What if you woke up tomorrow and everything you had thought was true was a deception?
A deception formed by people that stood to profit from your ignorance. Not just on one small area but every facet of your existence.
Would you want to know? Or, would you be content with the life you had before you discovered the truth? Could you close your eyes and act as if nothing ever happened?
What if you could see the ways that you have been deceived and the way that those that came before you were made to believe a lie? How valuable would the truth become? Would it make you change your habits? your routines? the way you talk or think or speak? Would it impact you or would you brush it off and carry on with business as usual?
What if after waking up you decided to respond to that truth?
What if you started studying history and world events and, like a string of pearls, events were no longer random but contained a sequence? What if that sequence was repeating? What if while studying these events they began to seem familiar?
We live in an age in which intersecting crises are being lifted to a global scale, with unseen levels of inequality, environmental degradation, and climate destabilization, as well as new surges in populism, conflict, economic uncertainty, and mounting public health threats with Covid.
All are crises that are slowly tipping the balance, questioning our business-as-usual economic model of the past decades, and requiring us to rethink our next steps.
There is an entire media world around us, that we’re completely fine with THAT FEEDS US FOR THE MOST PART SHIT AS ENTERTAINMENT.
There is an advertising industry that is turning climate change into products to sell.
Bio this Bio that. Shop to save the world.
Our lives are taken over by technology – smartphones, Ipads, Apps. This menace is seen in the increased addiction of internet users to social media and other internet products; and the exploitation of internet users by internet companies.
The internet and social media are like a two-faced coin; one side is good and the other is bad. These inventions are now abused and used against our existence and survival.
The internet and computers are daily changing our lives and improving efficiency, almost taking over our lives with some sectors where technology is taking over how we live and do business.
Emails and social media platforms have changed communication, both individually and business-wise.
Financial transactions and business deals are now completed in a matter of seconds.
The idea of constantly visiting a doctor for medical checks is almost becoming obsolete with the invention of the wearable.
Robots are increasing the efficiency of manufacturing processes.
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The Zombie Apocalypse May Not Be How You Originally Envisioned, it’s time to give ourselves a reality check.
We are shells of who we may have been because instead of looking around and experiencing the life we are dependent upon a lit-up screen.
We are lacking socialization; instead of talking to and spending time with other people, we are getting all our information from the Internet.
The Internet is an amazing resource, but there are some things it cannot teach or give you.
It cannot teach you the value of spending time with friends and family, or how to live life to the fullest by being present in the current moment. You never know just how many opportunities and experiences pass you by because you are looking down at your screen.
Each generation is becoming more and more dependent, and no longer sustain skills that were once deemed necessary. We have lost social skills, manners, and expect everything to be delivered to us as fast as the Internet does
We are all so distracted by our phones that we have not fully noticed the zombie apocalypse that is happening right in front of us.
Technology is a beautiful thing, but if we cannot learn how to use it responsibly and in moderation, our future may not be as bright as the screens we are holding.
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The important thing people need to realize.
The chances are, you’re probably reading this on your phone right now.
Maybe you saw it while you were scrolling through Facebook, or maybe you came across it while making random Google searches. The point is, you used some sort of technology to be able to access this article.
Nowadays, people use technology as a filler.
Try to remember what life was like before you were attached to technology by the hip.
I bet you spent your time doing totally different things than you currently are doing.
Maybe you used to read actual books, go outside and enjoy the weather, spend quality time with your family or communicate with people through handwritten letters rather than emails and text messages.
The reality is that our lives have completely changed.
But is it for the better, or worse?
The basis of democracy is the idea that people of sound judgment, wisdom, and morality should be chosen to lead the government, make decisions for the masses, and direct the force of the state/government.
“The state is the great fiction by which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else.” Frederic Bastiat
A divided people are easier to rule.
Governments act in multiple ways to seduce us into their service.
For the masses, this is done through the illusion of welfare and public spending in which the state first robs us through taxation and then bribes us into supporting it by giving us a percentage of the stolen funds back in the forms of government welfare programs.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
The effects of human-caused global warming are irreversible on the timescale of people alive today and will worsen in the decades to come.
The last three decades of climate negotiations are littered with broken promises.
This puts the challenge with COP26 into perspective.
It is probably the last chance to re-envisage the challenges of our planet and try to understand what’s going on in our world.
The major threats to human survival – world environmental degradation, extinction of species, climate destabilization, nuclear war, terrorists with weapons of mass destruction – result from unrestrained use of such technologies without a concern that makes sense of the nature and scale of their power.
Today many people are thinking on minuscule time scales and therefore only see short-term costs and benefits as real.
Why?
Because we human beings only perceive threats that make sense in our Newtonian time which implies that humans are of no particular significance in the universe and therefore don’t see long-term consequences:
WE THINK IN METAPHORS.
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Consequently, the real challenge with the current approach to climate policy is that as long as cutting emissions is expensive, leaders will talk a lot but do little.
The world will need to increase its spending by hundreds of billions per year (a relatively small sum) compared to the £135 billion we are already spending on subsidizing ineffective green energy today.
If the world can develop green energy that is cheaper than fossil fuels, then we will have solved global warming.
AND THIS IS NOW the world’s greatest collective action problem.
Global climate is projected to continue to change over this century and beyond and no matter what is agreed human-induced warming is superimposed on a naturally varying climate, the temperature rise has not been, and will not be, uniform or smooth across the country or over time.
DESPITE PRESENT DAY WORLD FEVOR, progress on climate change remains elusive.
Enacting policies today to cut greenhouse gas emissions won’t have a discernible impact on global warming for decades, if not centuries.
That’s because we have already locked in significant warming due to our historical emissions.
It’s rational for an individual country not to drastically reduce greenhouse gases, given most economies are heavily based on energy resources that emit them. Yet, if all nations act that way — indeed, that’s what’s happening — most countries would eventually be worse off due to the cumulative impacts of all our emissions.
Put another way, what’s better for each individual country in isolation is actually worse for the planet as a whole. Conversely, what is worse for each individual country, overtime would be better for the planet.
Unlike other policies, climate change is cumulative.
The longer we wait to address it, the bigger the problem it becomes and the harder it gets to solve, fueling a feedback loop that makes solutions ever more difficult.
Big climate policy would have to offer concrete benefits outside of its impact on emissions — think jobs or energy security — to overcome this time disconnect.
Pay now and pay later
Climate change presents two separate costs.
Cost No. 1: Responding to flooding, heatwaves, and other extreme weather that climate change is often making worse.
Cost No. 2: Enacting policies to reduce emissions, which would come in the form of higher fossil-fuel costs today.
Cost No. 1 will continue for decades, if not centuries, even in addition to Cost No.2 (This is because of the aforementioned time disconnect: the amount of warming locked in already has also locked in associated costs — which will come in the form of not just money, but also health, lives, and nature losses.)
The costs will hit different parts of the world disproportionately, setting the stage for conflict, not cooperation. (further complicating the first point).
Low-lying nations whose very existences are at risk due to climate change have a very different set of cost concerns than Saudi Arabia.
By 2060, the cost of inaction on climate change is predicted to reach a staggering $44 trillion, with the highest anticipated GDP losses in the Middle-East, Northern, and Sub-Saharan Africa, and South and Southeast Asia.
By contrast, you invest money in your retirement savings plan with a reasonable level of confidence you’ll get it when you retire.
Imagine getting taxed before you put that money into your fund and then not living long enough to reap the payoffs of your fund.
That’s what will happen with climate change, on a global scale.
The bottom line:
Decades of climate negotiations and failure to stem greenhouse gas emissions are a reminder that we lack effective global governance. The outcome of Glasgow must be all nations agreeing to spend much more on green R&D and to implement a process of verification to monitor compliance.
The science is clear: Our climate is changing. The most marginalized communities—historically shut out of decisions made about their futures—will bear the brunt of the damage.
We are the first generation of humans to start paying the price for a warmer world, and we are also the first to face costs as we try to address them.
We’re paying now and later.
Other than other, Canada, at the present, there are few countries with a policy for sustained mass immigration, with most reluctant to accept more refugees.
Why?
Because foreign populations tend to plant-wide and deep roots and governments don’t want any international authority telling them which people or how many people they should absorb.,
However, people will not stay standing up to their necks in water or gasping for air due to heat or starving because there is no food, they will migrate to whatever altitude, latitude, or longitude is required to survive.
No frontier border of immigration policies will stop this migration.
Ironically the response to the Covid pandemic reinforces border closures at a time we need to reimagine the opening of borders to allow for the inevitable shifts in the occupancy of the planet.
Will the world climate stabilize?
Of course, not – one effect has a knock-on effect with as I have already stated humans becoming a species in search of the right combination of latitude, altitude, and attitude.
The COP26 (the 26th UN ‘Conference of Parties’ on Climate Change) due to take place in Glasgow in November will hopefully highlight the truth, but this truth will not be enough unless it changes us all, to provoke a new way of thinking about climate change governance.
If not what the world so often holds dear will be counted of little significance. The ambitions of businesses to profit from their exploitation of finite natural resources too often leads to environmental degradation and disregard for the value of human life.
What must change is the way in which people and nations are driven to compete for a greater share of creation’s wealth is destructive of the very creation on which we all depend.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE ASKS: WHEN ARE WE GOING TO RECOGNIZE THE ENORMOUS AND UNDENIABLE POWER THAT NATURE HAS OVER CIVILIZATION AND OVER ITS POLITICS ?
Scientists have not suggested that climate played any direct role in causing the current COVID-19 outbreak, but no matter how one looks at what is happing climate change is making outbreaks of disease more common and more dangerous which promises to amplify the harm and make even unrelated crises more painful.
You would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to recognize nature’s enormous and undeniable power over civilization and even over its politics, and we urgently need a shared vision of basic values to provide an ethical foundation for the emerging world community.
You don’t have to be a scientist to know that the loss of biodiversity and encroachment by civilization will help new viruses jump to people and that we are still turning a blind eye to the fact that our behavior is driving this.
There are undeniably numerous reasons alone that may make the pandemic prologue for more far-reaching and disruptive changes to come. However, it is also clear that climate policy today is indivisible from efforts to prevent new infectious outbreaks.
Slow action on climate has made dramatic warming and large-scale environmental changes inevitable. It is now up to the public and leaders to understand that it’s human behavior driving the rise in disease, just as it drives the climate crisis.
The current pandemic and climate change are both demonstrating this in real-time.
Today, hurricanes are larger and more intense than ever. Fires are spreading faster and further amid drought, their total size having doubled in recent years.
So what can be done to speed up the transformation of how we manage our world?
Promoting sustainability requires a total transformation of how we think, buy and use earth resources.
This transformation is now in its infancy.
The seeds of the values-based approaches ‘Ethical’ values such as trust, integrity, justice, and compassion are usually neglected in sustainability assessment.
The authorities tasked with responding to it will already be consumed by other emergencies, their capacity to provide even the most fundamental aid limited, their budgets gutted.
It is time that the Advertising industry step up to the challenge.
While seemingly benign advertising is one of the key drivers behind climate change by promoting excessive consumption.
Advertising is an excellent form of communication, capable of delivering a wealth of information to consumers on varying topics. It has become so powerful and so subtle that consumers accept most advertising content without question.
On the other hand, advertising to sell products is willing to sacrifice the health and welfare of the consumer, turning them into gluttons, and lowering the moral standards of our society.
By their very nature Advertising, language, logic, and action force separation, discrimination, and choice.
Advertising creates excess “want” in a society that does not know the meaning of “need.”
Marketing in its various forms continues to grow through mobile, content marketing, social platforms, and new digital platforms. Now Worth $1.2 Trillion.
Digital platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Instagram, Snapchat, and Google AdWords have a glaring responsibility to introduce green-field technology that creates genuinely new opportunities for advertisers and marketers, not to mention consumers.
To assist in this transformation, we must start to legislate against advertisements that promote unsustainable consumption for the sake of short-term profit.
Media outlets should be legally required to remove any advertising that does not meet the values of sustainability.
The ability to motivate an entire group to strive toward a specific goal is a major part of what makes a good Advertisements.
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At the end of the day, the creation of new indexes and methodologies to measure human and economic development are needed, since they will provide us with a wider toolkit to analyze our main subject: economic sustainable growth.
Well-established measures such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) should no be the key determinants of national policies and legislation.
GDP can remain as a complementary indicator to development, but it is not an adequate indicator when considered on its own.
It represents the value of all goods and services produced over a specific time period within a country’s borders.
We know that in an economy, GDP is the monetary value of all final goods and services produced while it is totally removed from the damage it creates to our core values.
However, it fails to account for the multi-dimensional nature of development or the inherent shortcomings of capitalism, which tends to concentrate income and, thus, power.
If we continue to concentrate on GPD disasters that might have otherwise proved manageable will compound and amplify COVID’s effects until the hurt — measured in lives, livelihoods, and property damage — winds up worse than it might have been from anyone disaster alone.
Throwing money at a problem doesn’t work without core values determined from that starting point. One of the limitations of GDP is that it only addresses average income, failing to reflect how most people actually live or who benefits from economic growth.
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What’s known as biodiversity is critical because the natural variety of plants and animals lends each species greater resiliency against threat and together offers a delicately balanced safety net for natural systems.
As diversity wanes, the balance is upset, and remaining species are both more vulnerable to human influences and, according to a landmark 2010 study in the journal Nature, more likely to pass along powerful pathogens.
The human spirit has consistently sought to transcend the material, biological, physiological, and technological limitations. but the present world problems won’t be solved by technology because no feasible technology will sufficiently decouple economic activity and environmental impact.
Take profit-seeking algorithms for example.
The urgency of the climate change crisis really can’t be overstated. Unless action is taken across all levels of society over the next decade, we’re looking at a near future of droughts, flooding, and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.
So here’s the existential crisis for adland:
The more effective it is at selling products to consumers, the worse the climate crisis gets.
THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY HAS A MORAL DUTY TO STOP EXCESSIVE CONSUMPTION. TO STOP PROMOTING EAT MORE, BUY MORE, GAMBLE MORE. DIE SOONER.
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≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: IF WE CONTINUE IN THE SAME DIRECTION AS WE ARE NOW, THE CONSEQUENCES WILL BE UNPREDICATABLE/ DISASTOROUS AND CONFLICT RIDDEN.
We all know that we must shift the direction of the way we live life on Earth.
Sadly, this does not seem to be the case and hence, social conflict and civil unrest seem inevitable.
We all know that what is needed is a coordinated global response and bipartisan domestic response not just to the current pandemic but also to tackle climate change.
As Schwab writes: “The new technology age if shaped responsively and responsibly, could catalyze a new cultural renaissance that will enable us to feel part of something much larger than ourselves – a truly global civilization.
Yes, we are in a fourth industrial-technological revolution with regulators guilty of sleeping by allowing AI to develop financial weapons of mass destruction turning the world into a digitalized market for the sake of short-term profit.
Today, 43% of the world’s population is connected to the internet, mostly in developed countries.
Each time you run a Google search, scan your passport, make an online purchase, or tweet, you are leaving a data trail behind that can be analyzed and monetized. Computers are already making decisions based on this information.
In less than 10 years computer processors are expected to reach the processing power of the human brain. Socialism for the Rich and Capitalism for the Poor.
Think of apps that track how much you eat, sleep, and exercise, and being able to ask a doctor a question by simply tapping it into your smartphone.
In the future, will it ever be possible to be offline anymore?
So are the technologies that surround us tools that we can identify, grasp and consciously use to improve our lives? Or are they more than that: powerful objects and enablers that influence our perception of the world, change our behavior, and affect what it means to be human?
It is therefore worthwhile taking some time to consider exactly what kind of shifts we are experiencing and how we might, collectively and individually, ensure that it creates benefits for the many, rather than the few.
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At the heart of discussions around emerging technologies, there is a critical and central question: what do we want these technologies to deliver for us?
The fourth Industrial revolution is widely taken to be the shift from our reliance on animals, human effort, and biomass as primary sources of energy to the use of fossil fuels and the mechanical power this enabled.
It however can also be described as the advent of “cyber-physical systems” involving entirely new capabilities for people and machines.
It represents entirely new ways in which technology becomes embedded within societies and even our human bodies -. examples include genome editing, new forms of machine intelligence, breakthrough materials, and approaches to governance that rely on cryptographic methods such as the blockchain. It’s just not very evenly distributed.
More people in the world have access to a mobile phone than basic sanitation.
The complexity of these technologies and their emergent nature makes many aspects of the Fourth Industrial Revolution feel unfamiliar and, to many, threatening.
Indeed, it is certain that the governments know this, but instead of helping the poor they are making it harder for them to survive and it is certain that sooner or later when the bubble burst, there will be few survivors.
Added to this is the humungous amounts of money governments are borrowed to keep the government running in the absence of real economic growth.
Since the financial crash and before interest rates were kept at near-zero levels for most of the decade in the run-up to the crisis with the West governments encouraging speculation and risk-taking.
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Currently, there are three big areas of concern: Inequality, Security, and Identity.
Inequality.
62 individuals controlled more assets than the poorer 3.6 billion people combined, half the world’s population.
Unequal societies tend to be more violent, have higher numbers of people in prison, experience greater levels of mental illness, and have lower life expectancies and lower levels of trust.
An important potential driver of increased inequality is our reliance on digital markets – increase unemployment.
Security.
The combination of the digital world with emerging technologies is creating new “battlespaces”, expanding access to lethal technologies and making it harder to govern and negotiate among states to ensure peace.
The technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution also offer expanded capabilities for waging war which is increasingly accessible to both state and non-state actors, such as drones, autonomous weapons, nanomaterials, biological and biochemical weapons, wearable devices, and distributed energy sources
It’s not a question of if non-state actors will use some form of neuroscientific techniques or technologies, but when, and which ones they’ll use.
Identity, voice, and community.
Already, digital media is increasingly becoming the primary driver of our individual and collective framing of society and community, connecting people to individuals and groups in new ways, fostering friendships, and creating new interest groups. Furthermore, such connections transcend many traditional boundaries of interaction.
Unfortunately, expanded connectivity does not necessarily lead to expanded or more diverse worldviews.
Emerging technologies, particularly in the biological realm, are also raising new questions about what it means to be human.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is the first where the tools of technology can become literally embedded within us and even purposefully change who we are at the level of our genetic makeup.
The very reason why people are residents in taking the covid jab.
Martin Nowak, a professor of mathematics and biology at Harvard University, stated that cooperation is “the only thing that will redeem mankind”.
If we have the courage to take collective responsibility for the changes underway and the ability to work together to raise awareness and shape new narratives, we can embark on restructuring our economic, social, and political systems to take full advantage of emerging technologies.
This can only be achieved through the ideology of. Live and let live.
In 1969 a man stood on the moon.
The U.S. Has Only Been At Peace For 21 Years Total Since Its Birth.
This means that for 222 out of 239 years – or 93% of the time – America has been at war. The only time the U.S. went five years without war (1935-40) was during the isolationist period of the Great Depression.
It’s no wonder that the world is Fucked up.
One only has to look at the current withdrawal from Afghanistan to see the benefits of War.
This has important implications for how policymakers ought to treat future wars that are inevitable as the world struggles to feed its present direction of economic growth at whatever cost.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Carbon Dioxide emissions are at a higher level in the atmosphere than at any point in the last 4m years AND THE MESSAGE COULD NOT BE CLEARER.
LEADERS MUST ACT NOW OR GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS THE ONES WHO THREW AWAY OUR LAST-DITCH CHANCE.
If they fail to act the future will be changed beyond anything that the coronavirus pandemic has brought about.
So far what we see from world leaders are hot air promises that are totally inadequate and worthless without the trillions in investment and you can rest assured as the world returns to economic growth it will by using fossil fuels.
90% of the emissions will be in the next few decades, will come from emerging economies.
So let’s look at Cop26 or as I like to call it Cop-out 26.
Further change is now inevitable.
“Securing a brighter future for our children and future generations requires countries to take urgent action at home and abroad to turn the tide on climate change. It is with ambition, courage, and collaboration as we approach the crucial COP26 summit in the UK that we can seize this moment together, so we can recover cleaner, rebuild greener and restore our planet.”
PRIME MINISTER OF THE UNITED KINGDOM.
If you believe this just look at his country which is hosting the Cob Out / Cop 26 summit. It has cut its aid to the poorest countries, the only country to do so.
It is the decisions we make today that really matter.
Right now our species is undermining and destabilizing the very foundations that are necessary for life on earth to thrive.
We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reconcile our economies with the natural world yet none of this will be enough.
What we say yes to. What we say no to and where we choose to invest our human and financial capital right now and not in years to come.
We know that the most vulnerable are at the greatest risk from climate change and that they have done the least to cause it. Action to address this and build resilience is needed now before more people lose their lives or livelihoods.
TO ACHIEVE ANY CLIMATE GOALS, EVERY COMPANY, EVERY FINANCIAL FIRM, EVERY BANK, INSURER, AND INVESTOR WILL NEED TO CHANGE.
What are we talking about?
At 2 degrees of global warming, there would be widespread and severe impacts on people and nature. A third of the world’s population would be regularly exposed to severe heat, leading to health problems and more heat-related deaths.
At 1.5°C, the impacts would be serious, but less severe.
Now with three more months to go until COP26 we will see a lot of Hot Air
This decade is decisive.
We need to turn ambition into actions of mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, finance, and implementation.
Why?
Because the climate crisis has become critical.
When you read stories about fires in the Amazon and Australia, ice melting in the Antarctic and Arctic, sea temperatures rising, and plastic destroying wildlife in the oceans, the scale of the problem can sometimes make the idea of dealing with it feel hopeless.
There is a general feeling that the future is so uncertain and it’s extremely hard to live with.
Unfortunately, most people although aware of the concept of Climate Change are in denial about the catastrophic reality. The issue is not about climate science but about everything else.
The world does not move together. It never has.
A 1.5%c goal is a political choice, not a scientific discovery.
Unless there is a political, economic, social-cultural, and moral makeover of the human world, only a bottom-up social mass movement will bring needed changes.
So what is COP26 all about?
One of the hardest facts to grasp about climate change is this:
No matter what we do it’s almost certain to get worse. Any action we take now is going to take decades to have any effect.
Why?
This is not the hottest summer on record it is going to be the coldest as the global average temperatures are projected to keep rising.
Unlike the current Covid pandemic there is no flatting the curve OF CLIMATE CHANGE any time soon.
The shock factor of this week’s UN IPCC report is already wearing off.
The population is just one of many issues in the global discussion about climate change, but it is going to become a major problem.
Population issues certainly are an important dimension of how society will unfold, how society will be able to cope with this crisis over the course of this century.
With half of American’s have to migrate and god forbid China the world’s most populous country ( the largest emitter of carbon) has to do also.
There’s no one thing that’s going to do it.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
It’s time to cut out the bullshit and get a grip when it comes to climate change.
The effects of human activities on Earth’s climate to date are now irreversible on the timescale of human lifetimes.
So the key question is, what will our emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants be in the years to come?
The simple reason for this is that it is impossible to predict with any degree of accuracy just how much greenhouse gases are going to be released in the next few centuries, and just how much this is going to affect the climate.
Electrical Cars, Solar Panels, Wind turbines, and technology might all help reductions in carbon emissions but they are all products. They all use the earth’s finite resources to produce profit for companies that created the world of Profit for Profit’s sake that has to lead us down the slippery path to climate change.
In my opinion, any new normal ( which is going to be far from normal ) has to hold fossil burning industries accountable or nationalizing them till we reach a point where sustainable energy generates higher financial returns than coal and oil.
The harsh reality of climate change is now playing out in real-time before our very eyes, with some of the negative changes already locked into the climate system, while global efforts to reduce carbon emissions are not moving fast enough to avoid irreversible damage to the planet.
Any solutions are going to take years to have any effect so we need to adapt: or, in other words, get used to the realities of this new, heated-up, wet, violent, world.
We all know that the climate challenges we are facing on the planet transcend national boundaries.
At present we being told that’s, it’s not too late to stop the forthcoming climate changes totally making our planet unlivable if we move to clean energy.
However clean energy is only one part of the challenge because the inequalities in the world demand a fundamental overhaul of existing social, political, and economic norms.
It is this new perception that needs to be contagious so it is adopted globally.
The shocking truth is that climate change has only just begun.
In other words, whatever the mitigation efforts of future civilizations, climate change is here to stay. Regardless of future emission trends, the CO2 footprint from our brief passage on Earth is going to remain in the climate system and impact the well-being of all terrestrial life forms for what could almost be considered an eternity.
In the last year, we are seeing with the current Covid pandemic that we live in a world where HARMONIZATION of any actions is impossible.
We will witness this in the forthcoming Cop-out / Cop26 summit.
The above perception is highly unlikely to happen.
Why?
Because the climate change problems will probably worsen before — or indeed if — it gets better, no one wants to bear costs of change that will fall on – the poor.
Long before this ever happens, humanity must prepare itself for an inland retreat and a constant battle against rising seawater that will continue for hundreds and hundreds of years into the future.
We are incredibly adaptable, but at the psychological level, there’s going to be tremendous disruption among families, societies, nations, etc. when change occurs.
Anything that helps an organism survives in its environment is an adaptation.
Adaptation is an acknowledgment that this.
Some of that change is a given, but not all of it.
For example:
Loss of traditions, habitat, and cultural heritage, and the distress that comes with moving away from the land where your ancestors are buried, where you’ve lived all your life. Not to mention the extinction of species, animals and plants, and coral reefs, and all kinds of living things, those we depend on and those with which we simply share ecosystems.
None of the solutions so far even begin to address the possibility of an impending mental health crisis due to the upheaval associated with managed retreat and other forms of climate migration.
How do you convince a community that their home will not be habitable?
How do you make room for rural refugees to live in a crowded city?
Climate mitigation is hard, and we are running out of time to do it, but I would argue that adaptation in its absence will actually be a million times harder.
Without substantial cuts to our collective carbon imprint, many more lives will be lost trying to adapt to a changing environment, and countless more will be made meaningfully worse.
Why wouldn’t we do what we can to avoid that?
The long course of human evolution shows that climate disruption, which is what we’re going through right now and in the foreseeable future, is associated with the demise of ways of life.
As difficult as it may be, there is a vast scale of loss associated with climate change that one has to try to comprehend and accept in order to understand the urgency of the situation.
THE NEED FOR HARMONIZATION to anticipate the actual and expected effects of climate change and take appropriate action to prevent or minimize the impacts.
How will we feel when the air inside feels tinny and canned when all of this feels like our future?
The two main responses so far to climate change are Mitigation and Adaptation – they must go hand in hand.
Adaptation can be planned in advance but it must go beyond just development to include the global food system, which encompasses production, and post-farm process such as processing, and distribution is also a key contributor to emissions. And it’s a problem for which we don’t yet have viable technological solutions.
Food is responsible for approximately 26% of global GHG emissions. So we will need a menu of solutions: changes to diets; food waste reduction; improvements in agricultural efficiency; and technologies that make low-carbon food alternatives scalable and affordable.
Methane warms the world twenty times faster than carbon.
Junk-food chains, including KFC and Pizza Hut, McDonald’s have spread around the world.
Take McDonald’s.
It has about 28,000 restaurants worldwide, opening around 2,000 new ones each year
The food industry spends billions a year in advertising and promotion to persuade people to eat more food.
In short, then, this is another example of wasted wealth, wasted capital, wasted labor, and wasted resources.
On top of all this while the earth warms up it has the capability of releasing 1.5 trillion tons of organic carbon twice as much as Earths, atmosphere currently holds.
The planet is the ultimate ‘global commons’. It belongs to neither a particular individual nor a particular nation. Nor does it belong to a single generation such as us, our children, or our grandchildren.
Instead, it belongs to all living creatures both alive now and in the future. Just as all of humanity is connected ‘horizontally’ across the globe, so too are all past and future life forms bound ‘vertically’ in a continual unfolding of the story of life.
So when you buy something, you buy something that lasts; you buy it because you really need it and want to take care of it. It is none other than this consideration for future human beings and other life forms that should form the yardstick by which we set our mitigation targets — not merely what is politically and economically feasible for the industrialized world today.
Yet the political and economic institutions of our civilization are fixated on enjoying the present and unable to account for the consequences of our actions on tomorrow.
Corporations and governments are forever borrowing from the future in order to improve the present.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
While we watched a postponed Olympics game unfold in Japan with barely one in 10 Japanese wanting it to happen, a pandemic is exposing gaps with graphic honesty in a world that has long been overdue for systemic reform of its economic, social, and technological structures.
All require a global-to-local response and long-term thinking; all need to be guided by science and need to protect the most vulnerable among us, and all require the political will to make fundamental changes when faced with existential risks.
Beyond the obvious short-term impacts of climate change and Covid (such as loss of life, a profound hit to economic and social activity), both are casting a long shadow into the future.
If we remain passive and ununited to the emerging risks, we may lose a historical opportunity to shape the new normal that we want, rather than the one we would be left with.
At the moment the economic risks dominate perceptions, with a prolonged global recession a top concern.
However, if either Covid-19 or Climate change eclipses sustainability on the public agenda where are we then.
What we will be left with are critical non-economic risks concerning the sustainability of life on earth and all that live on it.
On the environmental front, even with an expected 8% drop in global emissions for this year, the world would still miss the 1.5°C targets to avoid a planetary catastrophe.
If we are to truly recover from the pandemic and its impacts, then it will not be about putting things back together to how they were –we are in the midst of a historic event that will change many aspects of our world.
The long-term societal impacts of both, such as an exacerbation of inequality and changes in consumer behaviors, the nature of work, and the role of technology – both at work and at home – will change our way of life forever, for us as individuals, as a workforce, and as a society.
We were unprepared for Covid that was predictable. We are not preparing for Climate change that will create substantial societal consequences for the long term, now being felt by people worldwide.
There is one thing for certain our attitudes towards traveling, commuting, and consumption will change employment prospects.
So what lessons can we distill, that can feed into your own future scenario, resilience, and business continuity planning?
Profit for profit’s sake will have to be regulated.
No longer can businesses plunder the earth for finite resources to produce worthless short-term material satisfaction. We know that we will have to build back better and address deep systemic vulnerabilities that have been allowed to develop over the last decades.
Left unchecked, there is a real risk that inequalities and social deprivation will increase
Therefore, the challenge to return to the ‘new normal’ is as much a psychological as an economic choice.
The timing and speed of the economic recovery, dependent as it is on solving the health crisis, is likely to exacerbate inequality, mental health problems, and lack of societal cohesion. It is also likely to widen the wealth gap between young and old and pose significant educational and employment challenges that risk a second lost generation.
A golden rule of politics is that the timing of a decision is almost as important as the decision itself.
“Timing is everything”, but it is also the element that is hardest to get right.
Of course, we need to focused on the climate, sustainability, and on societal risks, such as inequality, mental health, the lack of social cohesion and inclusion. If we do not do this, then the gaps in inequality – especially financial – are likely to remain and increase destroying all efforts of a green economy, a sustainable economy, or any other form of the economy whether it is socially driven or ever man for himself.
We are already seeing record levels of unemployment due to lockdown measures, to control transmission and are re-learned hard lessons, particularly that social deprivation determines health outcomes.
So it is time for preparation, for a world of shocks which is likely urging to ramp up economic activity, regardless of impact, to recover at any cost.
Much depends on what governments, societies, and businesses will do next. This should be a long-term change in attitude in the historic public vs private debate.
I urge you to take the time to weigh the potential risks and benefits based on your situation before making a decision you could regret for the rest of your life.
We must draw on all our strengths to build back a better world.
It’s time for all avenues of communication to be taking the lead.
The New Normal is knocking at the door and the door is already open.
Change is simple and it’s not easy.
Step 1: Do you want to change?
Step 2: Do you know how to change?
Step 3: Are you willing to give a change time?
Anyone who has ever changed has gone through the process. We need all three steps, and if we miss one, we get none.
The new normal in the end will look like we want it to look.
The life you thought was boring, is the life you’re hoping to get back to right now.”
Ultimately, public health is a political choice. A choice we are now confronted with, and one we will have to make over and over again as we transition to a more resilient, zero-carbon, just, and healthier future.
Hopefully, hold on to that sense of shared humanity.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
WE CAN’T CREATE SUSTAINABLE PROSPERITY BY AN ACT OF WILL.
02/08/2021.
Dear Cop26 Delegate,
As you know the sheer importance of what is happing at the end of this inflationary period on Earth is going to define all of our futures.
Whether the forthcoming COP26 Summit results are brilliant or terrible if we are not found in harmony with the earth, is likely to make our age, a mythic one, to our distant or future descendants.
Our distant and future ancestors are what everyone on earth shares.
From this perspective.
No human goal today is more pressing than the search for sustainable prosperity.
But it must encompass all other purposes, including peace, justice, health, science, economic development, spiritual pursuits. Without them, all others will prove transient and illusory.
You will be attending a sobering up BY CLIMATE CHANGE SUMMIT that will hopefully show the scale of our problems and produce Actions that all in sundry can participate in.
You as a delegate must develop imagery that will bridge the incomprehensible gap between the forces of nature responsible for the very existence.
We are living today at a turning point for our species.
We can all be drowning in yelling about our differences, trying to control matters by fiat, or we can close our mouths and listen and try to follow some common sense.
This is a very special time that will never come again.
This summit is not the place, to blow your own trumpet, make worthless promises, but rather to agree on transparent actions on a global scale.
We all know that we need energy.
We all know that the production of energy must go green. Not in twenty years, not in ten years but right now.
So why not agree to the following.
Government non-repayable grants.
Enable every home to install solar panels and insulation.
We are at a pivotal moment in human history not because we still don’t really know where we come from, or if we are alone in the Universe, or do we really matter.
It is, of course, impossible to put into a sentence or a paragraph what is wrong with the world never mind the Universe.
But it’s possible to describe our world in a word. Beautiful and we humans occupy an extraordinary place in it.
The strange fact is that in this age of information when data is our currency of communication, most of us have no idea how to picture the world never mind the universe.
The last time the Western culture shared a coherent understanding of our world I would say, was away back in the middle ages, when Galileo discovered that we were not the center of the universe.
Now with climate change and the current Pandemic, it is as if we have just started to see the world in color, and that changes, not just what is far away, but what’s right here.
This discovery of the state of our plant challenges us to reframe everything and there is little point in learning a lot of science unless you can do something valuable in life with that knowledge.
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There is only one image of our world that shows us this.
The photo shows no countries on our planet, only landmass, oceans, and clouds.
Our endless preoccupation with nations and racial or ethical groups is completely misleading our intuitions.
This image shows our glorious plant in its true state without language in all its forms, cultural identification, religious beliefs, all are just tools, to shepherding ourselves successfully through the coming state of the world
This is going to require tremendous creativity, combined with more than a large dose of common sense, which unfortunately down the centuries and now is lacking in the collective management of our planet Earth.
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However, we live in a world where all information is freely available at the click of a mouse, so what has changed?
We’re seeing a lazy entitlement wash over the world where everyone feels as though they deserve what they want from their government the second they want it, without thought of repercussions or the rest of the population.
It seems like people don’t actually want democracy anymore, they want a dictator who agrees with them.
The sickest and most grotesque NEWS TOPPING THE CHART, dominating our attention and the news cycle, dividing and recruiting us into its ever more polarized camps, giving us a skewed view of how other people in the world really think, act, and live.
It seems like our new brave world is JUGED by a group of people that represents 0.01%, who take refuge in their own precious identity politics with us buying more and more into a worldview that is disconnected from cold data and hard facts?
The impact of the pandemic is showing despite loud warnings that continuing economic growth is incompatible with sustainability.
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So let’s take a look at the state of the world.
Even if we did stand on the moon it is a sad read and any solutions will not be found in religious beliefs or technology or in politics but in learning from history.
There have been over 250 major wars in the world since World War II, in which 23 million people have been killed., tens of millions made homeless, and countless millions injured and bereaved. Over 37 (or 42) million people have by killed by wars in the 20th century. Three times more people have been killed in wars in the last 90 years than in all the previous 500.
Over 35 major conflicts are going on in the world today.
There are approximately 30,000 nuclear warheads in the world today.
Current global military spending is approximately $800 billion per year; more than the total annual income of the poorest 45% of the global population.
Genocide and other mass murders killed more people in the 20th century than all wars combined.
33% of the world’s people live under authoritarian, non-democratic regimes. 35% of the world’s people live in countries in which basic political rights and civil liberties are denied.
1/3rd of the world’s labor force is unemployed or underemployed.
1 out of 6, children ages 5 to 17 worldwide are involved in child labor.
3 billion of the world’s people (one-half) live in ‘poverty.’
Women account for 70 percent of the world’s people who live in absolute poverty.
800 million people lack access to basic healthcare.
1.1 billion do not have safe drinking water. By 2025, at least 3.5 billion people, or nearly 2/3rd’s of the world’s population will face water scarcity.
870 million of the world’s adults are illiterate.
Over 100 million people live in slums.
The richest 1% of the world’s people earned as much income as the bottom 57%.
The wealth of the world’s 7.1 million millionaires ($27 trillion) equals the total combined annual income of the entire planet.
Poor countries (which contain 4/5th of the world’s people) pay the rich countries an estimated nine times more in debt repayments than they receive in aid.
Half of the forests that originally covered 46% of the Earth’s land surface are gone.
Between 10 and 20 percent of all species will be driven to extinction in the next 20 to 50 years.
60% of the world’s coral reefs, could be lost in the next 20-40 years.
More than 20 percent of the world’s known 10,000 freshwater fish species have become extinct.
Desertification and land degradation threaten nearly one-quarter of the land surface of the globe.
Global warming is expected to increase the Earth’s temperature by 3C (5.4F) in the next 100 years.
An estimated 40-80 million people will be forcibly evicted and displaced from their lands.
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The reality no matter how one looks at it, is that the old assumptions that provided the unifying ideas within our cultures are eroding because of our technological advancement, and although we are seeing what may prove to be the emergence of a new worldview consensus based on the Critical Theory it has not solidified its hold on society as yet.
With technology and Algorithms, our cultures have and are continuing to accept the idea that objective truth is inaccessible and that truth itself is, therefore, relative and personal, but how we conduct ourselves is just as important — even more important is how we do it sustainably and so far we have made a great job of it.
The world is now facing a collision of not just climate change but is colliding with finite resources in a much that the current economic growth could end or totally collapse in the not-so-distant future.
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But a free and functioning democracy demands a populace that can sustain discomfort, tolerate dissatisfaction, be charitable and forgiving of groups whose views stand in contrast to one’s own, and most importantly, that can remain unswayed in the face of some violent threat.
The words ” We Need” are only words. They should be replaced the words ” Action Now”
Why?
Because we also need to be clear in our own hearts and minds about the solution to the world’s problems. If we are to do anything we must break the alignment between theological advancement – climate change and pollution.
The world is at a crossroads as the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on the global economy have combined with increasing polarization and highly charged elections.
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So what will we do?
Probably have a conference.
But if you could change the world, what would you do?
We live our entire lives as aspiring presidents, aspiring movie producers, aspiring artists, aspiring authors, aspiring human rights activists, aspiring world-renowned scientists, and aspiring thought leaders while we sit in front of our TV screens, walk around glued to Smartphones, or Ipads that fed us pictures of climate change, wars, the covid pandemic, racism, political/economical collapse.
All Encouraging us on one hand, to think that the world is more violent than it really is while on the other hand promoting the glamorous life of people that believe that they are better off than we are;
What I fear is that we’re seeing now is a loss of that ability to handle discomfort and dissatisfaction.
What I would do is help people think for themselves.
While governments introduce more and more taxes to pay for inequality/economic growth charities competing to raise funds to save almost everything, from adopting everything from a child to a fish or animal to a plant, in the real world.
Taxes form a key ingredient in the social contract between citizens and the economy but How taxes are raised and spent can determine a government’s very legitimacy.
Health programs:Military: Social Security:Interest on the national debt: Education programs: Food and agricultural benefits: Pensions. Government machinery.
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Our new world now needs solidarity more than ever to make the world a better place.
Presently in a year when the world is fighting a pandemic, the Olympics in Japan will once again show us what we are capable of in sport to bring our true authentic selves to every situation. ( See: Post – The Olympics games show be permanently hosted in Greece.)
It represents a true coming together not separation, in a true spirit of humanity.
Without this coming together there will be no new world but a world run by algorithms that will not treat us as equal.
But how can you take on the problems of the world when there’s so much to do already?
In science, we have been staggered by revelation after revelation that things are not what we previously thought them to be, and beneath each layer of reality we have unpeeled lies another. It is not hard to piece together all this information to comprehensively picture what the end times will look like.
If so, what are we to do about it?
The only way to beat the attention economy is to opt out of it.
As the growth models of countries cannot be sustained Countries need to overcome political hurdles to invest in infrastructure and human capital.
How?
One way is to publish the information about political capture so that the public can hold politicians to account for reforms.
Because the only way for human rights to persist is for everyone to collectively agree to accept that things don’t have to go their way 100% of the time.
Freedom can only exist when you are willing to tolerate views that oppose your own when you’re willing to give up some of your desires for the sake of a safe and healthy community when you’re willing to compromise and accept that sometimes things don’t go your way and that’s fine.
Finally, we must accept that world problems will always be with us.
The world has woken up to the need to curb emissions and invest in climate resilience. But we all need to move faster down this path, we now have less than 100 days to go until the UN climate summit, Cop26 arrives in Glasgow.
Five years on from the Paris Agreement, and with countless evidence that the climate crisis is worsening, the negotiations will focus on nationally determined contributions to stop the world from warming above 1.5 degrees. But as the countries confer with each other, it will be the people of the world who have the most to say: we need action, need more of it, and need it now.
They will not address nature and climate as one.
HOW CAN YOU GET INVOLVED?
We know that the production of energy is the biggest contributor to global warming.
If we want action not promises to reduce carbon emissions in twenty years in thirty years there is no reason that non-repayable grants could be made available to everyone to convert to green energy by installing solar panels.
So why not use the tools that are available to demand our governments to do so on
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Emails to cop26@cabinetoffice.gov.uk.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
We live in an age in which intersecting crises are being lifted to a global scale, with unseen levels of inequality, environmental degradation, and climate destabilization, as well as new surges in populism, conflict, economic uncertainty, and mounting public health threats.
All are crises that are slowly tipping the balance, questioning our business-as-usual economic model of the past decades, and requiring us to rethink our next steps.
In the next few months, we will once again witness a gathering of verbal diarrhea in Scotland all promising to go green.
There is no doubting in the last few decades that we humans have achieved advances away beyond what our ancestors would have believed possible. The irony is that to survive we have to become something very different from what we are.
Many optimists believe that technology can transform society and solve climate change.
To a great extent, this is probably true no more so than in the field of medician.
Take the discovery by Alexander Fleming in 1928 of Penicillin.
Before its discovery, we were dying thirty years early than we do today.
His discovery was down to an accidental piece of bacteria landing on one of his Petri dishes which took another ten years to develop into a drug to save lives.
Today with human intelligence and machine learning we can produce drugs in a matter of months.
The way forward to reducing CO2 emissions is not a by-pass lane it is by using the technologies that already exist.
It’s time to cut out the verbal and bull shit and make these technologies affordable to all.
Yes, the world today is in a dire state and a new kind of social and ecological environment needs to be created with green energy the price of which is toppling daily.
Comparing global problems involves lots of uncertainty and difficult judgment calls, but every problem is solvable if we devote resources to building a just world and not guns.
THE WORLD RUNS ON ELECTRICITY.
SO IF WE WANT A GREEN FUTURE NON-REPAYABLE GRANTS TO CONVERT FROM FOSSIL FUELS GENERATED ELECTRIC TO ENERGY BY NON-POLLUTING RENEWABLE MATERIALS – WIND – SUN- WATER- GEOTHERMAL – HYDROGEN.
SUCH A MOVE WOULD CREATE MILLIONS OF JOBS AND COULD BE FUNDED BY PLACING A WORLD AID COMMISSION OF 0.05% ON ALL ACTIVITIES THAT HAVE PROFIT FOR-PROFIT SAKE AT THEIR HEART. ( See previous posts)
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We are now presented with two very different futures.
The last generation that can stop devastating climate change. We have the knowledge and the tools – we just need politicians to lead the way.
or
We fail to meet climate mitigation goals.
For certain, either outcome will not be easy or cheap and it is happing faster than we wish to acknowledge.
The problem is the two outcomes are profoundly interlocked with lots of uncertainty.
HOWEVER, UNLIKE THE CURRENT PANDEMIC CLIMATE CHANGE WON’T JUST DISAPPEAR IT WILL REQUIRE A NEW MEANING OF LIFE.
To recognize that we are entering a new world with opportunities and perspectives is an enormous challenge not because of climate change but because of the current inequalities existing on the Planet.
The choice we are now confronted with is one we will have to make over and over again as we transition to a more resilient, zero-carbon, just, and healthier future.
The question is who is going to pay for the transition.
New transformative technologies may promise a radically better future but also pose catastrophic risks.
THERE IS LITTLE POINT IN REDUCING GLOBAL TEMPERATURES IF BY THE TIME IT HAS STABILIZED HALF OF THE WORLDS POPULATION HAS BEEN DESTABILIZED OR DISPLACED.
A lack of global emphasis on foreign aid, conflict, and political factors have kept poverty as a driving factor of Inequality.
To adjust to the coming new kind of social and ecological environment, how do we frame either of the above outcomes constructively.
We will have to relearn the world to do so.
We have to become more aware of the future of our planet and our future and the legacy of the human species to start a serious battle to make up for the damages.
At the moment it is difficult to know the changes in the ecosystems that surround us not to mention the social uncertainty to come.
The fundamental economic problem is related to the issue of scarcity.
Society is mostly dominated by people wishing to consume more goods and services that are available.
One in nine people in the world go hungry each day and suffer from nutritional deficiencies as a result.
Currently, 1 in 9 people lack access to clean water across the world.
The problem is not that we aren’t producing enough food, but rather that people lack access to food. Many people do not have enough money to purchase food and cannot grow their own.
To try to work out which global problems are most pressing and make progress on foundational questions about how best to address them is impossible unless we address the fundamental problem.
To recognize that scarcity will drive almost everything.
To recognize a sense of shared humanity.
To recognize that approximately 600 million children are not mastering basic mathematics and literacy while at school.
To recognize that is not just climate change that treating the world but artificial intelligence and the way we are using it.
Using only the interaction of its embedded sensors, computer programming, and algorithms in the human environment and ecosystem — is becoming a reality that cannot be ignored anymore.
Because building autonomous weapons systems are one thing but using them in algorithmic warfare with other nations and against other humans is another.
They will in no uncertain terms alter the very fundamentals of security and the future of humanity and peace.
As global temperatures continue to rise, technology improves and the world economy grows, it gets easier to cause destruction on an ever-larger scale with the weaponizing of artificial intelligence both military-wise and as a social tool.
The Weaponization Of Artificial Intelligence
The development of autonomous weapons system (AWS) is progressing rapidly, and this increase in the weaponization of artificial intelligence seems to have become a highly destabilizing development. It brings complex security challenges for not only each nation’s decision-makers but also for the future of humanity.
There are always unforeseen consequences when new technology is introduced. Those unintended outcomes of artificial intelligence will likely challenge us all.
AI algorithms must be built to align with the overarching goals of humans.
As more and more data is collected about every single minute of every person’s day, our privacy gets compromised.
Look at what is happing in China with its social credit system, it could devolve into social oppression.
Unless you choose to live remotely and never plan to interact with the modern world, your life will be significantly impacted by artificial intelligence.
The transformative impact of artificial intelligence on our society will have far-reaching economic, legal, political, and regulatory implications that we need to be discussing and preparing for.
Sure, it can transform our lives for the better.
In fact, people have gotten used to depending on AI for almost everything and can’t imagine not having these technological advancements as part of their life. Because many processes and applications are getting automated, people are getting addicted to these kinds of inventions which can be an issue for future generations to come.
Societies will face further challenges in directing and investing in technologies that benefit humanity instead of destroying it or intruding on basic human rights of privacy and freedom of access to information.
In the future, predictive analytics and artificial intelligence will play an even more fundamental role in content creation that will affect our wallets, health, safety, and lives.
The mistake we are making is to think that this situation is the only future.
That it is impossible to regulate AI because of the rate of AI change entails.
This is not true as it is possible to Audit all AI technology and algorithms to ensure that comply with human values and to make their programs totally transparent.
Why is the above urgent?
Because combined with climate change we are faced with and a transactional wealth of a new currency of unknowable value called personal data inequality will ravage the planet we all live in and on.
These are not some science fiction movie scenarios the current Pandemic is revealing a much more tragic and fragile world that requires more than trust.
The United Nations (UN) currently lists 22 “Global Issues”.
These correspond with the most important issues of our time and are known as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs).
Here is a few of them.
FOOD SECURITY.
HEALTH ISSUES.
EDUCATION.
GENDER EQUALITY.
AFRICA.
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES/ POLLUTION.
OCEAN CONSERVATION.
WATER SCARCITY.
GLOBAL ISSUES THAT REQUIRE POLICY SOLUTIONS.
This is not intended to be an exhaustive list. Rather, it serves as an overview of some of the major issues all global citizens should be aware of.
Artificial intelligence is not on the list.
Because the biggest challenge facing the planet needs every solution possible including technology like artificial intelligence (AI).
But AI is not a silver bullet it can only unlock new insights, pinpointing those responsible for it.
The current environmental issues pose so many problems to industry and society that not enough action has been taken to stop turning Climate change into a product.
My goal in this blog is not to convince people climate change is real, or that AI is destroying society it’s to get people who do believe that climate change is real and that Algorithms for profit’s sake are plundering the world to do more to affect change.
What can be done by any of us against the might of Capitalism that will have any effect?
There is only one weapon available to us all and that is our buying power.
If we use our collective buying power you will then see not just governments but global corporations change their tune from profit to sustainability.
We decide whether we want to look at the world in one way or another, always making tradeoffs.
As Harvey Sacks observed.
” If only we introduced some fantastic new communication machine the world will be transformed”
” But the best and brightest devices must be accommodated within existing practices and assumptions in a world that has whatever organization it already has”
All are under threat because all are happening at what scientists estimate to be about 1,000 times the normal pace and are yet to be quantified.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
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