Global warming

According to Marianne Thieme and Ewald van Engelen, global warming is the effect of an increasign conflict between economical growth and ecological integrity, as they state in their book 'De kanarie in de kolenmijn'. And for me, this captures the deepest essence of the problem I have ever come across. The beauty of it, is that it doesn't judge the outcome, while personificating it. Thereby shifting this complexy ecological and political debate into someting graspable for all. Something personal. It is now become an ethical dillemma. And as I alway say, ethics is a folk sport.

However this conflict between economical growth and ecological integrity plays at a whole other level. It resides in socety, rather than inside an individual. And jet, I would argue that the dynamics are the same, only the scope differs.

Let us look at an example. We all know the marshmallow test. An infant that gets to choose between one marshmellow now, or 2 in the near future. Children who are able to wait for that second marshmellow, turn out to be more succesfull in their carreer than the kids that go for the short term sattisfaction of only one marshmellow. To enlange the scale of the marshmellow test, let us now look at using fossil fuels. Socety can choose between short term economcal growth by using fossil now, or the long term satisfaction of a sustainable economy in the near future. Now comparing society with a kid might be a bit silly of me. Let us rather take an addict. The addict time after time again chooses short term satisfaction over a long term sustainable way of living. I would say that society is addicted to economical growth by using fossil fuels. Every time we burn a gallon of gas to achieve something, we choose the short term satisfaction of achieving a task over the sustainable way of achieving that same task in the near future with means that leave the integrity of the ecology intact. An addicted person is in general not a fancied person. The same can be said for society. An addicted society is not a fancied society. 

That being said, how about rehab?