Die kinders maak vol
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
We all came to the Business Networking meeting today hoping too influence the people around us and create a lasting impression that will benefit our businesses and help create a healthy working relationship with others.
Remember that by coming to these meetings we are investing in our futures.
For those of you who have children, for those who still wish to have children and those who are actively working towards forming a family, I’m sure that you will all do what ever it takes to protect them from any negative influences.
So why is it that in South Africa we are allowing our children’s future to be buried in a very shallow, cluttered, environmentally suffocated grave?
Can we continue NOT investing in the steps that will not create a working symbiotic relationship with our natural environment?
Should we continue being naïve to the fact that our healthy, our happiness and our future all rely on the health of the natural environment?
They say you are what you eat. Consider what will happen once all our crops and rivers dry up, if we pull all the fish from the seas and cut down all our trees.
Through the completion of a successful World Cup South Africa just proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that we have the ability to pull off the greatest in the world. Stories of a safe and clean South Africa were highlighted in newspapers around the world.
But guess what. We paid for it.
South Africa invested billions into infrastructure because we saw the long-term benefits. And who wouldn’t pay a little extra to keep the dreams of a safe and clean South Africa alive?
Think of our children’s future as a World Cup event. Are we investing now to ensure their safe and clean future?
Over the past 200 years, the human race has experienced 2 major global revolutions. The Industrial Revolution and the Information Technology (IT) Revolution.
The Industrial Revolution introduced the human race to the working machine, created to take over humans need to work giving us more time to do what we want therefore making us happier. The Introduction of the Information Technology help promise of access to more information, making us wiser and therefore happier.
Two unmistakable benchmarks in the evolution of our complex societies but with 2 unmistakable short comings.
These new machines are made from and consume large amounts of depleting natural resources that will never replenish themselves, while producing large amount of by-product that we call “waste”.
In the past few years we have entered into a new Revolution, with equal economic benefit as the previous Revolutions but that actually give back to the environment instead of exploiting it. A sustainable Revolution that promises to improve our health and happiness.
I recently heard that 2 men from Germany took a 24 hour flight in a plane that was powered only by solar power.
So why is South Africa still considering building nuclear power stations when we have an abundance of possible natural energy?
Why are we still moving towards digging septic holes in the ground in order to hide our tons of consumer waste as a quick fix?
Cape Town dumps 5000- 6000 tons of waste into the earth everyday.
With newly proposed extensions on current landfill sites, and talk of excavating new landfill sites, the cost to have your bin removed and dumped will rise by about R13.
How many realize that first piece of plastic we ever came across is likely still on this earth and will still be here after we pass.
No matter how many times we point a finger a the large corporations at the forefront of deforestation, abusing our seas, causing devastating oil spills that last months and dumping toxic waste while incapably supplying our country with electricity, we will always have 4 fingers pointing back at us.
The key to Pandora’s box of solutions lay in our ability to acknowledge our wastefully habits, actively make the small adjustments to lesson our addiction and use our influence to inspire change in our own circles.
We shouldn’t lack the confidence to think that our individual contribution cant initiate change. We’re selfish to believe that it’s too late to adjust, leaving our children to come up with the solutions for themselves.
Global warming and climate change will not discriminate between colour, social or financial status, age, religion or sexual preference.
A drought does not consider if you’re Jewish or Catholic. Floods will not show the slightest sense of remorse, slowing down to a trickle because your 3 or 83.
They say Rome wasn’t built in a day. in order to create a sustainable economic and environmental future for our children it’s going to take every individuals conscious step.
