Cornucopia vs. Cassandra

            Since the population of the earth began to increase exponentially since the start of the industrial revolution, human beings have wondered whether or not there would be enough resources to sustain our existence. There are now two major viewpoints we have rallied around: the earth will run out of resources eventually, or the earth can sustain our growing population forever. These opinions are classified as cornucopia or cassandra. Cornucopia, as the name suggests, is the belief that the earth will always have enough resources to provide for humanity and the rest of nature. Cassandra conversely is the theory that our population will get so large that at some point the earth’s resources will be depleted. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, but you have to be able to back it up.

            In Greek mythology, the cornucopia was a magical horn that would magically and endlessly refill itself with food and drink. Today’s cornucopian believes that man’s advances in science and technology will allow us to engineer enough resources to ensure the survival of the human race, no matter how large it becomes. This is just an unsustainable viewpoint. We cannot create something from nothing, we would need to find these resources somewhere in the universe in order for us to take advantage of them. Technology will not be able to increase at the rate necessary for deep space long-term travel before the earth runs dry. America on the whole seems to share this opinion, because we use more goods than almost any other nation on this earth. We aren’t even the most populous country, why do we have permission to destroy the earth faster than anyone else? We view the environment as future-America’s problem, but if we can’t see it as now-America’s problem, future-America is going to be overwhelmed. Cornucopian's are thinking short term issues will be solved by technology in time.

            Cassandra’s have a much more realistic outlook on life and how it will be affected by the lack of resources available. We, yes I am a Cassandra, see the world as being a place inadequate to support the amount of humans here right now, let alone how many will be here in twenty years or so. China is seeing the world this way. They are now attempting to get rid of all the pollution in their atmosphere to make the world a better place for their future generations. The only problem here is that China cannot yet innovate very well. They can clone any existing industry nearly perfectly, but making one from scratch is difficult. China normally copies what we do, seeing as we are always innovating and making things better. Sadly America does not see the world as finite; therefore we do not have a large industry in place for caring for the environment. The largest country on earth can’t get good enough blueprints from us, so they have not yet been able to attempt to fix their environmental issues. We are thinking of the long term affects we will experience from overuse of the earth, cornucopian's are not in the slightest. Cassandra’s are stifled by not only the Cornucopian’s, but also by the conditions that ideology has created. 

            We all know what the earth looks like, all those famous blue marble pictures from the moon. Now imagine if that marble’s green patches all started to look brown and gray, lifeless and empty. And at the same time the oceans are getting darker, filled with pollution. Not a very nice image is it? Well it’s what’s going to happen eventually if we as a species cannot control our intake of limited resources. Our technological advancements will slow down the decay of the earth, but it is impossible for it to be stopped. We have to find a long-term solution right now, or our future generations will be cursed to live with our mistakes. And it's not just them, we are harming everything on this planet. Dogs, trees, cats, monkeys, humans, apples, dolphins, rats, germs, roses, and every other type of flora and fauna now has a decreased lifespan, species-wise, thanks to our misuse of the earth. Congrats.

References:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/23/AR2008052302456.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/opinion/19friedman.html

http://andrewsidea.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/walle1.png

http://www.sane.org.za/docs/views/showviews.asp?ID=115

http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/10/cornucopians-vs-malthusians.html