Betraying Future Generations

1626: 

Edited by CJ Tointon

I've just watched a programme on TV predicting two main things: a huge increase in the world's population and a huge decrease in food and water supplies. The omnivorous lifestyle adopted by almost every human on the planet lays ever greater strain on the planet's ability to produce enough food and water to sustain this way of life.

In this TV programme, it was shown that educated women (in this case in India) with their greater access to birth control, would choose to have only two children at most. With our present medical knowledge of how to avoid the main childhood killer diseases, there's no longer any reason to be producing large families. This would prove to be a breakthrough in the problem of world overpopulation. With regard to keeping people fed, it was shown that food technology and water conservation could bring about more food with less waste of water.

But despite this great leap forward in knowledge, the main causes of the present difficulties facing the planet are nevertheless not being addressed. It seems that humans will 'fiddle at the edges', but never fully face up to their responsibilities for bringing about a permanent solution - namely, the adoption of plant-based food regimes.

Individual omnivores are not all stupid, and yet, collectively, they don't seem to understand how wasteful it is to use up valuable plant food and water to feed animals to provide meat and by-products - when none of it is necessary! Nor do they realise just how much animal farming contributes to the production of vast quantities of greenhouse gases.

And then there's today's ethical questions which future generations will probably not understand, namely: why we practised the cruelty of farming animals, why we were so wasteful, why we didn't adopt such obvious solutions to our feeding problems when we had the knowledge and (most importantly) why there was such a conspiracy of silence about it all! They will surely have to conclude that the humans of today were only willing to talk about solutions, not actually implement them. 

It seems we humans are incapable of facing the truth about cruelty and waste. We seem concerned only with our own 'present' - not with the future. After all, we won't be around to witness the consequences of today's lack of concern. It's evident that we like to speak brave words to impress future generations, but our sophisticated speeches are a sham. We are, in fact, still the same old primitive and self-centred humans we always were.

Even if the planet can maintain a zero increase in population growth, there is no way we can sustain our present seven billion humans on an omnivorous diet without causing harm to the planet and human health - not to mention the damage done to the animal population! The solution is simple; but there's a reluctance to 'bite the bullet'. If we can see the obscenity of treating sentient animals like food-producing machines, then perhaps the worse obscenity is our avoidance of the obvious alternatives.

Once we can acknowledge the simplest of solutions - using plant-based foods where less water is wasted and animals are not exploited - we won't need to hide behind the "I'm alright Jack" attitude. If we shirk this responsibility, we doom future generations to sickness and starvation.