Opinion Article on the Environment

Our unpayable debt to the environment

Throughout more than two hundred years of industrialization, humanity has contracted a debt with the environment that gave birth to it: we have taken materials Y substances at our whim, we have modified them and then thrown away without caring how or how long it takes the nature to regain its balance, nor what may be the long-term consequences of our models of production. And as everyone knows by now, the payment date may be near.

In nature, as in economy, resources are finite and scarce. There are almost none that we can use indiscriminately and eternally, or at least not without having to face certain types of unforeseeable consequences. This is because the physical, chemical and biological system that sustains the environment is extremely complex, too complex for we can aspire to understand it right away, and yet that does not prevent us from exploiting it as if from an endless gold mine treat. And today, the currency of such a loan is called energy.

Energy, as we know, is constant in the universe. It cannot be created or destroyed, but it can be transmitted and transformed. And the latter is what we have learned best to do with the passing of time, especially when it comes to generating electric power, which consume all our devices and allow us to sustain a model of life. We use this energy to produce, to cool or heat our homes, to light our nights and entertain our free time, without being too clear about where it comes from and how much it costs get it.

There is, it is important to know, no clean and 100% ecological way of obtaining energy. All the methods that we know so far have what we might think of as side effects, although some are much more pernicious on a large scale than others. The combustion of fossil substances, for example, is the most efficient of all the ways we know of obtaining energy, but it is also the most expensive, both in its extraction, processing and use.

Other methods, such as wind power, have a tremendous impact on the local fauna and generate annoying noise for miles around, while the hydroelectric power devastates aquatic ecosystems and requires the modification of watercourses. Nothing is 100% green.

The truth is that everything on the planet is connected, and the use of a resource must be considered a loan: we will have to pay for it later in some way. It may not be us directly, but other species in our place, but other species depend on them. species and so on, until it is the turn of our domino to fall.

It is not explained, then, that they are the same economic sectors that defend austerity and that insist that nothing is free, those who seek to turn a blind eye to our debt environmental. Either their theoretical convictions aren't really that strong, or they have a pretty magical idea of ​​how nature works. Two centuries of pouring gases into the atmosphere inevitably has consequences. Two centuries of destruction of the plant biome and impoverishment of the biodiversity It obviously has consequences. And those who cause these phenomena will be the ones who must bear the bill: us, or our future generations.

So, if we understand as something immoral to indebt a country for several generations, how can we not think in the same way about our growing and unpayable ecological debt with the environment? Are we not pawning the future of our species to enrich a few today? Perhaps the time has come for ecological austerity. And as always happens in crisis scenarios, the fight will be to determine who should pay which percentages Of the debt. It is time to start thinking about these matters.

References:

• "Opinion journalism" in Wikipedia.
• "Natural environment"in Wikipedia.
• “Environment (biology)”in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.

What is an opinion piece?

A opinion piece is a type of journalistic writing, of common appearance in the written press, in which the points of view and considerations of an author are expressed signatory, who is usually an individual with authority on the matter or whose perspective is valued within the society.

Opinion articles are of a subjective, personal and argumentative nature, since in them the author seeks promote your point of view among readers, that is, convince them to interpret the reality of it manner.

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