Progress vs Pollution and Development vs Destruction of Nature? Costs of Progress and Development

Is progress same as pollution? 
Is destruction of nature same as "development"?

I believe progress means progress of humanity and progress in our quality of life as a whole.

• If progress means pollution of pristine waters of lakes, aquifers, streams, rivers and oceans with industrial waste, chemicals, insecticides, refuse, plastics, and other garbage that renders them unfit for life, then it is “regression” not progress. 
• If progress means herding the majority of people in sardine-like fashion in city ghettos with below-poverty level subsistence eating unhygienic food to become a source of cheap labor for making the rich richer, then this is “exploitation” not progress. 
• If progress is eating polluted GMO food and processed food seeped with contaminants and causing all sorts of known and unknown side-effects, then this is “genocide” not progress. 

Progress = Eco-Terrorism:
Regression and Exploitation

• If progress means increasing the temperature of world with “global warning” through industrial pollutants destroying the Ozone layer, then this is “environmental terrorism” not progress. 
• If progress means killings millions of people in wars instigated by military-industrial-complex to extract natural resources from the poorest of countries and compelling them to buy them back with “value-addition” at the barrel of the gun, and killing them in numbers never witnessed before in history, then this is “savagery” and not progress. 
• If progress is to destroy the environment and our beautiful earth with species getting extinct at a rate never observed since the end of dinosaurs, then this is “self destruction” not progress. 

We cannot define progress = pollution. We have to redefine it as movement towards social, compassionate, and considerate human beings. Political language of progress and development is often used for exploitation of natural resources. We need a better formulation.

Is progress regression?

What was free and pristine and pure is now polluted to make beaches, rivers, streams, and ponds which were hitherto free into commercial commodities. Water now needs to be purchased in bottle, which was safe to drink from taps just a decade or two ago. Entry to clean beaches is no longer free. City streams are no longer water ways to be enjoyed freely, ponds and lakes are now taxed. 

Pollution of beaches that were free to enjoy earlier. Why are free beaches not clean?

Can progress justify turning city streams and water ways into garbage dumps ?

Is it progress to dump the city refuse in to ponds?

Is it progress to dump industrial effluents and pollute the water ways so that the
rich 2% of the world's population can live in affluence?

Is it progress to dump the industrial effluents into aquifers and poisoning them
in areas habited by unsuspecting communities?

Is progress exploitation of poor by the rich?

Is it progress to leave the serene country side to settle in polluted congested cities?
Are these the fruits of industrial development?

Is it progress to compel the peasants to migrate from their healthy countryside fields
to live in city ghettos to be exploited as cheap labor in industries developed to make rich richer?

Is coming from healthy work environment of open country side fields into congested, crowded and claustrophobic industry workshops progress?

Is it progress to relegate humans to become just another cog of the capitalist machinery?
Are humans nothing more than a machine part or a tool?
Is progress defining humanity as a human resource;
just another resource like land, building or machinery part? 

Isn't working in modern industrial age organization just another form of  slavery,
with your life timings dictated by the masters?

Is progress  genocide through polluted foods?

Is it progress to feed people chemically polluted food?

Is progress deception of truth for the profit generation for a few?

Is it progress to feed people with food whose ingredients they do not understand
and about which they have no choice to avoid because of their financial constraints?

Is it progress when the people of the most developed country are deceived into eating polluted food?
Is it progress to feed the same food to poor, unsuspecting, illiterate masses of developing countries
on which are hoisted dictatorial rulers bythe world powers?

Is progress environmental terrorism through global warming?

Is it progress to degenerate this beautiful earth into a living inferno?

Is it progress to ignore the visible signs of degeneration of our environment?

Is it progress to have the development proponents blatantly ignore the indicators of global warming?

Is it progress to ignore the ecological disaster time bomb?

Is progress savagery that inflicts resource wars on weak countries?

Is it progress to wage wars for exploiting the resources of poor people?

Is it progress to keep the people ignorant about the extent of misery caused by wars of plunder?

Is it progress and development for the developed nations to wage wars on the third world?

Is it progress and development to let the Military Industrial Complex to go after whatever now remains?

Is progress self-destruction through destruction of environment?

Is it progress for the developed world to ignore that the rate of extinction of species
which has now entered the exponential rise bend of the curve from which recovery is irreversible?

Is it prudent for the development proponents to ignore the calendar dates for extinction?

Can we connect the dots to the mass extinction rate of the dinosaur era?

Our home, the only one, is on fire. Is it progress or development to ignore this?

What should be done?

1. Redefine progress to include the above parameters.
2. Allocate the costs of the degradation of environment, wars, deaths, destruction, social costs of urban dwellings, health costs, water pollution, global warming into the price of all the processed products of the industry and force them to clean it up. These are not external costs, externalities or overheads to be paid by people through taxes. These should be made direct costs. Let the petrol rise to $400 per barrel or whatever to reflect its true cost. Let the cost of bottled water rise up from 50 cents to $4 or whatever to indicate its true cost and so on... 
3. No Carbon Tax that is designed to defray the costs incurred by the rich but are spread on the poor.
4. Researchers should compute the costs through more rigorous economic models keeping in view all these costs. 

See Also:

• At What Cost: Fazle Hasan of IBA and Computation of Economic Costs
• Get Pakistan out of this quagmire: Economic Cost of War on Terror for Pakistan

• Whither Writ of the State? Costs of Corruption and Nepotism in Today's Rangeela Shahi Daur
• Progress vs Pollution and Development vs Destruction of Nature? Costs of Progress and Development
• Eight Disconnectivities induced by Social Networks and Smart Phones: Costs of Tech Connectedness
• Small is Beautiful: Why Small Businesses should Replace Big Businesses (A Case Study of Rickshaws vs Buses)