Greed and sustainable development

Muhammad Eusha The era of industrialization and technological progress has not had a very warm response from the environment. Since its inception roughly a century ago, the animosity between development and ecological balance has been more or less conspicuous. Nature has suffered disgracefully in the process of development as it has become obvious that achievement of a style of life sophisticated by dominance of technology is going to be impossible without interfering with the basic elements of nature. The problem is, our knowledge seems to be too little for us to understand how we can continue our development trends segregating our operations in such a way that we do not interfere with the way nature functions; it would not be redundant to point out that we require nature to function the way it normally does because human survival itself depends solely on the survival of nature, unquestionably, considering how intricately inseparable the two are. Insufficient knowledge, however, is not the biggest of our problems, by any means. This essay would assay to delve deep in to the actual problem of development, its reality and the only right point of view to analyze it from. The concept of development can be attributed to the Europeans without any qualms. The era of enlightenment, as the Europeans want to put it, brought about a scientific revolution which was driven and powered by curiosity about nature and its operations. It was more or less about attaining knowledge of a deeper level about nature, its principles and operations. For example, Newtons laws of motion were only a set of observed principles. One such law tells us how the final velocity of a body at any time can be calculated if we know the acceleration and the initial velocity. The fruits of the observational exploration of nature soon were employed by the materialist businessmen to build industries and use knowledge to indulge in relentless pursuit of mundane wealth and prosperity. The principles of refrigeration were soon employed by industrialists to build commercial refrigerators, for instance. But the depth of the attained knowledge being shallow, we quickly found out that many of the technologies directly or indirectly were affecting the environment negatively. The concept of pollution of different forms, damage to ecological balance and their inevitable consequences to be experienced by the human race to experience have alarmed us all. The global multicultural and multinational civilization in our era is principally dependent on energy consumption. A high rate of energy consumption can only be possible through production of energy at a high rate. All the known methods of energy production so far directly or indirectly harm the environment. Even the innocuous looking solar panels are results of production processes which cannot be realized without having steps injurious to the environment somehow or the other. Moreover, the required photovoltaic cells and other necessary equipment create unavoidable environmental hazards both in cases of manufacturing and disposal. While there is such a high level of awareness in the West about pollution, the truth that is often hidden from the gullible mass public is that all the industries pollute the environment; the question is about the degree of pollution, not the very existence of it. Some industries would boast having great effluent treatment plants and claim that they conform to the federal anti-pollution regulations.

The truth is, not only those regulations have not been designed to put a stop to pollution entirely, all the technologies that are used to stop pollution either themselves contribute by polluting directly or indirectly, or are never hundred percent efficient to stop the release of harmful chemicals in to the environment. We all are very well aware that the carbon dioxide emitted by the generators indispensible to the industries are greatly deleterious to us; yet, for reasons to be discussed later in this article, internationally, no one seems to be greatly bothered by the fact. In the United States, for example, industries are encouraged to lower the rate of carbon emission! Notice the word encouraged. The industries are not forced to stop their polluting activities. They are merely encouraged to do so using various incentives. The refusal to comprehend that our technology is harming us has an economic impetus behind it. It is, rather ironically, usually not the scientists or inventors who insist that we continue with our technology dependent civilization. It is the businessmen who are chiefly responsible. The boom of industries and the unbelievably high increase in the intensity of economic activities have brought the mankind to such an era that we are unable to go back now or even think about it. Avarice, an old enemy, seems to be the reason behind all the environmental problems of our very modern world! The industries which manufacture commodities like shampoo etcetera would not want to divulge that dumping shampoo in the water is going to bring dire consequences one day, sooner or later. The honest economists are baffled and are frantically trying to bring the people intoxicated with greed back to senses. The malevolent economists are doing their best to use their prevarications and circumlocutions to ascertain that nonexistent and impossible concepts like sustainable development keep the current trend going. There is a third group of economists who still believe that we could still someday achieve technology that would allow greed and nature to coexist on the same planet! It is preposterous to think that Bangladesh is being offered money because it might face inundation as a consequence of global warming! One wonders about the puerility of those who made such an offer and those who thought it was a good one! What are we dreaming of buying with that money standing in knee-deep water! Or are we going to build a wall to separate the sea and the land? The asininity displayed by politicians both home and abroad is disgraceful indeed. They must understand that some damages cannot be made up using money! One particular reason behind this strange blindness and refusal to understand that we are fast approaching our own destruction has its root in Darwinism and theory of Evolution. Many planners and thinkers in the West believe that we would mutate and survive in the changed environment without any great loss. There is also an astonishing tendency to favor the theory of Evolution, which, to date, remains only a hypothesis as unproven as the Adam and Eve theory! Muhammad Eusha is an engineer and a regular contributor