Globalization and the Environment

"We are in the age of globalization." It is the new paradigm. Global trade, global communication, global culture, global threats and global rewards, global environmental crisis.

Our planet's population is soaring. That population's demands on the global environment are exponentially expanding.

The hideous debris swept to sea by last Spring's tsunami in Japan is heading toward the Americas. The radiation emitted by the nuclear disaster caused by that tsunami probably hit our shores months ago. Workers toil under slavish conditions in China, India and other developing countries to supply North America and other "first world" nations with the wonders designed by Apple Computer, Microsoft and a myriad of other multinational corporations.

The ancient mountains and rich habitats of West Virginia and Kentucky are crushed into oblivion to feed our nation's hunger for cheap energy. The water supplies of continents are sacrificed to agribusiness, energy development and industrial waste to feed, shelter and indulge the hungry consumers of nations rich and poor.

Wars are waged to procure declining supplies of oil. Wars are waged to procure productive land and valuable mineral resources. Melting icecaps raise ocean levels and swamp low-lying land masses, displacing their occupants. Carbon emissions from every country on the globe spew into the already saturated atmosphere. Free market capitalism, the one true religion of the twenty-first century, demands ever increasing levels of consumption of the planet's finite resources for throw-away products that clog landfills and create continental-sized oceanic dead zones.

It's every country and man for himself out there as the human race rushes toward its terrifying confrontation with the inevitable results of debasing its environment on a global scale.

If we must have globalization, surely global regulation in our specie's self interest might be a good idea? Screw nationalistic jingoism if the price is survival.