A hearty welcome to 2014 to
all of our readers! The new year is traditionally a time for reflection and
looking both forward and backwards. We look back on the events and changes of
the past year and evaluate the positives and negatives. And we look forward to
the next twelve months and express our hopes, aims, and goals for the year.
2013 was a difficult year in
many parts of the world. Many western countries have governments which are
insisting on 'austerity' measures that will supposedly solve the ongoing
problems of the financial crisis, but which are actually leading to a society
increasingly divided between rich corporations and poor, unemployed citizens.
Conflicts like those in Syria and Egypt seem to be intractable, with round of
round of attacks and reprisals. And the exploitation of natural resources and
the relentless drive for profit rather than environmental protection and human
survival continues apace.
The coming year, then, needs
to see a reversal in many of these trends – and the sooner the better. Society
needs to be made fairer, and the poorest citizens need much greater attention
from governments to ensure they can get back on their feet. Currently, too many
people are losing too much on a regular basis – their livelihoods, their loved
ones, their land, their dignity – and this continual impoverishment can only
eventually lead to anger and chaos.
So what do we at NRGLab and
the Ana Shell Fund hope to see in 2014? What will we be working to achieve for
the next twelve months? One of our primary goals is to see the extraction of
fossil fuels – so damaging to communities and destructive to the environment –
replaced by a focus on renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies. Our
research and development on these topics has come on in leaps and bounds this
year, and we will continue to push forward as time goes on.
We hope to see a dramatic
change in priorities for governments everywhere, with a vast reduction in two
of the most problematic uses of taxpayer money. Too much is being spent on
conflict – both in the sense of civil conflicts like those mentioned above, but
also through western intervention and the continued low-level wars being waged
by the US and its allies in places like Afghanistan, Yemen, and Pakistan. And
too much money is given in corporate subsidies – to engineering firms that make
warplanes, agricultural companies that are trying to capture the food chain,
security companies opening private prisons, and many more. Instead, this money
should be diverted to social uses like employment schemes and healthcare, and
put into new scientific and technological research that can help make human
lives easier, more efficient, and more flourishing.
And we need to see a change
in mindset in 2014, away from one which focuses on profit above all, and which
categorizes people as 'winners' or 'losers' in the game of life depending on
their net worth or the number of things they own. Instead, we should be valuing
more traditional concepts like cooperation, fairness, and equality – many of
today's corporate chiefs and conservative politicians will tell you that these
values are not part of 'human nature', but this is simply wrong. Cooperation
and mutual aid are as old as the human spirit itself, and can be seen in many
of the family and community values that we support. Rediscovering these values
is perhaps the most vital thing we can do to improve our own lives and the
lives of others. So perhaps, in the year to come, our personal resolutions should
be to ask ourselves at all times what we can be doing to promote cooperation
and to help our fellow humans, no matter what race, gender, age, or class they
happen to be. And with that, I wish you a happy new year and hope you'll join
us for the journey.
NRGLab, Ana Shell Fund, financial crisis, environmental protection, fossil fuels, renewable energy, new year
