Date: Wed, 3 May 00 19:14:37 -0700 From: Sylvia De Rooy <red1@humboldt1.com> To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg1390$foo@default> Subject: Earth Day
CPers might want to esp. note the bit about wetlands.
Earth Day At 30
If, in the thirty Earth Day celebrations we have held since 1970,
the human population and economy have become any more respectful of the
Earth, the Earth hasn't noticed.The planet is not impressed by fancy
speeches. Leonardo DiCaprio interviewing Bill Clinton about global warming
is not an Earth-shaking event. The Earth has no way of registering good
intentions or future inventions or high hopes. It doesn't even pay
attention
to dollars, which are, from a planet's point of view, just a charming
human invention.
Planets measure only physical things-energy and materials and their flows
into and out of the changing populations of living creatures.What
the Earth sees is that on the first Earth Day in 1970 there were 3.7
billion of those hyperactive critters called humans, and now there are
over 6 billion.
Back in 1970 those humans drew from the Earth's crust 46 million
barrels of oil every day-now they draw 78 million. Natural gas extraction
has nearly tripled in thirty years, from 34 trillion cubic feet per year
to
95 trillion. We mined 2.2 billion metric tons of coal in 1970; this year
we'll
mine about 3.8 billion.
The planet feels this fossil fuel use in many ways, as the fuels are
extracted (and spilled) and shipped (and spilled) and refined
(generating toxics) and burned into numerous pollutants, including
carbon dioxide, which traps outgoing energy and warms things up. Despite
global conferences and brave promises, what the Earth notices is that
human carbon emissions have increased from 3.9 million metric tons in
1970 to an
estimated 6.4
million this year. You would think that an unimaginably huge
thing like a planet would not notice the one degree (Fahrenheit) warming
it
has experienced since 1970. But on the scale of a whole planet, one
degree is a big
deal, especially since it is not spread evenly. The poles have warmed
more than the equator, the winters more than the summers, the nights
more than the days. That means that temperature DIFFERENCES from one place
to another have been changing much more than the average temperature has
changed.
Temperature differences are what make winds blow, rains rain,
ocean currents flow.
All creatures, including humans, are exquisitely attuned to the
weather.
All creatures, including us, are noticing weather weirdness and
trying to adjust, by moving, by fruiting earlier or migrating later, by
building up whatever protections are possible against flood and
drought.
The Earth is reacting to weather changes too, shrinking glaciers,
splitting
off nation-sized chunks of Antarctic ice sheet, enhancing the cycles we
call
El Nino and La Nina.
Since the first Earth Day our global vehicle population has swelled from
246 to 730 million. Air traffic has gone up by a factor of six.
The rate at which we grind up trees to make paper has doubled (to 200
million
metric tons per year). We coax from the soil, with the help of strange
chemicals, 2.25 times as much wheat, 2.5 times as much corn, 2.2
times as much rice, almost twice as much sugar, almost four times as many
soybeans as we did thirty years ago. We pull from the oceans almost
twice as much fish. With the fish we can see clearly how the planet
behaves,
when we push it too far. It does not feel sorry for us; it just follows
its
own rules. Fish become harder and harder to find. If they are caught
before
they're old enough to reproduce, if their nursery habitat is destroyed, if
we scoop up not only the cod, but the capelin upon which the cod feeds,
the fish may never come back.
The Earth does not care that we didn't mean it, that we promise not to do
it again, that we make nice gestures every Earth Day.
We have among us die-hard optimists who will berate me for not
reporting the good news since the last Earth Day. There is plenty of it,
but it is mostly measured in human terms, not Earth terms.
Average human life expectancy has risen since 1970 from 58 to 66 years.
Gross
world product has more than doubled, from 16 to 39 trillion dollars.
Recycling
has increased, but so has trash generation, so the Earth receives more
garbage than ever before. Wind and solar power generation have soared,
but so
have coal-fired, gas-fired and nuclear generation.
In human terms there has been breathtaking progress. In 1970 there
weren't any cell phones or video players. There was no Internet; there
were no dot-coms. Nor was anyone infected with AIDS, of course,
nor did we have to worry about genetic engineering. Global spending on
advertising was only one-third of what it is now (in inflation-corrected
dollars).
Third-World debt was one-eighth of what it is now.
Whether you call any of that progress, it is all beneath the notice of the
Earth. What the Earth sees is that its species are vanishing at a
rate it hasn't seen in 65 million years. That 40 percent of its
agricultural
soils have been degraded. That half its forests have disappeared and
half its wetlands have been filled or drained, and that, despite Earth
Day,
all these trends are accelerating.
Earth Day is beginning to remind me of Mother's Day, a commercial
occasion upon which you buy flowers for the person who, every other day
of the year, cleans up after you. Guilt-assuaging. Trivializing.
Actually dangerous. All mothers have their breaking points. Mother Earth
does not soften hers with patience or forgiveness or sentimentality.
Donella H. Meadows is an adjunct professor of environmental
studies at Dartmouth College.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jan 02 2001 - 17:35:08 PST