| |
  |
||
Buenos Aires / Issues – This year, the traditional message the Pope delivers on January 1st at the beginning of the World Day of Peace proposes the motto: “If you want to cultivate peace, take care of creation”. Hundreds of wars have taken place in many regions after World War II. Therefore, peace is far from being an objective that has been achieved and ensured. Peace remains a challenge for the entire human family. We also know that we face another problem of huge proportions: the preservation of the environment. If we don’t make a radical change, we will be affecting the possibility of future generations to continue inhabiting this planet. On one hand this means drastically reducing the contamination produced by human activity, which has already set off a climate change whose effects are believed will last for centuries. In the past nature had had the capability of absorbing man-made contamination, but in some cases it is no longer capable of doing so, bringing about dramatic imbalances. According to a study carried out by British economist Nicholas Stern, it would take 1% of the world’s GDP to limit the damage that climate change will cause under the present conditions (emergence or re-emergence of diseases, ice-melting and the rise of sea level, extreme meteorological events such as tornadoes, hurricanes, etc.). In second place, we need to preserve natural resources, such as sweet water —en element life cannot do without— or energy, which are key for society to function and develop. According to several experts, oil production has already reached its peak and has entered a descending phase, and so far, the use of renewable energies can’t significantly substitute the huge consumption of fossil fuels. Moreover, 900 million people have trouble getting water. It is estimated that by 2025, 1,500 million people won’t access water. Sweet water is 2.5% of all the water in the planet, but we can only access 0.26% of that. All of this poses the need to review life, production and consumption styles, as well as the very concept of development and wellbeing. The 6 billion inhabitants of the planet couldn’t be able to life according to European or U.S. standards, because the Earth couldn’t bear the impact. These elements, added to demographic increase, can generate serious tensions. In fact, main cause of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have already caused hundreds of thousands of casualties, lies in the control and transportation of energy resources such as oil or gas. There aren’t many alternatives. If we continue as we are now, the risk is the generation of explosive situations because the richest regions, the most powerful ones, will always tend to decide how to distribute the existing resources and this will enhance differences and injustices. The other possibility is to change the idea we have of development and economic growth on behalf of a more sober lifestyle, with less squandering or resources in order to allow that the population of the more deprived areas of the planet might also improve their standard of living. This second hypothesis, undoubtedly very complex and deeply revolutionary, can also be carried out in a context of peace and collaboration between the peoples. It is revolutionary because, as Italian physicist Sergio Rondinaria sustained on these same pages, it would be a similar change to the one caused by the industrial revolution. And we could expect really positive effects if, as if the Pope invites us, this change is motivated not only by necessity, but also by the desire to establish close relations of fraternity and solidarity among all the inhabitants of the creation that God has entrusted to our intelligent care. |
Tags
|
||
| Revista Mirada Global © Copyright 2009 |
