POST 7: THE IDEA OF PROGRESS: QUANTITY VS. QUALITY.

As we have studied in class, progress could be defined as a forward movement, an increase in a specific field. This is related to quantity in terms of progress. The other definition that we gave was a gradual betterment, a progressive improvement of society, this is the definition for a quality progress.
To illustrate this notion I chose to focus on today's problems and issues of society, I will be focusing my presentation on the Arctic zone.

This document is a chart showing the advantages of the Northwest Passage. This passage is a navigable route likely for trading situated in the Arctic Ocean. This passage would mainly allow bigger trading ships, that don't fit on the other trading passages (Panama, Suez and Malacca). The problem of this area is sovereignty: Canadians say that this area is legitimately theirs, whereas the USA and Russia and other European countries think that it's an international strait and transit passage. First of all we should compare the distance ridden between the comercial ports through different navigable passages for trading. Let's take the example of a cargo ship travelling from Barcelona to Hong Kong, through the actual transit passages they run between 20 000 km and 25 000, but from the Northwest Passage the travelling distance is reduced to 18 000 km reducing also the time merchandises spend in the boat. This passage could be andvantageous, not only for a faster trading, but also for environement.


The second document I chose is an article from The Wall Street Journal, written by Zac Unger on 2013.
Here, he talks about his personal experience investigating about polar bears. As many know, polar bears's living conditions and habitats have been destroyed because of global warming and humankind dammages to our planet. But what we don't possibly know is that there are 19 different colonies of polar bears. Most of them haven't been studied by scientifics enough to know what is going to happen with them, but the one who are under scientific control are actually better than we think. Polar bears don't actually need ice all the time because in summer they have a kind of active hibernation, during which they feed themselves little and wander around with no goal. Even if there are some populations of polar bears that are under control, we have to ask ourselves to what extent does globalization affect these creature's future, that could be uncertain.

To conclude we can say that technological and economic progressis always starving for growth, but we care little about the quality of this progress to our planet and wildlife living in it.