The Future Of Our World

I do this in order to keep from becoming depressed about the sorry-ass state of the world. All the hate. All the greed. All the ideological division. All the haves and have nots.

All of the aforementioned have brought the world to a kind of do or die place, specifically where it concerns the environment.

Because the simple fact is that without clean air to breathe and clean water to drink, nothing else will end up mattering.

Now I get that this can sound a bit alarmist, and that there are a whole lot of people out there who would think I’m full of crap for going on about this stuff.

These are the climate change deniers and pretty much anyone who makes their living from or owns some sort of smoke-stack industry.

And you know, I get that. Very few people, especially these days, want to rock the boat or mess with the status quo in any way.

But here’s the thing. The world is changing. Mainly because it has to.

Whole countries, by the dozen, are acknowledging the threat that climate change poses to our planet. And they are doing things about it.

They are switching from fossil fuels and coal to renewable sources for industrial energy, and they are offering incentives for their citizens to do the same.

They are banning tree harvesting and undertaking major reforestation programs to replenish the tree population. Because trees remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

There are scientists working to perfect machinery that removes CO2 from the atmosphere in large volumes and uses it for other processes that are non-polluting.

These are dozens of initiatives in various stages of development that are working to clean up the oceans and provide plastic that can be repurposed in any number of different ways. Recently I read that Adidas is making thousands of pair of shoes out of recycled plastic.

There are countries who have set dates for total bans on fossil fuel powered vehicles. And others that have totally converted their national energy grids to either wind or solar.

The biggest challenge to all of this is getting the larger industrialized countries like the US, Canada, Russia, Mexico, Argentina & Brazil to get on board.

And the biggest stumbling block these countries all face is simple: Market Capitalism. And the complete imbalance of wealth.

The heavily polluting industries like metal manufacturing, fossil fuel processing, coal and other mineral mining, the automotive industry, the fashion business etc, are mainly composed of companies that trade shares publicly.

The larger the company the more a part of the problem they are. The more of a problem they are the more it will cost them to reduce or eliminate the pollution they create.

But they have to fund this conversion though their profits, which lowers their stock price and makes them less appealing to investors and their customers.

It’s a vicious circle that’s designed to keep companies striving for more profitability at any cost. And being environmentally responsible is way dow their To Do list, if it’s even there at all.

But sadly, it is probably the single biggest contributing factor to environmental decimation.

And for many of these companies, it’s a hell of a lot easier and cheaper to funnel money into politics and buy the preservation of the status quo they need, than it would be to absorb the cost of re-tooling and conversion to renewables.

And that, in a nutshell, will dictate the future of the world.

It is a strange paradox there are very few aware people who don’t realize that the planet is being poisoned by these outmoded industrial process, but there are simply not enough business and industries who are willing to do anything about it.

jim out.

This is a story about one of the machines that had been developed to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. We need to actively encourage more of this kind of technology.

https://www.fastcompany.com/40421871/this-machine-just-started-sucking-co2-out-of-the-air-to-save-us-from-climate-change

Jim Murray is an experienced advertising and marketing professional and amateur photographer. He has run his own business (Onwords & Upwords), since 1989 after a 20 year career in Toronto as a senior creative person in major Canadian & international advertising agencies. He is a communication strategist, writer, art director, broadcast producer, mildly opinionated op/ed blogger & beBee Brand Ambassador.

You can follow Jim

On beBee: https://www.bebee.com/bee/jim-murray

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-murray-b8a3a4/

On Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jimbobmur

On Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/y97gxro