Author: Siti Noor Aliza Apandi
Date: 8 June 2023
Today many organizations, industrial sectors, businesses, and companies agreed to accept their roles not to harm the environment, either by undergoes decarbonize or waste management in manufacturing facilities. Prime minister of United States, Biden, is very ambitious to reduce the greenhouse gasses emission by 50% in 2030, and reach zero emission by 2050 (Parshley, 2021). The year 2020, is the worst-case scenario of the pandemic of COVID-19, where the lockdown was enforced globally, long distance travelled is no longer allowed and people are force to work from home, to prevent the diseases spread. The shifting of human restricted movement has also changed the energy consumption. The transportation sector has been inactive during the lockdown has resulted, the reduction number of vehicles operated on the road, has historically reduce the CO₂ emission to the atmosphere. The Energy Information Administration of US (EIA) reported, the energy consumption during the pandemic year is equal to the year 1990 total energy demand. The energy demand also shifted from industrial and commercial area to residential area, because of the increasing of home-office system. In US renewable energy is the leader of electricity generation, where the renewable energy consumption has been increased by 9% whilst fossil fuels demands is plummeting. COVID-19 pandemic has resulted the many industrial sectors in jeopardize and struggle to stay afloat to maintain in business. The depressing economic data in Europe, also called “free-fall” is a impact of pandemic, due to business closure in the country (Walker, 2020). However, the lockdown has resulted the good impact toward environment. The satellite images show the significant reduction of NO₂ in the most energy consumer country, China compared to the pre-pandemic year because of the massive shutdown of factories. The same patterns also occurred in South Korea, Italy, and United Kingdom (Watts & Kommenda, 2020).
The challenge to reach the greening is to establish a sustainable global economy; an economy that earth can handle. Although we are going there, the earth is continuing on the unsustainable route (ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies, 2018). Even if the companies is on the way to the zero emission by the year 2050, the world still struggling as what scientist refer to its “carrying capacity”. The overpopulation (Fig 1), overconsumption, world hunger, depleted agriculture, fisheries, deforestation, pollution, and poverty, has comes around over geopolitical boundaries (Cumming, 2016; Erdman, 2018; University of New South Wales, 2020). In fact, in order to meet our goals, we destroying our next generation future to meet theirs. In China, the country is a home for 600 million of people, whose income barely $154 per month. China’s population growth is increasing over the years, yet there is no productivity can be seen, there are also term for this generation, it is called ‘involution’ (see Fig 2). The young generation are not motivated to work hard, and unwilling proactively to join any competitions (Wang & Wang, 2021).
The main problem is the rocketing population and fast economic growth in the emerging economics are social and political issues that surpassed the mandate and the power of any organization. At the same moments, the organization has limited resources, the technology, global response and motivation to achieve sustainability. The billions of dollars will be spent in the services, products, and technologies to reach the sustainability, which barely exist today.
Look back on the year of 1990, the fresh produces, eggs, meat, and poultry are more nutritious back then compare to todays food. An article of -the great nutrient collapse- mentioned that the important foods getting less nutritious compared to decades ago (Evich, 2017). This related to the rising CO₂ in our atmosphere, where CO₂ trapped the heat from the sunlight and cause the rising world surface temperature. Lets imagine the rising 1-2 degree Celsius on earth same as fever human body basal body temperature. On the other hand, the animal farming. The animals is injected with various growth hormones, and feed with the artificial foods. Eggs from the farmed chickens, are containing the harmful pesticides, and being consume in over 16 different countries (VanderZee, 2017). The soil is a living thing, in order to make soil stay healthy, they need to be fed (Wallenstein, 2017). Soil is containing minerals, microorganism, and nutrients need by the plant or crop to grow on. The symbiosis between the plant and fungi is producing the complex relationship which only require the natural way for its to happen. For example, the plant root and rhizobium sp. fungi. The fungi grow on the plant roots because of the sugar made by the plant, and the plant get the root protection from other harmful microbes (BV, 2017). The excessive usage of fertilizer in the agriculture has reduce the soil ability to produce the healthy crops. This also supported by the Dr. Shiva, in her 2014 articles, where she mentioned about the soils with low organic contents will more likely to eroded. Furthermore, the soil erosion lost its organic content by 10 to 40 times before it can replenish again.
Aforementioned problems, many agricultural organizations aim for fast money to stay in the industry, rather than meet their sustainable goals. ‘Money is a king’ as they said, they do not even care what they do toward the environments. Increasingly, companies will sell solutions to the world’s environmental problems. This related to the capitalism has reshaped the industrial, technological and green revolutions, as the Edelman said “capitalism as it exists today does more harm than good in the world” (King, 2021).
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