BY MIKE MAGEE
A number of weeks in the past New York Occasions columnist Tom Friedman wrote, “We Are Opening The Lid On Two Giant Pandoras Boxes.” He was referring to 1) synthetic Intelligence (AI) which most agree has the potential to go horribly fallacious except fastidiously regulated, and a couple of) world warming resulting in water mediated flooding, drought, and huge human and planetary destruction.
Friedman argues that we should settle for the danger of pursuing one (speedy fireplace progress in AI) to probably uncover an answer to the opposite. However positioning science as savior fairly misses the purpose that it’s human conduct (a mixture of greed and willful ignorance), slightly than lack of scientific acumen, that has positioned our planet and her inhabitants in danger.
The brief and long run results of fossil fuels and carbonization of the environment have been properly understood earlier than Al Gore took “An Inconvenient Truth” on the street in 2006. So have been the confounding elements together with inhabitants development, urbanization, and floor water degradation.
After I first printed “Healthy Waters,” the worldwide inhabitants was 6.5 billion with 49% city, largely located on coastal plains. It’s now 8 billion with 57% city and slated to succeed in 8.5 billion by 2030 with 63% city. 552 cities across the globe now include populations exceeding 1 million residents.
Below supreme circumstances, this city migration might serve our human populations with jobs, clear air and water, transportation, housing and schooling, well being care, security and safety. With out funding nonetheless, this could possibly be a demise lure.
Clear, secure water is prime to sustaining the well being and productiveness of those metropolis dwellers. Funding in water infrastructure, in keeping with the OCED, delivers a 3 to 1 return on investment. So the cash must be straightforward to search out. Nevertheless it’s not. And it’s not for a scarcity of science or know-how. It is a matter of priorities. For instance, Americans handle to search out 16 billion a year to spend on bottled water, nearly all the time no higher, and sometimes worse, than widespread faucet water.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, in her novel “Braiding Sweetgrass,” writes: “Amongst our Potawatomi individuals, girls are the Keepers of Water. We supply the sacred water to ceremonies and act on its behalf. ‘Girls have a pure bond with water, as a result of we’re each life bearers,’ my sister mentioned. ‘We supply our infants in inner ponds they usually come forth into the world on a wave of water. It’s our accountability to safeguard the water for all our relationships.’”
Relating to planetary well being, that’s the form of respect, widespread sense, and creativeness we have to yield faster and higher outcomes than AI. Planetary well being requires properly ordered priorities and shifts in human conduct just like the current development away from enormous, harmful and disruptive hydroelectric power initiatives just like the Three Gorges Dam in China. People now depend on hydroelectric initiatives for 16% of the world’s energy. That’s good in that it’s renewable and lowers carbon emissions. However its’ impact on the surroundings, displacing people and animals with dam building, and taking part in a job in catastrophic disasters when dams fail, has drawn criticism.
In response, a easy answer known as “pumped storage” is quickly supplanting enormous dam initiatives. The system is easy – two reservoirs, one excessive and one low. When power use is low, water is pumped into the higher reservoir. When demand is excessive, water is allowed to stream into the decrease reservoir by way of generators that generate wanted power. Locations like China, which has been all in on hydropower, has switched 80% of their future initiatives to “pumped storage” as a result of it’s quick, secure and efficient, and may “present a versatile backup for wind and photo voltaic.” The important thing perception is that the reservoir system acts as a battery, storing potential power able to go, on demand, with out including the extra price of storage.
Knee-jerk over reliance on scientific inventiveness lets us all off the hook. Earlier than we give a inexperienced gentle to the following batch of dot-come gazillionaires, we’d be good to ask two questions: What is smart? and What’s finest for the well being of all People?
In equity to Tom Friedman, he warns about placing all our eggs within the scientific basket with out tightening laws that help “scaled sustainable values.” But his last phrases do little to encourage confidence primarily based on previous historical past and efficiency. As he places it, “God save us if we purchase godlike powers to half the Pink Sea however fail to scale the Ten Commandments.”
Mike Magee MD is a Medical Historian and writer of “CODE BLUE: Inside the Medical-Industrial Complex.”
