Towards Uncertain Future

Towards Uncertain Future

By Dr Arvind Kumar

Technological revolution has spawned augmentation in new demands on resource consumption. Undoubtedly, human industiral civilization on the verge of collapse, yet humankind is not tired of telling itself that it is exempt from the laws of physics and nature - that infinite growth is possible on a finite planet. On the other hand, unprecedented expansion of human population has culminated in accelerating the pace depletion of finite resources. Expectations of human beings have increased manifold and technology is expected to overturn the laws of physics, chemistry and especially thermodynamics/energy. Heightened expectations spur aspirations that may not be fulfilled within the finite human limits. Scramble for modern gadgets and luxuries are pushing humanity away from spiritual values.

Today we are awash in technology and we are also dying. We are, in fact, killing ourselves with it. We make better weapons. We make better devices that require the extraction and consumption of more raw materials and then require us to throw away the energy and resources in old ones. We poison ourselves and our environment with chemicals and then we turn to chemistry to create drugs (using a lot of oil and energy) to imperfectly cure the diseases we ourselves created. In fact, we are heading for an uncertain future.