I recently saw a sharp little video that argued that our ability as a species to eliminate small pox is reason for us to be optimistic about our future.
The speaker shows us how much damage global warming will do to Bangladesh alone. He gives us a view of how devastating our actions will be to the earth and ultimately to ourselves.
He also shows us a host of communicable diseases that we have almost eliminated- such as Guinea Worm.
Now he is very right. Dedicated individuals eliminated small pox, and other dedicated individuals have nearly eliminated other communicable diseases such as guinea worm.
The question is not 'does this mean then that we are able to achieve this kind of effect upon problems such as global warming?'. The question is 'why did we put such effort towards this problem, and why have we failed to put that same effort towards problems such as overpopulation or global warming?'
I believe that the problem has to do with cultural mythology.
We seem to believe that the world was made for man, and man was made to conquer and rule the world. Because of this we will put a lot of effort into destroying enemies and competitors- like wolves, and Indians, diseases that hurt human beings (sorry, diseases that hurt domestic humans) and anything thing else that stands as opposition to our rule.
On other hand, global warming is just a side effect of ruling the world. Over population is our cultural destiny. We can talk about fighting these things, but to actually do something significant about them would require us to change our cultural mythology.
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