{"title":"The greatest challenges that we face","authors":"P. Townsend","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192857477.003.0020","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"We tend to live in the present, both personally and politically, and this inhibits serious actions that involve the long-term future, unless one can see political or commercial advantage. Whilst there are claims that we are destroying the planet and its resources (a truly significant imperfection), the reality is that there is inadequate action to seriously address these issues. Not least is that over the last century population has increased eightfold by adding around a billion people every decade. This is unsustainable, and it should be an absolute key concern of all of us. The fact that it opens commercial markets, and profits, means we ignore the increase, although over two more generations we will have passed the window of opportunity to salvage humanity. This is an imperfection on the ultimate scale.","PeriodicalId":180044,"journal":{"name":"The Power of Imperfections","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2022-01-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"The Power of Imperfections","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192857477.003.0020","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We tend to live in the present, both personally and politically, and this inhibits serious actions that involve the long-term future, unless one can see political or commercial advantage. Whilst there are claims that we are destroying the planet and its resources (a truly significant imperfection), the reality is that there is inadequate action to seriously address these issues. Not least is that over the last century population has increased eightfold by adding around a billion people every decade. This is unsustainable, and it should be an absolute key concern of all of us. The fact that it opens commercial markets, and profits, means we ignore the increase, although over two more generations we will have passed the window of opportunity to salvage humanity. This is an imperfection on the ultimate scale.