Introduction
The brand new world that pays respect to nature in the same way as it respects human convenience proved not to be as far as it seemed at first glance. Compared to the world at the beginning of the 21st century, it required perceptional changes toward nature, biodiversity, and ecosystems, as well as reforms in agriculture and management of water, energy, and waste. However, it allowed humanity to finally defeat the looming ecological doom of the planet and establish a new, sustainable future.
Changes in Human Relationship to Nature
Through increasing awareness, not only consciously but even at a subconscious level, future society was able to grasp the underlying concepts of human and nature harmonic coexistence. Among the first came a realization that human is an inseparable part of the environment. In turn, every environment has a carrying capacity, referring to the maximum size of the biological species population that can be sustained in that environment (Wall, 2020). It triggered various conservative tendencies and shifts in tolerance range regarding the conservation of natural resources and wildlife diversity, along with the redistribution of the population (Jacobson et al., 2019; Nguyen et al., 2020). Apart from that, awareness is, in many ways, synonymous with preparedness. For instance, AI technologies have become sophisticated enough to predict earthquakes based on anomalies in electrotelluric potentials and, thus, allow people to avoid casualties (Al Banna et al., 2020). Overall, the overwhelming knowledge of natural phenomena allowed humanity to predict and deal with natural disasters efficiently.
Biodiversity and Ecosystems (what has been done differently to achieve it)
The concept of carrying capacity has been central to preserving biodiversity in various ecosystems around the globe. It is intertwined with the term ecosystem resilience, which constitutes “the amount of disturbance needed to shift an ecosystem from one set of ecological structures, functions and feedbacks to another set” (Heino et al., 2021, p. 91). In this context, humanity realized that, instead of attempting to prevent the ecosystem disturbance that proved to be incredibly economically inefficient, there is a way of mimicking certain ecosystem conditions to ensure their circumneutral state (Heino et al., 2021). For instance, manipulating a previously disturbed acidified lake regime contributes to its healthy ecosystem preservation.
Agricultural Production
In sustainable agriculture, humanity has achieved substantial improvements with the help of bioengineering and by juggling “synthetic” and “organic” solutions to supply problems. One of the greatest transitions in the food supply field was the development of sophisticated synthetic meat production chains that eventually economically outvalued the traditional meat industry. The fact that humanity no longer required cattle breeding to produce food opened access to vast lands previously reserved for it (Bensel & Carbone, 2020). Then, using bioengineering advances to produce rich in minerals and soil-friendly fertilizers and by utilizing the newly acquired land, people learned to grow crops that did not harm the soil.
Water Resource Management
Sustainable water resource management requires a grand monitoring system that tracks ecosystemic regime shifts on local, regional, and global scales. The resulting evaluations built on assessing disturbing indicators, such as changes in climate, land use, organic carbon, species, and acidification, allowed for early interventions and ecosystem balance maintenance (Heino et al., 2021). In particular, preserving the forest resources significantly contributed to maintaining sweet water quantity (Bensel & Carbone, 2020). Apart from that, a great emphasis was put on improving the existing drinking water and wastewater treatment systems to balance the release with the naturally occurring capacity (WSS, 2018). Consequently, potential contamination by pharmaceuticals in water became low enough to be successfully assimilated and attenuated in the environment.
Energy Needs Management
The management of energy needs registered the most significant improvements compared to its non-sustainable state. In the wake of the looming peak oil point, humanity has invested tremendous resources into making the alternatives to internal combustion engines more economically beneficial (Bensel & Carbone, 2020). The most efficient alternative proved to be installing special solar panels in high levels of the atmosphere. This way, harvesting solar energy was no longer limited to the day and night cycle. Besides that, technological advances in energy accumulation and transportation resulted in the abolishment of wires in favor of batteries and other wireless means. In the context of the energy revolution, carbon dioxide emissions have completely stopped, and the Earth’s climate has eventually stabilized.
Waste Management
Waste management in a fully sustainable world has registered significant alterations as well. Compared to the previous associations with the word “disposal,” the new waste management is all about “reuse.” Technological progress has completely eradicated the materials not suited for their future recycling and use. For instance, thermally decomposable lead dioxide has successfully replaced platinum electrodes (Al-Hydary et al., 2020). The conservational tendencies that became ubiquitous in society demanded that all products of human industrial activities are not lost in vain. The most common solution was to make them as organic as possible so that if the material was no longer usable in production, it could decompose without any harm to the environment.
Conclusion
Overall, the world has registered a major societal shift in terms of the tolerance range. Particularly, the behaviors that did not align with the environmental theme went far outside that range and became strictly socially unacceptable. Due to massive public support, environmentalists managed to seize political power worldwide and began to enforce various acts and industrial regulations. The budget reorganization allowed investment in renewable resources research leading to the energy revolution. Apart from that, it led to the water surveillance system’s appearance. Despite the changes’ cost and the abandonment of more short-term convenient energy sources, the planet was finally able to reach its sustainable future, proving the correctness of previous decisions.
References
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