Premise

So far, humans have exploited as much as they could any possible source to live on earth. The world is changing . Change is inevitable

Unfortunately, often just in order to maximise their interests, out of money, without giving a thought to the future.

Despite many decades passed by, it’s difficult, without looking from the outside, not to tell how much the planet is suffering; but some clues are there and a change of direction is needed.

There no superhero that can deal with it, on our behalf.

Only the societies with new values are those whose duty is definitely to look forward to a better living- smarter and cleaner – ultimately: more sustainable.

Overpopulation

According to UNO ( United Nations Organisation) by the half of November 2022, we are going to reach 8 billion of people.

More than half, around 55%, are from Asia, that is the most populated continent on earth.

It’s worthy considering that poor countries have an higher tax of childbirth.

In the last 50 years the population of  Africa has grown by 300 %.

The demographic augmentation arises the pressure on the ecological footprint, whereas reduces the biocapacity.

Between 1961 and 2013, the agriculture increased its global hectares from 9,5 to 12,2 billion, due to new cultivation techniques; Nevertheless in 2012 an overexploitation of 65% exceeded on the effective capacity of sustainability per person.

The clear risk is not to provide the right supply of sources the elevating number of people demands.

The richest countries have the most worldwide consumption model: short life of the product, more services, a better quality of life and more infrastructures.

Globalization launched the opportunity for the great cities to become independent.

Exploiting resources somewhere else and ultimately to take possession of that good in exchange of money.

So the free marketplace is what really moves the investment.

Water

The big mistake here is to value common goods by relying on a volatile unities of measurement, namely money, supposed to universally brings about a profit.

On the contrary, that profit can ruin permanently a specific site or space, a loss is the ordinary counterpart.

Introducing an argument in favour of this thesis: the water can furnish an example.

Since the beginning, the water is an essential part of the productive life, some scientists predict it is going to be the petrol of the XXI century.

A bottle of water is now available just by spending a little bit of money, one day in a near future it might be an enormous expenditure; it just because of its less and less availability.

The agriculture detains the highest worldwide use of drinkable water: 70 % .

The earth is made up of 97 % of water but of it only the 0,5 % is that accessible to us; mostly it comes out from glaciers, rivers, streams, lakes, aquifers, water sources and wells.

Among the 37 principle aquifers in the world only 21 provides water but at the same time they are also running out.

In the next years Israel’s sample should be followed, for instance, it is the leading role country for wastewater recycling; In fact, by 2015 Israel managed to treat and re-use approximately 86 % of wastewater for agriculture’s operations.

What is ahead in this field?

Water needs as sooner as possible to be handle as a vital element, for its supreme importance.

Desalination plants, despite its excessive cost, are going to be an alternative solution to guarantee water supply.

The potential is great but so far in Italy the production is as low as 0,1 %.

On the negative side, the energy expenditure is expensive and the salt waste disposal;

On the positive side, the sea water offers an almost infinitive supply.

Other practice is the gathering of rainy water into tanks or into underground palaces as the famous Basilica Cistern in Turkey.

New irrigation’s model can give a significant bound in arising the level of water spared;

Nowadays around 2 billion people are denunciating to United Nations the lack of water: the bad hit parts are the rural villages of the lesser developed countries.

Climate change

Hot waves, drought, increasing of the temperature, seas and oceans’ elevating level and firewood are what it brings about;

The balance has been compromised by human activities; specifically the carbon is being more produced than absorbed.

Positive carbon sinks as oceans, plants and soils are suffering the far more higher quantitative CO2 production derived by burning of fossil fuels, pollution, volcanic eruptions.

EEA – European Environment Agency – informs that in 2019 the 77% of the greenhouse gas emissions in Europe were from energy industries.

What is expected is a significative augmentation of temperatures; the gases in the atmosphere create a rebound effect which entraps the heat.

The warm due to green house effect is bounded to increase temperatures.

On that way the reason why International Community agrees that global warming needs to stay well below a 2 C increase.

The economic production is running out the ecosystem’s resources by its too much exploiting manner to get goods for the market, it is due to the demands ever more pressing although part of this amount of production remains unused.

Whereas the life suffers on earth, below our eyes, the planet itself changes too.

In the last 10 years, glaciers melted in a concerning way by reaching its peak.

IPCC ( Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ) records that the glaciers melting raised its own pace as much as six times faster than in the 90’s.

Melt rate stands at 1.2 trillion tons loss a year.

If temperatures grow it will have more dispersion of water.

On and on..

Animal extinctions, the whole Artic to turning into free water, warmer, higher and more acid oceans, more violent tropical storms and floods, intense drought in many regions and wildfire.

To worsen the facts, the recent discovery of a third hole in ozone layer by Canadian chemical physicist QING-BIN LU;

The other ones over the polar regions were discovered in 1985.

This one is seven times larger than the hole over Antarctica.

It is supposed to be there since 80’s.

The formation of the ozone hole is to claim to the use of pollutants, especially the chlorofluorocarbons then banned from Montreal protocol (1987) but expected to be harmful until 2070-2075 due to the continuation of its effects.

When the ozone layer shrinks the UV rays hit with more violence the Earth surface.

Plus other gases such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and the same ozone contribute to the greenhouse effect; where gases are trapped in the atmosphere producing an internal heating.

To control the global warming these gases are agreed to be reduced to zero by 2050.

On that depends the future on earth.

By the end of the century many places will become too hot to live in.

Some effects as the sea level rise would probably take millennia to reverse its course.

Air pollution kills around 9 million people per year; the oppression given by the heat can irremediably take old people to an untimely death.

Outdoors works can become unbearable to stand.

What hurt the most is the role we play, in fact, we are victims of this phenomenon.

That’s because we don’t have yet a program or simply the power to contrast this change.

Only a massive and cohesive response to this problem can lead us out of this danger.

PREDICTION and  BILL GATES’ BOOK

According to Energy Policy Institute, Chicago University, before the end of the century half of U.S.A is going to have a summer hotter than nowadays Egypt and India do have.

Even Bill Gates, who studies climate change from several years, wrote an important book in 2021;

It is titled : How to avoid a climate disaster – the solution we have and the breakthroughs we need- .

In it, the tension between economic development and sustainability might be resolved in accelerating innovation;

To invest in green technologies, mostly in sustainable energy.

A key point is not to only reduce emissions but drastically to abolish them; reducing or replacing Co2 emission by 2030 is likely to be counter-productive.

What we need is new infrastructures, a decarbonization of electricity entailed in coal and gas production, to maximize the nuclear energy improving its security.

Gates suggests specific steps that should be taken by government leaders, market participants and finally individuals.

The aim is to avoid a climate disaster, given for sure if not contrasted.

Innovation industries grows and it is the proper road for the future.

Gates introduces the green premium; it is the additional cost a business owner pays to produce by clean technology instead of using more polluted ones.

There is an externality which prevents them from producing too much gas.

It entails the negative externality, for example, the fact of not paying only for the good but also for what the good produces.

Taking an example from motor vehicles a business man pays not only the fuel but also for the deed to pollute the air;

It gives new value to the environment giving to it a rank.

Taxing the carbon following this logic can be an efficient tool.

CONCLUSION

The major issue is the not-capacity of change the way people effectively lives.

It has to blame on politic and society; As Gates suggested in his book they have the power to solve more directly the matter.

As soon as people don’t see what is going on out of their “comfortable zones” they won’t be prompted to act differently.

A change of mind is needed and then a system change.

More global and shared activities which bring some results.

For example more planted trees, new green areas, the less unnecessary industries and the more infrastructure of carbon capture plants.

This engine sucks CO2 from air. There are currently 19 direct capture plants operating worldwide.

To act instead of discussing the problem is the key to effectively brings about a change and a relief.

Furthermore, society should adopt a new and more ethical vision not based on money but on the common good.

Here we have to take into consideration if it would not be totally wrong to invest and to guarantee reward and benefits to those who choose sustainability.

The abolition of its own interests and profit is the step that would make the world no longer an industrial machine but a easier place to stay.

Then the respect for the other components of the world as well as its environments is essential; it deserves to be recognize and protected as maximum common good.

If you want to read more about climate change, click here.