A recent study concluded that the extremes (in terms of wealth) are more adaptable to climate change than the middle. We’re talking about countries here, (and the same is true about individuals, I guess).
The study has been performed by experts at the School of Geography at The University of Nottingham. Simon Gosling, one of the authors, said: “We’re finding a real trade-off between adaptation and development, that’s not to say we should discourage development, but you can’t assume that by promoting it you’re also helping people adapt to climate change.
It’s not that traditional is always better, but as people move from traditional to modern they lose things; policy-makers need to think about how to help them make the transition.”
Gosling also said that developing countries, where old, traditional methods of living and doing agriculture are in a process of transition to a new agriculture, where “the new ways aren’t up and running yet.”
You can read a more in-depth analysis on the study here, but I showed you the point.
Now I’m not a conservative individual most of the time, but I think traditional agriculture has its own ways of doing things differently in every part of the world, and those ways have been developed in centuries, if not thousands of years. Modern structures like bank loans or genetically-modified crops only work when there’s a perfect balance between the economy, the environment and the people.
It’s the same situation to, say, not wanting to purchase a credit just because you want to stay independent and you want your belongings and the place you live to be your own, not the bank’s, and hence you don’t want compromises.
It all boils down to the saying that simpler is better. The more we complicate our existences with unnecessary, invented variables, the more we’re more vulnerable to nature’s whims. And if those whims are in fact engaged by ourselves, then the situation is even messier than it should be. I mean, it’s common sense.
The sad fact is that there’s nobody but us on Earth to handle it.
