Sustainable Abundance or Ecological Crisis

About thousands of years ago, one fourth of the earth was covered by land. Only ten percent of that one fourth land was inhabited by people and other living species.The rest was covered by thick green pastures or forests.As time passed by, population started increasing and so did the needs of the people.To meet these needs, many new things like machines,etc were invented.Now, we have come to a stage where any work can be satisfied by some form of technology.But if we continue to produce goods with the help of this technology at an increasing rate, will there be an abundance or is there a possibility of ecological crisis?This is the question which Nye addresses in his essay ‘Sustainable Abundance , or Ecological Crisis’.
The nature has many resources that are useful to us.Man,having acquired this knowledge,has used nature’s resources since the very beginning of time.Fire,an element of nature, was used by Early man to cook food orr drive away animals.With whatever was available,Man succeded in making tools to make his life simpler.Water was used to rotate wheels in mills.In this way, some part or the other of nature of nature was utilised by man.Technological advancements increased the production and it was sufficient enough to meet the needs of the people.But,at the same time,what was happening behind-the-scenes was that the green land which was home to millions of wild species was being destroyed and turned to dry lands which was then used for other purposes.For example,in Denmark,wheat-growing areas were converted to diary farming owing to the pressure from inexpensive grain produced in the rest of the world. ‘Every action has an equal and opposite reaction’,as said by Newton is very prominent here.Every resource of nature that is being exploited,leads it’s elimination and thus,it will not be available to the future generations.This in-turn results in a crisis.It all depends on us.As J.B. Jackson said, “Landscape is a composition of man-made or man-modified spaces to serve as infrastructure or background for our collective existence”.This means that we have been building up land accordingly so as to satisfy our needs.As agricultural machinery came up, most of the forested hillsides in New England were cleared in 1840 so that farming could be done.By introducing technology into farming, we were able to produce large amounts of goods.For example, in 1890 a single US farmer could produce 19 times the goods produced by his grandfather in 1830.Productivity increased owing to the tractors,motors,new fertilisers,etc.In this way people were self-sufficient between 1870 and 1890.The working hours in factories also dropped and the wages rose twenty-percent.People started living more luxurious lives as they had more money to spend and a lot of leisure was available to them.Robert Thurston predicted that at this rate,people in the 20th century will live twice as easy and as comfortable lives and have many more luxuries.But, is this happening right now?Some people are still struggling to live a comfortable life whereas the others are happy with what they have.Thurston expected an abundance of products or goods to be available to the people of the twentieth or twenty-first century.But in reality,this did not happen.The rate of technological change was taking place at a very fast rate and ordinary people had access to every form of technology.This is clear by the fact stated in the book which says that almost everyone owned a car or truck.But using these vehicles let out a lot of carbon dioxide and other gases that were harmful to the atmosphere.In the book it says that in the first half of the nineteenth century, many believed that industrialisation created more wealth and abundance.But this is not true.Building dams and irrigation systems in desert areas increased food production but in the years to come, the land might become unproductive due to the salts and chemicals left behind by evaporating water.We know that burning coal produces electricity.What we are not realising is that it also produces sulphur-dioxide which results in acid rain.There is another effect of increase in productivity which further leads to abundance. ‘Demand’ for more and more products increases and when this demand increases excessively, it leads to the exploitation of nature(which is nothing but a crisis).For example,in the book it is mentioned that demand for wood, charcoal and iron stripped colonies of forests;european demand for gold,silver,copper,zinc,lead, and nickel created mines,pits,slag heaps and polluted ground water;some industrial methods led to air and water pollution;in some areas, there was extensive soil erosion.By 2000,there was massive air pollution that increased the level of greenhouse gases.This was because of the increase in the number of automobiles on the roads. Pollution is not the only effect but making a car requires high amount of resources and we need a lot of land for roads,driveways,parking lots.All this leads to an ecological crisis again.Technologies did create abundance but at the cost of nature.Technological abundance distracted people from helping one another.As the book says, in 1970, they distracted people from helping one another.They were least bothered about the future of next generations and continued to increase domestic per capita energy use.Another example given in the book that created ecological imbalance was that European nations eliminated hedgerows to create larger fields for farming.As this happened,many bird species that lived in hedgerows diminished leading to the imbalance.As we exploited nature’s resources more and more,we lost the value and significance of them.Whether it is to be sustainable abundance or Ecological Crisis, it is upto us in the end.The choice we make will result in either of the two.For example,in the book it is mentioned that Henry David Thoreau made a choice to reduce his needs to a minimum by eliminating the unwanted.He chose to live in a simple ome-room house in Massachusetts woods.He was not against technology.He just used it to satisfy his needs.In this way , he made sure he didn’t use the resources of nature excessively.This might seem hard to practice(living in the woods using very little of technology)in real but what Nye is trying to say by stating his example is that one must utilise resources wisely and in a way that will not harm others or the environment.Europeans have made a choice to rely onn mass transist and bicycles and smaller automobiles and alternate forms of transport.This reduced the amount of pollution and also the energy per capita, averting ecologocal crisis.This shows that it is our choices which create abundance or crisis.Technology will create abundance but it is the way we mangae the abundant products or resources that makes the difference.Over-utilisation(using products more than the required amount) of resources leads to a crisis.
Nye’s statement, ‘Ultimately.....construction’ means that carrying capacity is not a number that can be calculated or predicted but it is a number based on our activities that shape the nature in return.Nature is there to harness but should not be over harnessed.Nye’s statement is supported by many examples stated above in the essay.With more technological advancements, comes more responsibilty.This responsibilty lies in making choices that build up a healthy environment.The choices depend on what people want from life. “Nature’s limits are our own”.As we tend to exploit nature more and more, the lesser will be it’s availability to us in the future.