In 1776, when 33-year-old Thomas Jefferson, the son of British immigrants, drafted the Declaration of Independence, the world was vastly different place than it is today. Most of North America was unexplored and uninhabited by colonists. Jefferson and the revolutionaries he joined forces with hoped to create a nation where all men would be independent: free from the tyranny imposed on them by Britain’s monarchy and aristocracy, free to speak their minds and free to worship as they pleased. The founders hoped to create a self-sufficient New World where everyone could compete on equal footing and share in the prosperity based on the abundant resources available.
Nearly 250 years later, the independent, self-sufficient nation the Founding Fathers envisioned is an impossibility. We not only live in an interdependent global economy but also face intertwined challenges that no nation can tackle on their own. Climate change offers the best illustration of our need for interdependent thinking. The change in weather patterns creates droughts, which reduce the fresh water available across the globe, which diminishes the ability to raise crops and feed livestock. When water and food are in short supply, hunger, poverty, and disease emerge. Those inter-twined problems, like climate, do not care about nations or borders.
A close look at today’s newsfeeds makes it clear that the water shortage resulting from climate change is at the root of most conflicts today. In 2022, the World Wildlife Foundation reported on the global water crisis, noting that 1.1 billion people worldwide lacked access to water and 2.7 billion found water scarce for at least one month of the year. Inadequate sanitation, a consequence of water shortage, was also a problem for 2.4 billion people, increasing their exposure to diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever and other water-borne illnesses. Two million people, mostly children, die each year from diarrheal diseases alone.
Many of the water systems that keep ecosystems thriving and feed a growing human population have become stressed. Rivers, lakes and aquifers are drying up or becoming too polluted to use. More than half the world’s wetlands have disappeared and, compounding the problem is agriculture, which consumes more water than any other source.
The water shortages cited above, in turn, lead to population shifts within and between countries. When people are unable to grow crops because they lack sufficient water and live under the rule of tyrants, they react the same way our forefathers did: they leave and seek refuge in better places. Our country and other developed and democratic countries with favorable climates are all encountering the consequences of this migration as hundreds of thousands leave their arid homelands in the Middle East and Central America.
The ultimate solution to these interdependent problems is clear: we who are fortunate enough to live in an affluent nation with relatively abundant resources and favorable climate will need to make some serious sacrifices if we hope to avoid the inevitable conflicts that await us if we continue along our current path of consumption. We need to stop contributing to global climate change created by burning fossil fuel and devise a means of providing the water humanity needs to survive by limiting its use and sharing it. We need to stop squabbling over borders and who is the most powerful nation and begin thoughtful dialogue on how we can work harmoniously to survive as a species.
Unfortunately, across the planet few political leaders are talking about the sacrifices we need to make to survive as a global family. Instead, the focus is on how to maintain the status quo, focusing on dominance and independence instead of cooperation and interdependence.
The age of independent nation states of the late 1700s should go the way of the colonialism in that same era. To survive as a species our nation should lead the way by replacing the independent “America First” mindset that is primarily concerned with the health of our country with an interdependent mindset that values the health and well-being of our planet. The adoption of such an interdependent mindset would acknowledge that those of us born into parts of the world with favorable climates need to make personal sacrifices so that everyone in the world — not just those in our nation, state or neighborhood — can experience life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
From Mother Nature’s perspective, human beings are just another species, one that seems intent on limiting its own growth through self-destruction and one that appears to be indifferent to the fate of other beings who share the planet. If the human species cannot find a way to change our thinking, if we cannot find a way to harmonize with nature and each other, our worries about the future will disappear… for our species will as well.
Wayne Gersen is a retired public school administrator. He lives in Lyme.