ENG 120
9/19/2013
Change for a Better Good
Destruction of earth is inevitable if the people of developed countries continue to live as they do. In “The Futility of Global Thinking” Wendell Berry asserts if solutions are not found to environmental problems, nature will destroy the human environment. The realization must be made; the liability of these problems does not exclusively lie in the hands of industrial corporations, but on those of every person. People are allowing the destruction of the environment with excessive consumer demands and convenience, which forces industries to produce more products at a higher rate. People need to change how they live and stop demanding such high productivity. As Berry suggests, the solution to the large problems are found in the smaller problems.
Developed countries are at the cause of the large scale environmental problems. The progression of countries increases pollutants, as well as the usage of natural resources. As a precise country advances in the world’s economy, the standards of living within that country begin to grow. Less developed countries do contribute to environmental problems, but to a much smaller degree. Saying that undeveloped countries contribute to environmental problems as much as developed countries would imply less developed countries are as industrialized as developed countries, by definition this is not true. Take energy usage for example, Berry states, “It was not just the greed of corporate shareholders and the hubris of corporate executives that put the fate of Prince William Sound into one ship; it was also our demand that energy be cheap and ‘plentiful.” Hence; the higher the rate of energy used, the higher amount of pollutants produced and natural resources used, which in turn, creates more environmental problems. The correlation can be made, that developed countries do create more environmental problems than less developed countries. However, this does not...