Tag: planet

Earth vs Jeff’s Trillion

When the population of animals or insects in a region grows substantially and causes damage, we call it an infestation.

Yet we humans have never looked at it the same way when it comes to ourselves, on how we grow and expand to displace and occupy forests, oceans, plant and animal territory.

And that concern is worsened multi-fold when public figures like Jeff Bezos say things like he did around 2018, that someday ‘a trillion people will live in space, there will be “a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts” and we’ll develop other planets, leaving Earth a beautiful place to be’, that isn’t coming from a place of need-based expansion, but rather a fascinating-sounding image to sell tickets on his spaceship.

Because then us common mortals start seeing the planet like we do an existing, well-functioning phone, when someone we admire gives us a preview of a fancy, upcoming phone. Our reaction is often reflected in what I call a ‘rolled model’ (as opposed to a role model).

We are suddenly even less careful with our phone. We don’t mind if it falls a few times, or if something we placed on it risks scratching the screen or leaking onto it.

Because someone we admire gave us a preview of what our world and life would be, with that upcoming new phone.

So what if that person we admire actually sells phones. So what if we are suddenly alright with our current phone getting damaged.

We are simply fixated on the possibilities of the new.

Only, in the case of the planet, the intention of the likes of Musk and Bezos is simply to sell tickets to space. But the effect of such previews don’t just influence our actions to affect our phone, but influence and magnify the damage we cause to the blue dot that’s home to a lot more than just us.

Here’s a very interesting article: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220905-is-the-world-overpopulated

#earth #population #ecologicalbreakdown #space #balance

Sewage Popsicles

Sewage Popsicles

Some Taiwanese art students recently created ice popsicles made purely out of sewage water. And the 100 varieties they showcased, reflects exactly how clean we’ve made our water bodies.

With all due credit for their noble effort to send a strong message across, globally, here’s what I don’t understand. While humans stay dangerously stupid when it comes to the environment, why does getting a preventive message across to need to get, ‘stupider’? I know, thick skull and all that, but increasingly complex ad storylines can still be justified. But this? This is adding insult to injury.

The ice popsicles are good. But creating what looks like plastic wrappers for the popsicles? Isn’t that like wasting water to tell people to save water. Or killing … hens, to tell people to go vegetarian. Something like that? Isn’t that somewhat counterproductive to the cause?

While it’s amusing when its not concerning, the last century has shown a clear trend between the evolution of ‘enforcing what is right’, and ‘communicating what is right, creatively’. A lot of things harmful to the environment are obvious, but we won’t do anything to change it. Instead, we’ll just make ourselves more immune to the obvious. Thus, giving an opportunity to ad folk, and art folk in this case, to work their brains and creativity to come up with increasingly ‘wow’ ways to transmit the same, age-old obvious warnings we should have paid heed to decades ago.

So much for the smartest species on the planet.

Nevertheless, all due credit to their effort at revealing the ugly effects of our lifestyle on the planet.

Here’s an article about the popsicles and the exercise itself [link].

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