Everything's Connected

Speth’s 6 transitions, which he outlines in his 8th chapter entitled “Attacking the Root Causes,”
causes one to ponder how the problems we are facing as a world today are all really connected and need to be approached as one issue. Population control, alternative fuel research, environmentally honest pricing, and eliminating mass poverty all, in some way, affect the other and it is certainly a daunting task to fix them all.
This being said, I believe one of the most pressing, and frightening problem we face today is the population. It is increasingly evident that we are reaching the earth’s carrying capacity and without change our planet will be unable to sustain us. The growing population will also exacerbate many of the other environmental problems we face, seemingly making it impossible to better our predicament. The road of empowering women does seem to provide hope that we can get out population under control. The continued education of developing nations about contraception and healthy sexual practices is a necessary step to ensure the progress noted by Speth does not reverse itself.
Creating environmentally honest prices is a great way to show the common citizen the environmental impact of the products they buy. People think with their wallets, and if someone has to pay $15 for a can of Lysol Disinfectant aerosol spray they may think twice and go with a product that is more environmentally friendly, and all the more important, cheaper. Same can go for gas guzzling cars. Families that don’t need that SUV will choose the more efficient sedan or hybrid if it costs them several thousand dollars less.
Moving from the previous example, the general population needs to have a basic education of environmental issues and practices. This is going to be the single most important aspect of the fight for the environment. Many humans, especially those pesky American ones, have grown accustomed to a comfortable lifestyle and enjoy not thinking about how their situation may very well drastically change in the near future. Making this change real for the common man will help to mobilize the public to call for environmental reform. Those who do have a base knowledge of environmental issues need to be vigilant in their pursuit of what is truly “green.” Businesses today all want to be “green” companies and many will lie to be considered so. Take ethanol for instance, there was a massive marketing campaign by fuel companies to promote it as an environmentally friendly product when in reality fuel derived from oil is the greener route. We cannot be accepting when companies tells us about their new green product or practices and must demand the truth.