The heat of progress
The extreme weather conditions we have been witnessing recently – climatic changes, in scientific terms – are inextricably linked to mankind’s innumerable unmonitored activities. Man has turned the environment into his puppet, transforming all resources and procedures – even himself – into something marketable. This exploitation of nature to the extreme does not just involve serious implications for the earth, vegetation, water and air that we are only too familiar with; it also has a dramatic effect on social cohesion and the self-sufficiency of the political and economic spheres. It is connected to the distribution of power among a select few, to the aggravation of inequalities and distinctions, to the guidance of the weak economies by the strong, to globalization, to the inevitable advancement of technology, to galloping corruption and moral deficits. And who extracts the great spoils from nature but a handful of businesses which monitor global production and research for their own ends? Knowledge becomes a tool in the hands of an elite group. Who is it that benefits from the communications revolution? How many people have access to multimedia? Yes, the greenhouse in which we are all sweltering – and which is only going to get worse over the coming decades and centuries – will never be independent of an unevenly developing technological society.
