The truth about the environment

Environmentalists consider that things are getting worse and worse by each day, ecologically
speaking. They have plenty of fears, believing that the environment today is fighting with so
many issues, for example: the disappearance of natural resources, pollution, population growing
so the food is diminishing, rarer forests, dirty air and water. The article The truth about the
environment from The Economist treats this problem as being exaggerated. The current
situation is treated in a more positive way and the fears of the environmentalists are somehow
combated with arguments.
Unfortunately, the issue with the environment is presented in a wrong way in mass media. There
are communicated only the negative aspects, they seem to forget about the advantages of the
environment. These benefits were not reported as widely as the losses. I personally consider that
we all should think in solutions rather than complaining of how dirty is the air every day.
The planet has a finite mass. Keeping that in mind, natural resources will eventually come to an
end, consuming at some point because of the fact that they are also finite. In order to maintain a
good way of living, especially for the future generations, we should be more efficient with our
resources and think strategically how we can use them. For example, the system of extracting
solar energy has become cheaper in the past years and also the solar energy itself is free. It is a
public good. Another example would be the consumption of oil. We could use it to build some
alternative energy technologies and in this case we won't be worried about its disappearance.
Moreover, in order to protect our resources, we can increase scarcity by pushing the prices up. at
some level, there wont be left the same level of demand, thus we would stimulate efforts to use
less of the resource.
Everyone is worried about population growth which can lead eventually to hunger. However,
economically speaking is proved that the rate of population growth is declining every year. As
few solutions, the economists should raise agricultural production every year. Food, in other
words, would become not scarcer but even more abundant. In addition, there should be a policy
to establish laws of birth, on the same model as in China for example.
We can also discuss about features of natural resources and environmental quality that often
trigger problematic human behaviors related to the environment. Unfortunately, in economy
there are situations during economic actions in which there appear some additional effects called
externalities. The economic actions have a specific goal (for example to sell a good), but in the
process of producing it, the factories pollute the water or the air. This is called a negative
externality. It is true indeed that private individuals act for their own, but we as humans have to

think a little outside the box and look as the world as a whole picture, not for our own benefit, in
order to protect practically our home.
In my point of view, the economy and the environment are very strong linked. This
fact can be argued within two ideas of games. Firstly, t here is a picture with some

elements and near to it, there are shown some fingers. People tend to lose their attention of the
fingers and to concentrate only to the elements. As a lesson in life, we should focus on the big
picture of an aspect. Regarding the environment, in the process of industrialisation and the
development of the technology, ecology is one of the most important factors of the world. We, as
humans, in our dynamic and daily activities, tend to neglect this fact, until we will wake up and
see that we did not provide enough importance for the environment, element that we did not
counter when we should have done this. We will later realise that we have harmed it so badly that
we will remain without resources, producing global warming and other natural disasters.
Secondly, the bar game suggests that all things must be balanced and protected equally. A better
economy could not be held without a healthy environment. Economy and ecology are very
closely linked (for example if the fingers don't operate on the same level, they will produce an
imbalance). The game comes as a metaphor, with the bar holding the role of the environment and
the fingers, people of the globe. It raises awareness about the difficulty of environmental
protection and how it is dependent on many factors that are linked to each other. In the same
manner, if the fingers don't raise the bar at the same time with the same strength, if people don't
cooperate and chip in with their own part to save the environment, the results will not be
favorable.
As a conclusion, I strongly consider that those games gave us a different view of how we should
look, analyse and combat the actual and global problems of today, in a manner in which we do
not lose all the important factors, even though they seem invisible at a time because we cannot
focus on every detail. Moreover, people should be more aware of the environmental problems,
trying to put emphasis on solving them, looking on a long-term protection of the world.

Badarau Teodora and Spataru Corina

Group 917