When big corporations produce cars with combustion engines , which are 6 times the family needed to move the speed limit power...

When compacted vehicles (scrapping) 5 years old in perfect condition, only to benefit the consumer...

When the States do not regulate this type of production "excess"...

When people want to change the car (3 years) just because they are no longer "fashionable"...

When we buy and throw away daily 5 kilos of packaging...

...I understand that socially we're not doing things right.

The saddest thing is that professionals should understand the consequences, every day to help accelerate this more and more.

Hello Federico, exactly, given the amplitude and speed at which technology is moving and alongside feeding man's greed for more luxury, are we really concerned as to how and to what extent these are affecting Nature and we'll be the one to suffer the repercussions?

@Federico: As you rightly said many people are providing only a lip service and not really embracing the green lifestyle in large numbers. It will have to become an integral part of the lifestyle. That means you need to sacrifice some of the luxuries for which we are getting so used to and come out this habit of using short life products so that you can replace them every year or two years. Why make something and then start thinking of recycling, when you can live without it?

Balanced management of the elements of the planet has help save endangered ecosystems. I think it is important to reduce harmful practices for the planet. The resort has other sources of cleaner and more ecologist consumption. All this at a price between the major pollutants in the world and small polluter who want great track.

@Prishnee Bissessur: We may not feel the repercussions in our lifetime to a great extent. It will be the later generations that will be affected a lot.

Can we say that many of us don't understand the implications of our not so "green "actions on the long run and as a consequence being selfish and not thinking proactively about the future generation. Some are already aware and working towards improving the situation and minimise the damages, however how can we attract or encourage a larger mass to give their contribution in saving the planet?

People often only think of today and tomorrow, but few can see into the farther future; Those who do (or did) are / were prophets and write / wrote messages to us through various religious and moral writings. But do we listen???

Sustainable home/low carbon home/eco-house, reducing wastes, recycling of wastes, water and energy savings, saving trees or planting trees, conservation agriculture, use of energy efficient appliances, use of renewable energy, use of public transport, biking or walking all counts towards greening. These green practices will not only save natural resources but also helps reducing our costs towards gas, electricity and water bills. It will allow us to live in a low polluting healthy environment. To promote green life style to save planet, we have to educate people starting from the grass roots level first!

Dear Dr Szabo, I agree with you that many people of vision came and wrote about values, ethics and principles that guide a healthy lifestyle without impeding that of the future generation. If religion can unite people and religious persons with such great teachings can disseminate their knowledge, it is still in the individual's hand and his choice and responsibility to whether or not adopt such a lifestyle. Yet, some choose not to. So there must be some major factors that are hindering them from choosing what's right. Is it that fact nowadays people are looking for instant gratification? Instant money, instant pleasure?

How do we inculcate those values that religion preaches if they are least bothered about it?

I think it comes back to what you said : do we listen?

Unfortunately Prishnee, the focus of most people's attention is focussed on their personal situation, not that of the world at large. Thus, the current efforts to draw people's attention to the plight of global warming is lost on a populace that prefers to focus at individual or family level. Until people begin to see impacts on their own health or wealth, it will be difficult to engage the public in efforts to highlight the actions necessary to mitigate the worst effects. Thus, publicity needs to focus more on how global warming can impact individuals and their families, rather than the over-arching broad impacts that are currently highlighted by international agencies, especially if they want the grassroots movement that will be necessary to ensure political action on these issues - the top-down approach from governments has not worked, so a bottom-up approach driven by the general public is absolutely essential.

Indeed John, you made a very relevant point. Unless the individual feels himself or herself threatened by these repercussions that a better awakening and consciousness of the severity of the situation will be understood and given attention. Here again, it becomes a question of will, how the person chooses the appropriate attitude and embrace a green lifestyle for his/her own benefit and good. You proposed a very important strategy indeed, and hopefully government will take conscious of the failure of its broad approach and gear more towards and target the individual approach. Thanks for your great response. :)

The appropriate attitude, as you state it, is dependent on the situation. Past societies had practices that worked very well ecologically, but would be impossible today. In my culture they would crap in the river and have fishponds at the river mouth...the nutrients from the waste would power the fishery and it was a very ecologically sound practice. Today that would be impossible, the quantity of waste produced by the much denser population would simply overwhelm the natural cycles, making the waste a pollutant rather than a nutrient.

When we talk about the benefits or non-benefits of a green lifestyle I always have to return to the concept of the greatest good for the greatest people. It is an impossibility to maximize to variables in one equation, and therefore the greatest good for the greatest people is a fallacy. You can have one or the other, but anything else will be a compromise between the two. We are simply living beyond the capacities of our ecosystem to sustain, and therefore are forcing ourselves to have to change our practices. Just like crapping in the river only works up to a certain population density.

I personally would rather have less people on the planet, and still be able to eat meat in a guilt free way. Meat farming and production, just like anything, can be a positive aspect to the environment in the right balance. But because our population is skyrocketing we are producing meat way out of proportion to what is healthy for the environment, and now it is being a detriment. Again, like crapping in the river.

Change is not an easy thing. It takes time to observe oneʻs effects and to be able to design a new system. To return again to the river, what did that past society do as population reached and exceeded the point where our waste went from a nutrient that powered a large part of their food system, to a pollutant that actually destroyed their food system? How can they just instantly devise a whole new food system or entirely new sewage system? After all they canʻt stop crapping? Unfortunately what they probably did was starve, and their population dropped and then their old system became relevant again. Today that is consciously not an acceptable solution...to let people starve. While we talk here about changing our lives to be greener, there are millions of people around the world worried about how they will survive the next day.

It is not as if societies of the past were magically awakened into consciousness when their lifestyles exceeded their means. The truth of the matter is that they had much harder lives, and the past is riddled with examples where they simply died off. So what we are doing now is not a new human phenomenon...it is exactly as we have always done it.

But I do believe that we have new tools now that can allow us to overcome our own detrimental effects. Tools, primarily, of observation and communication that never existed before, and that can allow us to learn and change faster than before. The problem is that we are also impacting and changing our environment faster than ever before, so maybe we are still at ground zero.

I donʻt think it is that people are not listening...I think, as always, it is the difficulty of change. It is the lack of knowing what else to do. I 100% agree that it is ultimately about person relevance, and if you have a family to feed and a job to get to then you are not going to stop driving a car because there is really not many other options. I hope this post is not too much of a bummer, but it is truly how I see the world and it all playing out.

And just to clarify I wish with all my heart to return to a simpler lifestyle...to live in my homeland and farm the land and live in concert with our natural surroundings. But I have also tried to, and this current system simply does not let us do that. You have to buy land, you have to pay taxes, you have to engage with the bigger system and that ultimately sucks you in to playing the same game as everyone else.

Well, Noa, I think that your post is excellent. I agree very much. My comment below builds mostly on this sentence in the last paragraph: “it is a lack of knowing what else to do”. My attempt of a possible answer would more or less be as follows. I view that once human beings cater for their basic needs, happiness, which we all seek, is not reached through boosting the Gross Domestic Product by encouraging the current unethical consumerism that leads all at once to resource over-exploitation and excessive pollution, (without even making us happier), and is the root cause of so many (all?) of the current growing environmental problems and inequalities, and ensuing social ills etc. In other words, happiness is not reached through seeking the `more`, as the rule of the current ruinous game dictates, but rather through seeking the `better`. Here is a short vid that explains this idea clearly: see `the story of solution` on http://storyofstuff.org/. Each and every one of us can through our decisions and actions be less part of the problem and more part of the solution. We can think globally, act locally. We can gradually change the rules of the game, `be the change we want to see`. I feel that this would give a worthwhile sense of purpose in today`s world, and give us hope to raise our kids in a better, not a deteriorating world.

Aloha Francois. Thank you for putting a more positive spin on my post. Iʻm not always that cynical. :) I completely agree with you, that focusing on what we really desire in our lives is a good positive way forward.

As far as I see in my country,  the situation :

1. The general  employment is low, and the goverment introduced the so called: public work which paid 165-210 EUR/month which is far from the consumer society: actually they are forced for a kind of green-lifestyle.

2. Unfortunately the adds, adverts in differend medias (tv chanells, newspapers, magazines, intenet) especially the popuar realityshows "hypnotyse" the consumer life-style into the brains pof people ówhich is serious problem. The newly introduced media-tax unfortunately did not changed this tendency :( 

3. The most important would be to introduce the Environment Protection and Nature Conservation disciplines into the timetables of the elementary, primary schools.

My question is there any examples  for teaching Environment Protection and Nature Conservation  subjects in prymary school in your country?

Definitely, it would help sustain the humans longer. Otherwise they are doomed, the way they are going.

The subject of the environment should be introduced to all children from the primary grades. It is no use trying to convert spoiled adults from poisoning the environment. They have lost the respect for Mother Earth.

Sure

No...and Michael Shellenberger says

“Green” is just barely Ok and not a redemption. I believe forced adoption of “green” technologies will lead to a “great leap forward”. The starvation times of Cultural revolution were triggered by a metal “rush”. “Plowshares” were melted down to make pig iron to satisfy political quotas. Hinayana or mahayana? Politics is a poor substitute for the market.

There are huge desolate areas now. They are getting less So. Warming is on the whole a slight plus...(Freeman Dyson). Many are woodlands reclaimed from farmlands. Green is not green everywhere. In Goma lack of modern fuel has resulted in forest looting, mafia and government disrespect!

No. Green alarmism will destroy what we hold most dear. Water shortages and electrical brownouts are the good examples of the result of “Green Policies”. I spent 25 years with the EPA protecting the environment by cleaning up toxins. I left to live with the wolves after green landfill monsters arrived.

Adopting a scrupulously clean life has not even cured Covid. There are too many moving pieces to make sense of what is best. Shortages of this and that were predicted many times. I for one cannot believe fear of shortages has now transfirmed into a fear of surplus. Too much plastic too much oil etc.

There is genetic work suggesting those with a particular genetic snippet that causes lung cancer and COPD are extra vulnerable. Those with a Neanderthal lineage (all caucasians apparently) are more at risk. The snippet is in most who live in USA. Efforts to be clean are barely helpful. Green?