Albert+Park's+Collapse+Reflection

==== The documentary, “2210: The Collapse?”, was an excellent eye-opener and contained material that compelled me to think deep about the status quo of our societies. A vast majority of people are aware that the human populations are consuming and exploiting a substantial amount of valuable, limited resources: water, food, oil, etcetera. And a point that the video brings up that is so real but frightening, is that humans will not react as promptly to issues such as global warming if the issue isn’t affecting them individually. The professor in the documentary used an analogy of how a gunshot in a room would cause people to clear out in a matter of seconds, whereas greenhouse gases accumulating and global temperatures rising won’t bring out the same efficient, and speedy response. This point brought out in the video made me realize how true it is, for I myself have found the oil, water, pollution, or food crises to be the least of my worries in my everyday life. ==== ==== Another significant point brought out in the documentary was how critical it is for us humans in the present, to identify what factors will probably cause our “collapse” and quickly react to them. People in our time are blessed with the ability to look back into the past and learn from mistakes that other great civilizations made, such as Rome or the Maya. Once again, however, people aren’t compelled to act immediately to contemporary issues even though possible resolutions are on our table of options. ==== ==== There are a myriad of contemporary issues we face today; there are just too many factors that could cause the downfall of our societies. There is exponential population growth, which leads to a greater demand in water and food. With the world currently holding about 6.7 billion, we aren’t even able to feed everyone. With an expected world population of about 9 billion over the next decade, the world just cannot sustain such growth. Also, we are rapidly consuming oil, primarily because it initially seemed abundant and it was effective as an energy source; most of our societies’ transportation systems are constituted by individual automobiles, and this mass consumption and scarcity of oil proves that we’ve failed to plan ahead. As the documentary mentioned, humans will dearly compete for resources, even war on one another. Hence, we are in dire need of a shift from our current sources of energy (oil and such) to a more promising source of energy, such as solar energy to avoid social collapse. This transition, however, will change our lifestyles forever. Other changes in lifestyle would also result if we were to tackle other issues such as means of transportation or food production. ==== ==== The world isn’t prepared for such drastic change, but needs to realize that we’re nearing to our collapse. I feel obliged as a global citizen, to participate and concur with new transitions that would ensure our survival; others should do the same and realize the severity of the issues that they’ve been neglecting for so long. ====