected to reach 9 billion. Just like you, all 7 billion want things for themselves, even if it’s unhealthy for themselves individually or destructive collectively. Ethiopia wants to use the Nile resources as much as Egypt does. Millions of lives depend on it, as Ethiopia fills their dam and threatens Egypt’s access to water, both countries could lose out in their conflict to improve the lives of their population.
Because we are all fighting for whatever we can get to improve our lot in the world, no one actually knows what they're doing until it's done. It’s really hard to look past our own desires if we are struggling to live, how can we expect Egyptian farmers to care as much? If we privileged educated Egyptians want to make a change, it can’t be to call everyone else who doesn’t care about clean oceans or fresh air evil or heartless.
For maybe 200 years now, movies and media have been convincing us to eat more meat, drive more cars and earn more money, hedonism was a defining quality of success whether on an individual or a grand scale with consumerism. Now everything has changed, the internet is telling us otherwise, we are confronted with an issue that is greater than anything we've been through before, and should we choose economic growth for the price of our environment? Or vice versa? And what are the consequences for each choice?
On one hand environmentalists calling out for a utopia while economy is on a pursuit for economic power and both cannot exist fully
Unfortunately we don't know the answer to any of those questions but maybe what we can tell you for sure is that this tension exists in us on an individual level between our conscious and unconscious, the conscious part that tells you to sustain, be healthy, clean up after yourself, work out while the unconscious thinks it could live forever in pleasure, so it doesn't really matter what we do; eat meat every day even though heart disease is in your future, don’t clean up after yourself because you’re too good for that, don’t care about those issues that will directly affect or limit your life, just enjoy an instantaneous pleasure and the price is a less rewarding future. It's natural to have those two conflicting voices inside our head all the time, we're all in it together but the question here is how can we as individuals consciously lead our collective to a better, more fulfilling future?
Well, they say balance is the road less travelled. When we constantly consume, there is no chance for balance. One should love themselves enough to discipline it in order to survive. Without a conscious voice telling us what to do we'll probably be doomed. The burden that has been thrown at us can only be solved by actions to counteract what has already been done, to reach a balance.
So maybe be brave, dare to love, cooperate, be your own authority, do the right thing and definitely don't take the easy way out. Whatever that means to you.
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