The Environment - the UK and Beyond - A Short Essay

Attributed to an ancient Indian proverb, "Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children."

I don't know whether the attribution of this statement is correct, but I think we can say that all life on earth is dependent upon the resources available – food, water, safe places to sleep and breed, for example.  In a system that is sustainable, the resources, though constantly being used, are, nevertheless replenished for the next generation.  If ever we get to a situation where resources are used faster than they are replenished, it will, over some period of time, become necessary to switch to alternative resources, if there are any available, or die.  With a box of twenty cakes, I can give one to each of twenty people, or two to each of ten, but once they are gone, they are gone, unless, of course, I have the resources to either bake some more or visit the local bakery to buy a new supply.

Earth itself is rather like my box that held the cakes, but on a much larger scale and holding much, much more than just a few cakes.  What do we get from the earth?  Everything!  Not only that, but we are in competition with myriads of other organisms, all wanting a piece of the resources provided by our home planet.  Is this an impossible position to be in?  Well, yes  and no.  Of course, it can be, but it doesn't have to be that way – we have choices, though that isn't always the case for the organisms with which we share this place.  Perhaps there's a clue there – sharing, are we any good at it?  When offering my box of twenty cakes, one person takes five, do I then allow all to take so many?  If I do, of course, there will only be enough to satisfy the demands (or greed?) of four people.  So it is with the earth's resources.

A commercial fishing captain wants to maximise the catch in order to maximise the profit realised – the maximum possible haul of fish would be every catchable fish in the sea – but where will the profit come from next year?  It is not in the long-term interests of the fishing captain and crew to take all possible fish – to do so would mean the certain demise of that particular business.  To keep going, there must be fish to catch next year, the year after that and long into the future.  In other words, this fishing business must be sustainable.  To achieve this, only enough fish are taken to satisfy a reasonable profit while allowing sufficient to breed and produce new stocks for future fishing seasons.

Fish have the capacity to breed and a fish like the cod can produce very many new fish in a fairly short period of time so long as predation is not too heavy.  The story is somewhat different with non-biological, or abiotic, resources, many of which are not replaced quite so quickly.  Of course, the wind as an abiotic resource does come and go, but others, such as oil, coal and gas, when taken from the ground, could so easily become exhausted and unavailable to future generations.  This idea is not new, but it must be kept in mind that these resources can, as I have said before, become exhausted in three main ways – economically, technologically or physically.  The first happens when the resources are still there but it would be too costly to extract, the second if too difficult with present technology (this is obviously tied up with the first).  Of course, if people are willing to pay more or some technology comes along that improves the efficiency of extraction, it may be possible to get a bit more – until the next hurdle is reached when it is either completely exhausted or there are economic or technological barriers preventing extraction.  Naturally, when it is physically exhausted, it has gone completely.