June 5 is celebrated as World Environment Day, commemorating the date of the first United Nations Conference on the Environment in Stockholm. This is the United Nations flagship day to promote global environmental awareness and action.
World Environment Day
This date is a good opportunity to be aware of how damaging we are, and that we must reduce our annual greenhouse gas emissions. By 2030 if we are to keep global warming below 1.5°C. Failure to achieve this goal will have negative consequences for our natural environment and society.
Despite some skeptics, the scientific society agrees that this increase in temperature is mainly due to human activity, and if we see how greenhouse gas emissions have increased since the first industrial revolution, it is evident to relate technological advances with them.
Since humans discovered agriculture and livestock, they began to shape nature and the environment to their liking, in order to meet their needs.
Unfortunately today we know that these actions and technological advances have been leaving an increasingly important footprint on our environment, to the point of putting us in a limited situation in which we must take action to curb these negative impacts. One is radical and utopian, as it requires that the more than 7 billion human beings that inhabit the earth come to an agreement and leave aside our consumerist nature. This implies a profound social change, which makes it a very difficult alternative to carrying out.
Our part
The other alternative is to start using this technology as an instrument to achieve sustainable development and maintain our comfort. “allowing us to reduce polluting emissions and make what is not sustainable become so, in order to have a world to inherit to future generations” (Smith & Enger, 2006). This is already becoming evident in the new generations of companies and technological enterprises.
Feeding: Plant-based animal protein companies.
Mobility: Electric cars (look for public incentive policies as in Norway, etc.).
Energy: Great development in the last 10 years of solar and wind energy, the development of new technologies (hydrokinetics, nuclear fusion).
Plastics or Waste: Clean seas, development of bioplastics.
To conclude
In this fast-paced and constantly changing and advancing industry, we must see the environment not only as a responsibility, using technology as an engine of change but also as an opportunity. Better said, as a set of infinite niche opportunities to combine business with an improvement in the environment that surrounds us.
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