I have a new column up today on OnlySky. It’s about a huge, important task that lies ahead for us: the era of cleanup.
Humans have prospered, but we’ve trashed the planet to do it. Fossil fuels have choked the atmosphere; capitalism has polluted the oceans with plastic junk; suburban sprawl has bulldozed ecosystems. At long last, we’re coming around to recognizing the price of our folly. In the future, green energy and other innovations will allow us to power our civilization with less incidental harm. But what about the harm we’ve already done? How can we make amends?
Read the excerpt below, then click through to see the full piece. This column requires membership to read, but you can sign up for free. (Paid members of OnlySky get some extra perks, like a subscriber-only newsletter and the ability to post comments.)
For the past eight decades or so, the world has enjoyed relative peace and relative prosperity. Since the end of the Cold War, America has been the unchallenged superpower presiding over a global order of its choosing. It’s been a neoliberal’s dream. Nations signed free-trade pacts, and goods and jobs flowed freely across borders. Industry flourished, damming rivers, building cities in deserts, turning prairies into megafarms and rainforests into cattle ranches. Skyscrapers rose, markets boomed, and air travel and the internet knit distant places together and flattened the world.
…For a while, we prospered with no thought to when the bill would come due. But that time is drawing to an end, as humanity belatedly realizes the magnitude of its folly.
A monumental task lies ahead of us. It’s like waking up in a trashed house the morning after a blowout party. We’ve had our fun. It’s time to clean up.
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