Environmental Friendliness in Germany

The awareness of enviornmental issues is pretty high in Germany. Compared to most developed countries the environmental movement is strong here. Some of the things to notice immediately are:

• Separation of waste into 3 categories: Bio, recyclable and others
• Extra charge for usage of plastic bags in supermarkets and encouraging people to reuse
• High cost of petrol/diesel
• Bicycle friendly streets
• Excellent public transport system
• Various environmental activities like protecting forests, plantations, etc. Opposition to 3rd runway in Munich is a significant movement
• Existence of Bio-products

When one travels through Germany, it is impressive to see that there is almost no visible air pollution and most cities are extremely green.

Does this mean Germany is environmentally friendly? Sadly, the answer is no when one observes the life-style and the society closely. Among the developed nations, probably, Germany might be better off w.r.t. environmental awareness. However when it comes to practice the country is way behind. Here are some of the reasons:

Air pollution: It is true that visible air pollution is almost nil in Germany. This is not due to any technological breakthrough. It has happened mainly by shifting out all the polluting industries to the so-called third world countries and importing finished goods.

Greenery: Germany is a pretty green country through the year except during winter. However much of this is artificially maintained. In fact home and garden plants looks to be a billion Euro industry here. There is very little support available for indigenous growth and maintenance of plants and trees. Much of the emphasis is on the commercial aspect of buying and selling exotic plants.

Animals: It is shocking to see absence of animals in all the greenery visible in Germany. Cold weather is probably a partial reason for seeing less animals here compared to tropical regions. However a bigger reason is the attitude of people in general towards animals. Animals, unlike plants, like to be free. However people in general want animals to be under their control. This desire for control has lead to elimination of most of the carnivores. That leaves only herbivores. Due to absence of their respective predators, the herbivores have the ability to rapidly increase in numbers and cause wide spread destruction of vegetation. This requires again human and technological effort to keep this under-check!

Why don't people let the respective predators survive? Animals in general flourish best when they are least disturbed. Which means gardens, forests, mountains, lakes and rivers need to have less disturbance from humans to enable the animals to thrive. In cases where animals are closer to human dwellings they require compassion and an attitude of "live and let live" principle. In an industrialized society human interference with nature is strongest and absence of compassion is stark. This has lead to wiping out many of the animal species here.

Recycling: Recycling of products and packaging material is almost a myth. It is true that a small percentage of these materials do get recycled. However majority of the materials are either buried in some remote place or exported to some "poor" country, from where no one wants to hear any more news of the same.

Supermarkets and Superstores: Almost all end user purchases happen in supermarkets and super stores. It is interesting to see that most products sold in germany will just have a German address and may or may not contain the information on the country of origin. Majority of these products would have travelled thousands of kilometers before reaching the supermarket shelves. How on earth can a supermarket be environmentally friendly?

Bio-products: Bio products are a niche. It is possible that these products are grown and produced in the most enviornmentally friendly ways. However as long as they are priced higher they cannot replace the non-bio, environmentally harmful products!

Public transportation: Existence of good publich transportation is a big thing here. However as long as they are more expensive than travelling by car most people would prefer cars. As long as the government promotes car industry and as long as the car industry pumps millions of Euro in promotion of the same how can the lure of the car decrease. Public transportation will remain a nice-to-have back-up solution for the majority of the population.

In summary some of the key things required to put Germany on the path of enviornmentally friendly nations are:

• Introduce enviornment related topics early on in the schools
• Spread awareness on the dangers of widespread usage of technology
• Promote business models and lifestyles that cause less burden to the environment
• Protect natural habitats from human activities
• Encourage human activities which are in harmony with Nature
• Ban imports of any item from anywhere in the world that is produced or hunted in an unsustainable manner
• Export and import Knowledge and not machinery and industries:
• Stop pumping money into the so-called third-world countries in the form of "Aid" and instead spread education on enviornment and encourage local sustainable life-styles
• Make the reports on environmental damages caused by modern machinery and industry easily available to any country receiving the German technology.

Let the world remember Germany for its Environmental leadership! Let Germany become synonymous with Peace and Non-violence in the broadest sense.

Economic activity and Environmental Protection: two faces of the same coin

Economic activity has a direct impact on the environment. The more the economic activity the greater is the impact. Faster, a nation's GDP grows, faster is the degradation of the forests, wild animals, rivers, seas, climate and of course, traditional communities and societies. From the tme Europe, Australia, US and Japan started on the path of tremendous economic progress much of the natural habitats started vanishing in these countries. Whatever little is remaining is maintained with tremendous efforts. Same thing can be said about China and India. The economic growth of these countries are being achieved at a huge cost to the environment.

In today's world, higher standard of living is typically associated with material possession and consumption. What every individual purchases, consumes, uses and disposes is a function of affordability. The cost of a product ultimately decides what people buy and get used to. Similarly the number of things that people buy is a function of how much money they possess. As this pattern of material possession and enjoyment has a direct impact to the enviornment, environmental protection cannot happen without relooking at the underlying economics that dictates most of our daily life activities.

One cannot drive in a big expensive car everyday and work for environmental protection. How is the car manufactured? How much energy was spent for its manufacturing and how much is being spent for its usage? How much of natural habitats have been sacrificed for oil wells, transportation, factories, showrooms, roads and parking areas meant for the cars? How much does a car cost? How was the money for buying the car generated? How much enviornmental impact is associated with earning this money?

Car is just an example and probably the one that spikes out among others. Similar questions can be asked about every product that is used.

There are a lot of environmental movements towards conservation of forests and animals. There are a lot of voices being raised against global warming, melting of polar ice caps, pollution, etc. However why is it that the environmental degradation continues to worsen?

There are also many movements for promotion of environmentally friendly products. "Bio" products are a big fashion. However why is it that they have not become main stream products and occupy a niche in the society?

It boils down to underlying economics. Majority of the people buy and adopt things that are relatively cheaper among the available options. "Bio" products are expensive and hence they cannot become mainstream. Living an enviornmentally friendly life is more "expensive" than the norm in a developed society and hence it cannot become mainstream!

Thus environmental protection and economic policies have to go hand-in-hand in order to see any visible impact. As long as economic policies are dictated by only money and profits, it is unlikely that anything significant can change w.r.t. environment.

What is Violent about Industrial Societies?

Most of the industrial societies have a high value of human development index. Human development index as defined by United nations includes parameters like availability of education and career opportunities, healthy environment, justice to all and typically high standard of living. Such being the case, what can be wrong? Shouldn't every society emulate an industrial one? Doesn't industrial development foster peace and prosperity? Isn't it paradoxical to say that such a society promotoes violence?

Human development index, when separated from standard of living is probably an excellent measure of how advanced a society is. Equal opportunities for education and career development, justice for all and such other purely humanitarian parameters are in fact peace-inducing ones. Every country and every community needs to strive to improve these factors. The questionable part is "standard of living".

High standard of living is typically defined in a western measure of scale. This scale is set by modern economic theory and is purely from a material posession and comfort point of view. In this system, a family living a content and healthy life in some remote corner of Africa or India, with no money will be considered to be extremely poor, compared to a taxi driver in New York City, who is an immigrant and has no immediate family! In this scale, a country with rich Bio-diversity and not much of industries is considered backward and third world compared to a country with many factories, high trade and no natural habitats!

High standard of living, associated with material wealth and human-centric comfort comes from a huge cost to Nature. It requires high energy and natural resources for its sustenance. Where do these things come from? Without unleashing devastating destruction on nature, there is no technology that is existent today, that can generate the required energy and can acquire and transform the natural resources to maintain high standard of living.

As long as the flow of energy and natural resources are uninterrupted, everything seems to be peaceful. In such a case violence will be hidden. In most cases the violence happens so remotely that the population enjoying high standard of living could be completely unaware.

Energy that we use results in Carbon-compunds as output which gets into nature at a rate faster than natural cycle. Result, as we know today, is global warming. Global warming is not just about increasing temperature. It is about drastic changes in climate across the globe resulting in widespread damage to nature. Isn't that violent?

Industrialization has no regard for forests and wild animals? Forest cover is decreasing at an alarming rate world over. Animal species are going extinct. Isn't that violent?

Fish and other sea food are being used up at an unsustainable pace. Not only the number of fish is decreasing but also species are going extinct in sea. Sea life and river life are devastated by increased consumption of fish and other water-animals, oil spils, chemical dumps and by propellers of speed boats and large cargo and luxury liners. Isn't that violent?

In cases where certain nations or groups cause an interruption to the supply chain of the industrial society for whatever reasons, vaid or invalid, the nation or the group could be termed as terrorist and could be devasted by war. Couldn't that be the case with Afghanistan and Iraq? Isn't that violent?

Who sells guns to the thugs and the militants across the world and equip them with means for violence? Isn't selling of guns for such purposes violent?

Much of the pollution in advanced societies has decreased in the last few decades. Isn't that a miracle of science and technology, that while the pollution decreased the standard of living increased? Shouldn't humanity bask in this glorious achievement? However what happened in reality? Much of the polluting industries were shifted to the so-called "third world" countries. There has been no miracle in science and engineering that has happened to eliminate pollution. Even there is no sensible way to recycle or even safely dispose much of the products of today's industries. Most of these toxic wastes are dumped in "poor" countries. Isn't that a violent policy?

Above all, industrialization is seemingly leading the whole humanity and the entire bio-sphere to a dead-end? Isn't that violent?