Planet Earth is not an Experiment in Global Pollution
Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 01/10/2010 - 11:30
Planet Earth is not an Experiment in Global Pollution
J. T. Trevors and M. H. Saier
Planet Earth is not an experiment in total global pollution, because if it is, humans and all other life forms are the test subjects. Total global pollution is actually 7 billion humans, consuming too many resources and dumping the wastes into the biosphere, which in turn has created a global climate change crisis and a lack of immediate and long-term solutions. Surely after decades of education, research, conferences, intergovernmental panels, the more recent World Wide Web, online journals and books and an immense amount of national and international research, all humans should have arrived at the conclusion that the biosphere is not a pollution experiment in progress. However, pollution is ubiquitous in all environments and life forms, even before birth. Why would every human being not understand that more humans and pollution are not required on this planet? If some humans do not understand this-what are the reasons? Could it be greed, ignorance, simply not caring, or they are of the incorrect opinion, that an artificial system such as the economy is more important than all natural systems and laws, upon which economic systems are truly dependent.
Planet Earth is not an experiment to determine if agricultural production can feed an increasingly hungry world, produce an immense number of useless consumer products, devise fraudulent and corrupt economic systems, infiltrated by fraudulent and corrupt people while at the same time causing as much global pollution as possible and accelerating the greenhouse effect. These activities can only have one disastrous outcome. Too many people consuming too many resources producing too much waste and destroying our singular, shared, common biosphere.
Human pollution and their wasteful byproducts are really the cause of most of our modern day problems. Economic growth is really an artificial construct, and a poor one at that, of the human mind, where some humans imagine that increasing productivity, efficiency and consumption equate to a better world for some, but certainly not for all humans. It is akin to the last great assault on the planet. In past centuries we have depleted fish stocks, deforested massive areas of land, caused immense erosion, extracted ores from the earth and left massive waste tailings, and have pumped oil out of the Earth to fuel economic growth.
Humans used wood and fire technologies to invent the necessary technologies to use coal technologies. Humans then used coal technology to invent the technologies necessary for oil technologies. Oil technologies were used to invent the technologies for nuclear technologies. Solar and wind technologies, hydrogen fuel cells and biofuel technologies are still a relatively small part of our current economy. However, some progress is being made, but at a relatively slow pace. The main problem is that by adding 75 million more humans to the population annually, human population growth outpaces the benefits of many of our newer technologies. Moreover, there are 75 million more people to feed and provide basic human rights and needs for, every year on the Earth. The equation is difficult to balance. More people make it increasingly difficult, to solve our shared global problems. It should be noted, there are likely many humans who believe these problems are not shared but are the problems of others and maybe even other countries. This is simply not true, especially in the present world of global financial systems, trading systems, interconnected markets, interconnected food, energy, transportation and communication grids.
While many individuals are making every attempt to reduce consumption and waste and provide a sustainable biosphere for future generations, many individuals are making little effort to reduce energy consumption and pollution in their individual lives. Many countries have failed to demonstrate leadership and cooperation in solving the climate change crisis. History will judge their stalling tactics, ignorance, myopic or no vision at all as clearly on the wrong side of humanities needs. They will be seen as people who did not have the skills, experience, leadership abilities, knowledge, political and humanitarian will, to do the correct thing. They will be judged harshly and deemed to be part of the problem not part of the solution.
Some of these people are loving parents, decent, honest and they often consider themselves religious and spiritual. They simply do not have the skills and knowledge to understand the severity of our current global pollution crisis, nor do they have any solutions. Their knowledge base is not sufficient, nor is it visionary and what is required for humanitarian thinking. They also suffer from another common problem-they fail to listen to those who have the correct answers. For some reason they find this intimidating and demonstrates their true lack of knowledge and vision. It is the responsibility of every responsible citizen of every country to ensure that these people never form a government based on greed, ignorance, control, warfare, conflicts, economic growth and lack of human population control. There is no future for humanity with total global pollution, resource depletion and uncontrolled human population growth.
J. T. Trevors
School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada, N1G 2W1
E-mail: jtrevors@uoguelph.ca
M. H. Saier
Division of Biological Sciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0116, USA
E-mail: msaier@ucsd.edu
- Login to post comments