“One gallon of gas is equivalent to 25,000 human hours of
effort…No wonder we are addicted!” ~Dr.
Art Whatley, Professor
of Management and Program Chair of the Master of Arts program in Global
Leadership and Sustainable Development.
Yet again, our Thursday evening anthropology
class was presented with the honor to have another brilliant guest
speaker. It was evident that Dr. Whatley
empowered the entire class with his passion and his knowledge about how the
dominating culture of the world is suppressing the planet. During the past 200 years after the discovery
of fossil fuels 250 years ago, this Western industrial culture has crept up on
nearly all cultures and pervaded the world’s way of life. 250 years ago, the world looked unlimited. All the oak trees were cut down to build ship
and explore the world. The foundations
of our Western culture were built with no limitations. For over 400 years,
indigenous people in each country have been trying to battle the dominant ways
that go against their entire belief systems.
Although
the beginning of Dr. Whatley’s lecture seemed only to be filled with doom, all
of the unfortunately realities had to be put into perspective. Our world must put the reality we have made
into perspective before we will be able to even begin undoing this
reality. We must identify the heart and
origins of each major problem. Among the
inconvenient truths discussed was the agricultural revolution, a topic not new
to the class. Because we can feed more people, we can make more people. The world’s population just reached 7 billion
people who all need to be fed and who all, instinctually, will reproduce. It is all of these 7 billion people’s genetic
structure to fill every space possible and to use every resource possible. And humans certainly have shown they have all
the power necessary to do this. It is
our evolutionary, biological predisposition. However, one could say that a strong, sound,
and educated human mind can defeat this instinct. Even a sound spiritual foundation or
religious belief system can teach people the value of being frugal with how we
consume our resources, how we should be charitable, and the importance of land
conservation. Disappointingly, we are
feeding the world’s growing population in an inequitable way. Dr. Whatley emphasized how “we cannot have
sustainability without social justice”.
The
dominant system the US has adopted made the country the biggest consumer
society on the planet beginning in 1980.
America’s leaders have an unconscious addition to economic growth. But the politicians and business people don’t
want to talk about this, even though the world is screaming. Sometimes I feel that many of these people
are simply in a deep denial. As Dr.
Whatley put it, “Ask any economics professor if economy is more important than
ecology, and their answer will be, ‘No, society and nature are subsets of the
economy’”. This has become the dominant
system in our education system which has made people ecologically
illiterate. Kids and people know about
economy than ecology. At least the 20
young students in our anthropology class know that the undeniable scientific
truth is that the economy is dependent on the planet.
It is
going to be up to us to utilize our people power to overcome the power of the
greedy people so that we can work to reverse the completely inverted
system. This is just now starting to
happen with the Occupy Wall Street movement. I found it quite compelling when Dr. Whatley
talked about how an annual earnings of $15,000 is actually the threshold for
happiness. We must move away from the
system of our industrial economy which takes, makes, and wastes, to a
sustainable system that borrows, uses, and returns. We must teach systems theory and its ideas of
limits, feedbacks, and overshoot. It is
indeed possible to sustain human life without harming the planet while being
happy and comfortable. Fortunately, there
is a minority of companies whose missions and objectives are to produce zero
waste in their industrial processes.
Thankfully, people are taking their own initiative to live in a
sustainable way in their personal lives with their diets, purchases, and how
much they travel.
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