If I Were Grand Poobah of the Earth

Fellow humans, I would like to sincerely thank you for considering me as a candidate for Exalted Grand Poobah of the Earth. I am humbled by the nomination and am looking forward to the possibility of serving you. In this speech, I would like to introduce myself and narrate my plans for bettering our planet.

I stand here as a passionate advocate for sustainability. Because of this, if I get elected as Grand Poobah, I will do everything in my power to help lower our ecological footprint without heavily compromising our quality of life in any drastic way. To do this, I plan to tackle two main areas of impact: affluence and technology.

Before I talk about those, let me first explain what an ecological footprint is and what ours is currently. An ecological footprint is an impact a person or community has on the environment and is expressed in terms of Earths - if everybody lives the same way as that person or community, the ecological footprint would be the number of Earths it would take to sustain everyone. The world’s current ecological footprint is 1.75 Earths, which exceeds the one Earth we all know and love. Ecologists can represent the global ecological footprint with a simple formula, I = PAT. The I stands for the total impact, the P stands for population (# of people), the A represents the affluence (consumption/person), and the T stands for the destructive technology (impact/consumption). You can see how the variables cancel out with one another to be left with our global impact.

Earlier, I stated that I would be focusing on affluence and technology as ways to make our world more sustainable. As of right now, I believe that we promptly need to adjust the materials in the technology we use and change our affluence with a long-term plan. This is because while both areas of focus need to be changed as soon as possible, modifying our affluence requires more of a lifestyle change, which would take many years to fully implement and adapt to.

My plan to make our Earth more sustainable begins with immediately reducing the plastic used in common technologies people use. The Supply Chain Organization writes the following on their website about plastic: “Plastic packaging is extremely wasteful and impacts Earth’s ecosystems, on which we depend. Due to poor product design and lack of political infrastructure, the majority of plastic waste is sent to landfills or disposed of into the environment.” This significantly contributes to global warming, greenhouse gas emissions, and the destruction of animal habitats. To relinquish these issues, I plan to cut 40% of all plastic in technologies in the next 5 years. I will start by immediately funding further research on plastic alternatives in the world’s leading laboratories. I assure you that your safety is my number one priority, and will never allow harmful chemicals in any alternatives, to those who may be wary. Once a suitable and safe alternative is discovered and produced, I will first alert car companies to cut down the amount of harmful plastic used in cars from 200 kg to 150 kg over the next two years. A common worry I see with this is if the cars will become more expensive due to them becoming more eco-friendly. I will make sure that these cars will be regularly priced, even with the modification. I recognize that not everyone is in a position to afford a new eco-friendly car, so the government will work to distribute these new vehicles accordingly. I will also work with individual nations and state governments to organize more plastic pick-ups and inform kids and teenagers about these world issues so they too can protest against plastic usage in common technologies and begin a movement in the future generations.

The second part of my plan to make the world more sustainable is with a long-term shift in our affluence, by modifying our eating habits with the food we eat. Meat consumption, in particular, substantially harms the environment through the release of greenhouse gases, deforestation, soil degradation, water stress, and coastal dead zones. Meat consumption is also unsustainable due to the disproportionately vast portion of land (over 75% of agricultural land). The GreenPeace organization explains that “[industrial] meat is the single biggest cause of deforestation, globally,” as author Annie Leonard writes. She also writes that forest fires are set intentionally to clear land for grazing or growing large amounts of animal feed. By destroying animal habitats and releasing toxic pesticides into the environment, the meat industry contributes to the extinction of thousands of animal species. Due to the overwhelming cons of meat consumption, I plan to cut meat consumption around the world by 50% in 50 years. According to research published in the medical journal, The Lancet, by 2050, each person should be eating no more than 300g of meat per week. For the next ten years, I plan to limit the meat consumption per person per week by 500g. Right now, in comparison, the average person consumes around 1500g of meat per week. The World government can restrict this meat consumption by regulating the amount of meat bought in stores and restaurants per person and taxing violators of this rule $100 per week for each violation. To ease civilians into this new lifestyle, we will work to limit our meat consumption to 1000 grams over the next ten years with attainable goals. Although people may object to this, saying that it is unnecessary, the ecological benefits of this new shift outweigh the concerns. By doing this, we are protecting our Earth and starting a new revolution in our future generations that would maintain a more sustainable world.

Our world needs change now, more than ever before. If I get elected as the Exalted Grand Poobah of the World, I promise to do everything in my favor to assist in making a better, more sustainable world for our children. I end this speech by imploring you to think of a potential reality: a world where future generations can thrive and look back on us with pride and thankfulness. Voting me for Grand Poobah will be the first step to making that dream come true. Thank you for listening.