Tuesday 16 August 2011

The Future ain't what it used to be

I became a teenager a few months before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. Then, although the future seemed limitless to us baby boomers, The Club of Rome had already published "The Limits to Growth", the following year Paul Ehrlich published "The Population Bomb", a few years later the West received its first oil shock, and unbeknown to almost everyone Roger Revelle, an American climatologist, was already measuring and correlating annual increases in atmospheric temperature and CO2 concentrations high above the mid-Pacific ocean. Before I'd left teenage-hood Jimmy Carter had solar panels installed on the White House's roof. Ronald Reagan had them removed. That symbolises for me the 30+ years we've lost in securing a well-resourced future for all the world's children. Now the future ain't what it used to be, and we are all in danger. I think it is now clear that my baby boomer generation, my parents' generation, and even you Gen Xers and Yers have taken resources from both our and the rest of the world's descendants to fund our own lifestyle. Ironically, however, we are learning that physical living standards, though important, do not by themselves a bright future make. Mahatma Gandhi rightly said that "The Rich must live more simply so that the Poor may simply live", but he of all people knew that "Man does not live by bread alone", and especially not by XBox 360s, Nike trainers and 64" Plasma flat screen TVs.