Magellan’s three ships which reached the Philippines in the 16th century, the Trinidad, the Victoria, and the Concepcion, must have been extraordinary vessels. Or rather, Magallanes was really doggedly determined. Even by today’s standards, crossing the Pacific is a pretty mean feat. Or maybe he was just lucky. If he strayed a bit to the left or the right, he would have missed Guam, and run out of provisions. And perished. He may have been an accomplished navigator in his time, but he’d be no match to the natives – the Polynesians.
The Pacific Islanders have been roaming their ocean for hundreds of years. Guided by the moon and the stars, and relying only on the patterns of the weather and the waves, they crisscrossed the ocean long before the Europeans left their own continent. The Polynesian voyagers knew their way without any landmark to guide them. But more importantly, they made sure of one thing – that they had enough food and provisions to last them the journey, which sometimes was towards some unchartered destination.
On a larger scale, very few of us actually realize that we are like the Polynesians of old, setting out on an unknown destination. Whether we like it or not, civilization developed on this planet which is by no means growing, from a total population measured in thousands and millions in ancient times, to the almost 7 billion we have now. But no matter how you look at the earth, its surface area will remain the same over the millennia, and the fact remains that sooner or later, we simply will run out of space.
Even more important than space, but still dependent on it, is the finite resources that we have, and the limited new things we will be able to produce or multiply out of existing ones. Alchemy is still a myth, and while we can now harvest agricultural products a hundred times more per hectare of land as compared to before, this too has its limits. Time will come when there’ll be no more gold to mine and when the earth’s oil will run out. What then? And while we’re running out of good things, we’re accumulating more of the bad things, comparatively. All of man’s activities produce the now popularly known Green House Gases (GHGs) – led by the villain, Carbon Dioxide, and resulting in Global Warming and Climate Change, probably ending the world as we know it in a couple of centuries or so, and us together with it.
And so like the seafaring Polynesians of yore, we sail through space in this cosmic ship called Earth, and we need to protect the finite provisions that we have. Unfortunately, it’s a one-way trip, without turning back, lasting until our food and water will run out. Unless we find a way to produce things out of nothing, or develop the technology to reverse Climate Change, then our emission levels will simply increase and increase until the sky turns gray and black. We can arrive at a collective decision to save the earth, but we have to make that decision personally, too. It’s funny (and so sad) that people sometimes insist on looking at things superficially.
Sustainability is not just a slogan to be shouted, it has to be lived. And the responsibility lies heavier on those who know, as well as those who are supposed to know. In the end, it’s not about how one lives comfortably, but how the world’s population continues to live in the centuries to come, especially those whose lives are at the existence level. Both in economic and developmental spheres, no one should be left behind, but the blame on how the world may reach a tragic future rests on those who cause it most, exchanging prosperity for environmental decline. Take heed and be sober, we may reach landfall if we’re determined.