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The 21st Century Environmental Revolution:A Comprehensive Strategy for Conservation,
Global Warming, and the Environment / The Fourth Wave
By Mark C. Henderson
Introduction
Finally, we are seeing some action on the environment. Unfortunately, it comes after disaster has hit and people have died. Hurricane Katrina and the late summer 2005 New Orleans flooding was a wakeup call for many. Today, governments are increasingly moving towards curtailing greenhouse gases in an attempt to slow down global warming. If we are going to wait until disaster hits before acting, then people are going to die each time. We need to be smarter.
Environmental issues are much bigger than global warming alone. The number of toxic chemicals and carcinogens in our own body tissues is simply shocking. World resources such as the oceans' fisheries are beginning to be degraded and eroded by toxic compounds. The Kyoto Accord on greenhouse gases is much too small and narrow in focus to address today's environmental challenges with any effectiveness. We need to look at much more profound changes and contemplate a much larger scale of action. We need to go to the next step. This is what this book is about.
Decades ago, Alvin Toffler wrote about three waves of change that swept over the world, transforming societies on a massive scale in the process. This is the beginning of a new one: the Fourth Wave.
Most of us woke up this morning assuming that the sun would rise. Beyond that little can actually be assumed. We know far less than we think about what really lies ahead of us. A decade ago, global warming was considered by many but a theory, the fancy of some scientist's imagination. Now, mounting evidence suggests that it has already become reality, one that we will have to live with for decades. That is, assuming we are eventually able to reverse course.
Many view the 20th century as a time of progress. There has certainly been a staggering number of technological advances during that period. From a social and economic point of view, many positive developments have also occurred. However, we have failed to address several of the problems that plagued societies during that period. Many could have been solved a decade or more ago given enough commitment.
We have made some progress in terms of world peace, but we have also developed weapons of mass destruction capable of wiping out life on the entire planet multiple times as if one was not enough. Not enough headway has been made in the fight against unemployment, social disparities, and world poverty given the vast increase in wealth we saw in the second half of the century. Even the richest countries in the world have failed at eradicating homelessness and dire poverty on their own streets.
In a relatively short period of industrialization, we have succeeded in producing a tremendous amount of pollution, some of which reaching just about everywhere including Antarctica, some of which lasting for extremely long periods of time.
There is a problem with the current economic system, at least with the way it is set up. To create jobs, we need to raise consumption levels. However, this also means increasing pollution and using up resources. China and India are viewed as vast consumer markets with a huge potential for job creation. But few speak of the effects that such massive consumption would have on the environment and the depletion of non-renewable resources.
Two things are increasingly becoming clear. Firstly, we cannot continue down the path we are currently on. Our impact on the planet is simply too devastating. Fundamental changes to the economic system have to occur. Secondly, our destructive powers have significantly grown in the last 100 years. That trend is accelerating as world production increases and mass markets are only getting better. At the beginning of the 20th century, we did not have the technology to cause a lot of damage. Today, we have our pick of ways to destroy ourselves and the planet: weapons of mass destruction, pollution, the total depletion of essential non-renewable resources, etc.
Looking AheadThere is much currently going on in the world, a lot of which will determine the kind future we move into. So far, world development has largely been determined by technological waves. However, social factors have also played an important part. One may think, for example, of the way democracy has fashioned modern societies or the impact of the human rights movement. In the current geopolitical chaos, the world may make a turn for the better or the worse. The stakes are high.
We have reached a point in history where things cannot continue to go on the way they have in the past. There can be good times ahead even for those currently at the top, but these will come at a price. History has shown many an empire crumbling because of their inability to shift their thinking, to challenge fundamental assumptions when the time had come. In the years ahead, countries will have to decide whether to maintain the status quo and move towards decline and disaster or to challenge their assumptions and trade a little pain now for a much brighter future.
There is generally a lot of resistance to new ideas, and things usually change very slowly. This is often for the better, preventing society from hastily going down disastrous paths. However, we do not have the luxury of time on many environmental issues—unless, that is, we don’t care about our children, grandchildren, and future generations. This is the time for bold actions and audacity, not for endless denials and delaying tactics.
Many of us are starting to feel that the political agenda has plateaued. Few new and creative ideas have occurred in the last 20 years. The Fourth Wave will bring many fresh ideas and challenge us into reassessing the past and defining a new agenda for the future.
The Fourth WaveThe 21st Century Environmental Revolution is the first book of a series dealing with contemporary issues. Its first part provides a historical perspective on current social and economic issues by going back in time through Toffler's first three waves of change. It makes the case that a fourth one is about to hit and transform society and the world we live in faster and more fundamentally than anyone expected.
The second part of the book deals with the usual spectrum of environmental issues but also the question of non-renewable resource use.
The third part focuses on what lies ahead of us: an environmental revolution early in this century. It lays out a market-based environmental strategy that would make possible change on a large scale and over a relatively short period of time.
As this book targets a broad audience, some readers will have difficulty with a few sections that are more complex. Feel free to jump to the following heading if need be. Others will find some parts too easy or general in scope. If your knowledge of the environment is good, just read selectively through those. The new strategy begins at chapter 6.
This book puts together a new environmental strategy which is capable of being implemented on a large scale. It is a piece of research written in easy to understand language and in a format interesting for everybody. As a result, more people can be reached and greater political support gained.
The environmental approach proposed in this book could take us out of the destructiveness of the 20th century into a bright new future. It would bring up new vistas of hope and could transform the world in ways nobody could have anticipated only a short time ago.
Welcome to the Fourth Wave.
Copyright Waves of the Future, © 2008.
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