...nobody ever thought about either, at the beginning of the industrial age, and that no one, or almost no one, thinks of now except for reasons of profit.
I was just reading about huge new U.S. coal exports to Asia, and thinking, despairingly, about what burning that coal is going to do to planet earth (in addition to what its extraction is doing here locally).
When scientific artists depict the early earth, before life got a foothold, they show a fantastically frightening and awesome landscape of exploding volcanoes, meteor hits, constant huge earthquakes, seas of burning and molten lava, and vast black clouds of ash and smoke teeming in a red sky, as the earth gets formed. This went on for a lo-o-o-o-ong time before the pieces of the earth settled down and a few puddles appeared and a thin atmosphere. Eventually, life began to develop in those puddles (on its own or arrived on meteors) and that--after another long, long interval, with periods of continuing tumult within the earth--led to us. Wouldn't it be ironical if the ultimate effect of human life was to return the earth to its volcanic state?
Combine the new weight of melted Arctic ice on fragile plate tectonics, wholesale removal of veins of oil and other enormous extractions and infusions, the increasing weights of roads, trucks, tankers and enormous new building construction, all by us--most of it to fuel our war machines and make a few people rich--and who knows what will happen? We also have the ticking time-bombs of nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons. We may well have agencies or private entities messing with the weather for profit or for political reasons. We have much fewer critters in the ocean and much, MUCH fewer trees around the globe (80% of earth's forest cover gone--logged off--or severely depleted, over the last hundred years!), for whatever steady-state functions the ocean's protein supply and trees are performing.
It's like a "perfect storm" of impacts--virtually all of it caused by us--that could, indeed, kill the planet. I don't think it would be as wracked as the early earth but it really wouldn't take much to rip off the atmosphere and even less to kill off all plant life. Carl Sagan established that even a limited use of nuclear weapons would kill all plant life with dust clouds in a few months time--in his book "The Cold and the Dark"--and animal life would soon be gone as well. Volcanic activity could have the same impact. The World Wildlife Fund states that we have 50 years to the DEATH of planet earth, at present levels of pollution and deforestation. I think they were just talking about our impacts on the environment in a normal earth--not one undergoing increased vulcanism, earthquakes, extreme weather and extreme flooding in coastal areas (where most of the world's people live). And they didn't mention nuclear power plants or nuclear weapons and the additional catastrophes that those could inflict. They were just talking about depletion--loss of biodiversity, fresh water and forest cover.
The death of planet earth.
Well, humans have gotten through "by the skin of our teeth" a number of times. Maybe we will this time, too. We are a clever species--capable of understanding our impacts and doing something about them. It is like a psychic earthquake to take it in--to comprehend what we've done in the last hundred years to the earth that gave birth to us--our only home. It's a difficult thing and it's easy to despair about it. Personally I feel--and feel very strongly--that we WILL make it and that, someday, humans will be pouring over DNA banks and other information, in a passion to understand what we had here--our earthly paradise--and will have developed great respect and love for Mother Nature's diversity and will do everything in their power to protect habitable planets, to terraform new habitable planets, to foster new species and to help spread life everywhere.
Our consciousness is an expression of the Universe. What is it for, if not to protect the Universe's greatest creation--life--and to appreciate all life and all the marvels around us and in the Cosmos? The Universe seems to be composed of not quite equal portions of destructiveness and creativity. The balance goes toward creativity--toward structure, balance, coalescence and beauty. Otherwise we wouldn't be here. We would be random particles floating in empty wastes of nothingness. Instead, here we are, with these gorgeous galaxies and star nurseries to look at, complements of Hubble, and much to do, to repair our period of destructiveness and learn to appreciate it all--our main reason for being.
We have been like ungrateful teenagers--a necessary phase of life. Now we need to grow up. I am no more frightened than the parent of a teenager is. That can be pretty frightened--but, ultimately, you have to form a positive outlook in order to help your child grow up. If you keep hammering on his/her deficiencies, you can do permanent damage that will prevent them from becoming capable, healthy and happy adults. In other words, if you let yourself despair over what we've done to planet earth, you will be contributing to humanity's inability to handle this grave crisis. YOU are part of it. Therefore YOU are part of the solution--or not. We can wallow in despair. Or we can create and encourage solutions. And if enough of us do the latter, we WILL solve it--the impacts we have had, our behavior, our lack of maturity, the flaws in our political system, our warlike attitude toward Nature and this whole complex of problems.
The Bush Junta caused a lot of despair, especially here in the U.S. We thought we had ended "wars of choice" by tyrannical powers. We hadn't. We thought we had an equitable economic/political system. We did not. We were easily ripped off and inflicted with fascism. We thought we had labor rights. Good-bye, jobs! As for the environment, they undid decades of political, regulatory and grass roots work and set us back 50 and maybe a 100 years, to the dawn of the industrial age when nobody even considered the environment, let alone stopped any profit project because of it. In addition, the Bush Junta created pollution where there wasn't any--with all the oil-fueled military traffic in the Middle East and elsewhere, bombs, depleted uranium and what all, and deregulation of polluters.
But our despair at all this comes from our feelings of helplessness. So that may be the first problem we need to solve. How to restore the power of the people in the USA? (I remember reading polls, oh, about 20 years ago, that showed an astonishing 80% of Americans in favor of strong environmental regulation. Our people may not need education so much as they need inspiration and leadership--and restored people power.) Also, we were at the heart of the Bush maelstrom and possibly exaggerate our importance. China is actually a bigger "climate change" polluter than we are. And we have horrible Corporate Media which cuts off the kind of information and grass roots organization that we need to involve more people in solutions. Despair is certainly understandable but it is an indulgence. We need to feel the same about planet earth as we feel our own children. Despair is not an option.
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