For decades, as populations increased and the demand for food and water and transportation and housing likewise increased, we turned to Nature – as mankind has always done – to satisfy our ever-growing needs and wants. We took and we took and we took some more from the Earth: we cleared ever more land for farming, trawled the waters for fish, mined the earth for fuel and jewels and ore, built more and more factories and put more and more vehicles on the road and in the air to get us farther and farther. We thought the supplies were inexhaustible, and the capacity for Earth to heal and renew herself unconditional.
When the alarms were first sounded and calls were first made for environmental protection, those people were written off as lunatics, bleeding hearts from the fringe with nothing better to do than wear flowers in their hair and no concept whatsoever of progress and development.
But Nature has a way of getting her message across to even the most stubborn of humans. The environmental and climactic disasters of the past years certainly got everyone’s attention, and now the tables have been turned and it has become sheer lunacy to ignore the issues of the environment.
Asia’s economic boom is being seen as having been achieved at an enormous cost in the form of serious air and water pollution and environmental destruction that has wiped out plant and animal species at alarming rates. Floods and landslides that have killed hundreds of thousands, contaminated water supplies and farmlands due to chemical pollution that have poisoned countless numbers, growing mountains of garbage that breed disease and fester in our midst as grim reminders of our greed and carelessness...these are what we are faced with today.
But all is not lost, for just as human ingenuity and advances in science and technology have brought about these dire problems, the same skills are now giving mankind the means to reverse the trend, to heal the damage, to begin to make things right.
With this issue, STARweek begins a section called The Green Page. Our aim is to increase public awareness of and encourage involvement in issues pertaining to the world we live in. We do not simply refer to planting trees or saving dolphins, although these are worthy endeavors. We refer to a change in attitude and lifestyle, from mindless consumption to an awareness of the effect our behavior has on the world around us and on other people.
We believe in sustainable development and responsible consumption. We are not saying no to building or manufacturing or production. We believe that we must have growth as well as green, economic development as well as environmental protection.
Mel Moench, a designer of self-sufficient homes, said that "human beings are stewards of the earth, and it is our responsibility to give this earth to future generations in the same or better condition than we received it."
We aim to bring to you not just the problems but solutions, and the people who come up with and make these solutions happen. There are many of them – in our country and around the world – with wonderful ideas and admirable efforts. They are the heroes we hope to introduce, and thereby inspire us to a more responsible, more sustainable way of life. – Doreen G. Yu