Every now and then one comes across to additional stories on how we – we being the human race – are really damn good at destroying our planet. I know the subject isn’t exactly new and what do you know, the human race is still alive. But looking at the big picture, we’re not on a good road.
Let’s see. Thanks to global warming, we’re losing the ice caps and it’s going to be pretty darn warm in general also. The sea is already turning into a huge dumpster for non-degradeable waste like plastics and now we’re gonna lose the coral reefs too, huh? Of course, the fate of crucial fish stocks around the planet hangs on by a thin thread, too – and in some places they’re already gone, possibly irreversably. The list of humankinds destructive effect on the environment is a depressingly long one.
And we haven’t taken too much time to “accomplish” all of this either. It took some hundreds of years to deforest most of Europe, but thanks to industralization, the pace of destruction has been much greater in the past hundred or so years. Do we as a species even deserve to survive? I think there is enough good in the human race for us to deserve survival. At this rate, the chances of that don’t look so great. Possibly luckily (or then not, if we turn to coal) for the environment, we’re fast reaching the point of peak oil production, which should force us to rethink quite a few things – renewable energy sources, among other things. I can recommend one book on this subject: The Party’s Over by Richard Heinberg; it will give you a good idea of the role oil plays in the modern world and all the current and forthcoming ugly implications. I think this has a very fitting cover image.
Now the latest large-scale warning comes from Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. It states that two thirds of the worlds ecosystems have been polluted overexploited in the past 50 years alone. The bottom line comes from this quote:
Human activity is putting such strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted.
If we already had the technology to terraform other planets, we would already be close to living like swarms of locusts – consuming natural resources of a planet and then moving on to the next one. Which would not exactly be a great thing.
For now, however, we’re destroying our only home. Pretty smart, huh?
Interesting!
I definitely agree. Although, the link “pretty darn warm” presented a scenario that was more pessimistic than the consensus of the scientists. See eg http://www.realclimate.org, and wikipedia. But of course, some “non-linear” phenomena like thawing of permafrost etc may come to play and change the predictions. We live interesting times.