Fourth Entry
Before the flood: We need to act right now before its too late.
A few weeks ago I watched a very interesting documentary called “before the flood”, it’s a
film starring Leonardo DiCaprio in which he travels around the world to be a
witness of the impact climate change has on the daily lives of people, animals
and plants were its most notorious.
Before the
flood it’s a film that aims to make people aware of their every day actions, to
make them aware of what they consume, to make people aware of how a simple
slice of meat is having a huge impact in the environment for future
generations.
Patches of forest being burnt down to plant “economically efficient” trees (Palm trees), the abuse of energy from the people in the United States, land being excavated and destroyed just to search for oil, thousands of factories releasing toxic gases in the atmosphere all around the world and so much more man-driven actions that affect the world in terrifying ways; the melting of the polar ice caps, islands and cities flooding, people catching pulmonary diseases due to the poor quality of the air, humans, animals and plants losing their habitats, and we could go on for days with the effects all of these harmful activities have in the global environment.
In the film they mention how most of these activities are done by a few group of people that just want to get richer and richer at whatever cost, they want to keep burning forests for their own benefit, damaging land, killing species, and compromising the future of the world just for money that they won’t use when they are gone, money that they will not even spend entirely on their lifetime. A few greedy people are ruining our world, and we are letting them get away with it.
At the heart
of capitalism is a vast and scarcely examined assumption: you are entitled to
as great a share of the world’s resources as your money can buy. You can
purchase as much land, as much atmospheric space, as many minerals, as much
meat and fish as you can afford, regardless of who might be deprived. If you
can pay for them, you can own entire mountain ranges and fertile plains. You
can burn as much fuel as you like. Every pound or dollar secures a certain
right over the world’s natural wealth. (Monbiot G, 2019).
We can’t
compare the value of millions of paper notes to the infinite value land and
territories have, it’s ridiculous that some people can by themselves destroy
precious land just because they have the money and the capabilities to do so.
A fire burning through forest in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, in July 2020. Image by Greenpeace International.
In the film
they talk about an initiative that caught my attention, the “carbon tax” which is
essentially a way of beating these greedy corporations in their own game, according
to Carbontax.org (n,d):
A carbon tax
is a fee imposed on the burning of carbon-based fuels (coal, oil, gas). More to
the point: a carbon tax is the core policy for reducing and eventually
eliminating the use of fossil fuels whose combustion is destabilizing and
destroying our climate.
A carbon tax
is a way — the only way, really — to have users of carbon fuels pay for the
climate damage caused by releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If set
high enough, it becomes a powerful monetary disincentive that motivates
switches to clean energy across the economy, simply by making it more
economically rewarding to move to non-carbon fuels and energy efficiency.
The income then its invested right back into helping the environment and eventually corporations will turn to greener and renewable resources to avoid this tax, thus creating more benefits for the environment, the downside of a policy like this is that it’s really hard to implement, since almost all of the world economy revolves around fossil fuels:
This graphic
shows us the fossil fuel consumption per capita in some countries, we can see
that one person in the US and Australia uses 10 times more fossil fuel than a
person in India, thus it poses a huge challenge since the use of fossil fuels
is very large in economically strong countries, it will be really hard to
transition from one resource to another, but in the long-run it will become
more profitable, stable and greener for the environment, and since eventually
fossil fuels are going to run out, why not start now?
If even one
of the biggest economy of the world forced this carbon tax in their country, it
will in turn lead by example for other economies, it may have its down sides at
the beginning but the benefit for the environment would outweigh any trouble
that it may bring.
Just as the
film says, if we want to be able to revert the effects that we have had so far
in the global environment we need to take action right now, if we continue with
all these harmful activities for the environment there would be a point of no
return and we will be doomed. Changing one’s lifestyle is also a great way of
helping the environment, just by choosing not to eat beef and eating chicken or
another type of meat can create a very positive impact in the environment,
choosing to support environmental companies rather than the big corporations
that harm the environment, measuring how much energy and water we use, if
everyone in the world started to consider these little things and choices we would
be able to save the planet and the future generations will be grateful to us.
There is this very interesting tool that measures your carbon foot print, it takes less than five minutes, so if you take the time to do it, please let me know your score in the comments!
https://www.footprintcalculator.org/
References.
Monbiot G. (2019).
The Guardian. Capitalism
destroying earth. We need a new human right for future generations. Retrieved
from: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/15/capitalism-destroying-earth-human-right-climate-strike-children
Carbontax.org.
(n,d). What’s a carbon tax? Retrieved from: https://www.carbontax.org/whats-a-carbon-tax/
BP
Statistical Review of World Energy. Fossil Fuel consumption per capita, 2019. Retrieved
from: http://www.bp.com/statisticalreview
https://www.beforetheflood.com/
Agence
France-Presse (2019). The Telegraph. China factories releasing thousands of tonnes
of illegal-ozone gas. [Picture] Retrieved from: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/05/23/china-factories-releasing-thousands-tonnes-illegal-ozone-depleting/
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