A week or so ago, we saw a mediocre movie called 'The Eleventh Hour'. However, it was an amazing experience. The local environment protection society had managed to organise a special showing of the movie with a bonus - the presence of the Federal Minister for Sustainable Development Andrew McNamara and a discussion session after the movie where a lot of Govt policies were explained.
The movie was well made and drove home a few points which we all take for granted. Our dependence on oil and it's by-products.
Right from petrol to fertilizers to plastics and vaseline (ehem ehem), most of our luxuries are derived from petroleum. Unfortunately, there isn't an endless supply of petroleum, and neither can it be regenerated.
So we are now left in a situation where we are rapidly consuming petroleum and the supplies are dwindling quickly. Most people claim that at today's rate of extraction, there will be enough to last the world for the next hundred years or more. What they don't realise is that India and China will demand more and more and this will result in a situation where we might face a fuel crisis within the next 50 years.
Still unclear? Let's start from the basics.
Till a few hundred years ago, the population of humans on Earth was about half a billion. The population had grown slowly over tens of thousands of years and had pretty much stabilised at that level.
Then, we had the industrial revolution, fuelled initially by coal and then by petroleum. We became more efficient in exploiting nature, producing food, clothes and medicines. Life expectancies increased and humankind prospered. We bred. And we bred like there was no tomorrow. As of today, there are about six billion of us - a 12 fold increase in a mere 200 years. By 2050, there will be close to nine billion of us.
Now here's the catch. By 2050, petroleum will be a scarce resource. This means that fertilizers will be expensive. Farming for food will be expensive. Moreover, transport of food will be expensive. This means that our basic necessity of food will be beyond the purchase capacity of most people.
We are talking about a very real possibility of global starvation less than 40 years from now. Now add that with changing weather patterns, more drought like conditions or more flooding and we will all end up with no-win situation.
Our parents generation enjoyed the fruits of nature and ate the fruit and cut the trees. We have eaten everything else and instead of planting more trees, we have converted this land into a wasteland. Our children will pay for all this.
A hundred years from now, history will look upon us and equate all of us with Marie Anoinette - who asked the starving farmers to eat cake - and lost her head (literally) in the process. We are doing the same thing. We are fighting each other over religion and not seeing that the only thing that keeps us safe in this harsh universe - our planet - is the very thing we are destroying.
The movie was well made and drove home a few points which we all take for granted. Our dependence on oil and it's by-products.
Right from petrol to fertilizers to plastics and vaseline (ehem ehem), most of our luxuries are derived from petroleum. Unfortunately, there isn't an endless supply of petroleum, and neither can it be regenerated.
So we are now left in a situation where we are rapidly consuming petroleum and the supplies are dwindling quickly. Most people claim that at today's rate of extraction, there will be enough to last the world for the next hundred years or more. What they don't realise is that India and China will demand more and more and this will result in a situation where we might face a fuel crisis within the next 50 years.
Still unclear? Let's start from the basics.
Till a few hundred years ago, the population of humans on Earth was about half a billion. The population had grown slowly over tens of thousands of years and had pretty much stabilised at that level.
Then, we had the industrial revolution, fuelled initially by coal and then by petroleum. We became more efficient in exploiting nature, producing food, clothes and medicines. Life expectancies increased and humankind prospered. We bred. And we bred like there was no tomorrow. As of today, there are about six billion of us - a 12 fold increase in a mere 200 years. By 2050, there will be close to nine billion of us.
Now here's the catch. By 2050, petroleum will be a scarce resource. This means that fertilizers will be expensive. Farming for food will be expensive. Moreover, transport of food will be expensive. This means that our basic necessity of food will be beyond the purchase capacity of most people.
We are talking about a very real possibility of global starvation less than 40 years from now. Now add that with changing weather patterns, more drought like conditions or more flooding and we will all end up with no-win situation.
Our parents generation enjoyed the fruits of nature and ate the fruit and cut the trees. We have eaten everything else and instead of planting more trees, we have converted this land into a wasteland. Our children will pay for all this.
A hundred years from now, history will look upon us and equate all of us with Marie Anoinette - who asked the starving farmers to eat cake - and lost her head (literally) in the process. We are doing the same thing. We are fighting each other over religion and not seeing that the only thing that keeps us safe in this harsh universe - our planet - is the very thing we are destroying.
