Can Mankind Destroy Life on Earth?

ADDED 12-1-2013

 REPOST: TakePart
"A Dozen Deadly Reasons Why Nature Matters"

http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/11/22/deadly-dozen-reasons-why-nature-matters?cmpid=tpenviro-eml-2013-11-30-restaurant

By: Ralph Smith & Nancy J. Bell   (all photos found with Google Images)

    

Can Mankind destroy life on Earth?

A long quote from Michael Crichton - author of Jurassic Park - “You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away -- all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years.

Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change.

Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that's happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive gas, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself.

In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time… A hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try.

We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.”

How do we harm thee? Let me count the ways ....

Deforestation: http://inhabitat.com/google-launches-worlds-first-high-resolution-interactive-map-of-global-deforestation/ We are both cutting and planting forests, but the trend is negative - in other words we are every year losing more forest than we plant. How does this affect us? Forests are rich biomes - supporting plant and animal life. Under the canopy of the trees other smaller plants flourish, fertilized by the fallen leaves. Birds and a huge variety of mammals, reptiles and bugs (insects, arachnids and other small animals) as well as mosses, lichens, fungi and many others co-habit in a lush world of interdependence. When we cut forests we lose those species.

The problem is complicated by the fact that much of the re-foresting is of a single species, instead of the multiple and competing types of trees found in most "natural" forest areas. A single species of tree cannot support a multiplicity of other species, and it is far more vulnerable to disease - a single tree disease can wipe out an entire forest, leaping from tree to tree with no intervening trees of different types unaffected by the disease to slow or stop its advance.

We have not improved matters by instituting monoculture into our stewardship of the forests, we are setting up a huge games of teetering dominoes.
Extinction: http://www.poodwaddle.com/clocks/worldclock/ This is a very cool website which tracks all sorts of "progress", including the disappearance of species, aka extinction. The number represented here is the number of species that have gone extinct this calendar year. What most people fail to realize is that life is a complex web - a weaving of many strands of which humanity is only one. Every time a species goes extinct, one of the threads of this rich and marvelous tapestry is pulled out of the whole. How many strands can we lose before the whole fabric of our ecosystem begins to unravel on its own? Frighteningly, we do not know the answer, but we proceed, in our ignorant power to destroy, as if everything we do makes no difference to the whole.
	Desertification: http://www.maps.com/ref_map.aspx?pid=12874 Desertification is the advance of deserts - the consumption of fertile areas by shifting sands and blowing dust. It's not that there is no life in a desert, it's simply that the life that exists there is thin, fragile, and incapable of supporting many people. North Africa used to be the breadbasket of the Roman Empire - now it is an area of bleak sand and rock, larger than the continental United States, and advancing south at a frightening 43 kilometers per year along a front 1500 kilometers across. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_fast_is_the_Sahara_desert_expanding_each_year#slide1 This is only 1 of several areas where the desert is slowly, inexorably, and at this point, unstoppably consuming the areas on which we depend for our food, wood, water and the rest.
Pollution: http://news.discovery.com/earth/global-warming/nasa-earth-map-illuminates-where-pollution-kills-130928.htm This map shows areas where pollution contributes to human deaths. There are many kinds of pollution - air, water and ground pollution are familiar to most people. http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/encyclopedia/pollution/?ar_a=1

But there are other kinds - light pollution, from man-made light sources disturb plants and animals that depend on a period of darkness to survive.

Noise pollution disturbs sleep and hibernation cycles, interrupting processes which depend on relative quiet. Noise pollution can also include systems like sonar, which confuse the migration of aquatic species, interfere with their communication with one another, and generally mess up the natural order of things.

A sampling of the other kinds of pollution - pesticides, oil spills and diffusion of petroleum by products, trash including heavy metals and plastics, which persist for tens of thousand of years, including our large and growing garbage continents [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch].

Additionally, we could take into account pollution from smog, runoff, fertilizer, algal blooms which consume the oxygen dissolved in water and suffocate life forms which breathe, http://www.businessinsider.com/map-of-worldwide-marine-dead-zones-2013-6 agriculture which crowds out more diverse ecosystems and, well, you get the point. Our activities produce substances in large quantities which the world has a hard time processing and eliminating, and in the meantime, we wreck havoc on the existing life forms and ecologies.

Extreme Toxic Waste Spills

Kingston, TN – TVA Spill DEC 2008 http://www.ask.com/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill?o=2801&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com	Gulf of Mexico – BP Deep Water Horizon Spill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill

Urbanization - as our cities continue to multiply and grow - they take the place of other uses of land. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/world/06/urbanisation/html/urbanisation.stm Cities are not entirely hostile to life-forms - humans live there in great numbers, along with our partners in urbanization - rats, cockroaches, dogs and cats. As cities grow, other types of landscapes retreat, and the life forms which occupied them die.

Anthropogenic global warming: Humans are not the only contributors to global warming - the earth has experienced cycles vast in duration where things get warmer, and then colder. But we certainly contribute to the current cycle http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/world/06/urbanisation/html/urbanisation.stm . Some species will adapt, some will leap ahead in a warmer earth, others will fail to adapt and perish. Since we still know very little about the effects of a warmer world on our fellow life forms, it is too early to say who will be the winners and who the losers in a warmer world. However, a warmer world with higher levels of carbon dioxide can be shown to have a present and continuing effect in a number of areas - the acidification of the ocean, which harms coral reefs and animals which have shells; a rise in sea level which will result in submergence of much of the current coastlines of the world and forcing the very large human populations resident there to seek other land on which to live. There is a great deal of speculation, argument and information available about these effects so I leave you to it with no further elaboration here.

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs): I would like to mention 3 threats of GMOs to our world - 1) loss of biodiversity, 2) unforeseen effects of incipient organisms; 3) economic control of species by the "owners" of the new plant and animal species.

Briefly then:

1) Biodiversity refers to the complexity of the web of life - roughly - the more diverse an ecology is the healthier it is in terms of resistance to disease, predation, natural or man-made catastrophes. GMO's go hand in hand with monoculture, and thus reduce biodiversity and threaten the robustness of living systems.
			2) The world exists as a series of checks and balances - when one species grows too numerous, it's natural enemies also grow numerous and act as a brake on their proliferation. We are introducing species which do not exist in the natural world - and without producing their enemies, as the goal is to increase the numbers and geographic extent of the new species in order to enjoy the traits and attributes of our creations more widely. But, we have no idea what the effect of these new life-forms will be on the natural world; there could (and will) be all sorts of effects we have not foreseen by promoting this imbalance. Furthermore, we have no track record of the effect of these GMO's on ourselves - we are only now starting to eat them and wash with them and wear them and so on, so we do not and cannot know if they will be beneficial or harmful to us. This is a gamble the corporations are willing to take and we are the guinea pigs in this giant experiment.
	·         3) The companies which introduce GMO life forms own them, and have every motive to spread them in preference to existing, unpatentable species. They have shown a willingness to be very aggressive in pushing their pet species. Along with the fact that we have to buy them from these corporations, they are selling seeds that do not propagate annually, and are advancing legal restrictions on the ability of farmers to keep a portion of crops that do produce fertile seeds. Taken together with the fact that they also sell novel fertilizers for these "frankenfoods", as well as making them pest resistant (killing off the life forms which feed on natural species), we are introducing a new game, with rules made by corporations and their pet politicians. Corporations are legal entities, but they are also immortal, have no feelings, and operate under a set of rules (short-term profits, long term control of markets, elimination of competition, legal responsibility to maximize shareholder value) which would be judged as insane if a human being behaved strictly according to those imperatives.

This is by no means an exhaustive study of the effects, intended as well as unintended, we are having on our world. Ozone depletion, space junk, wars, resource depletion, over-fishing, climate change-related wild fires and storms, loss of aquifers, the spread of radioactive materials, strip mining, fracking and other habitat loss… the list goes on and on. Our effects are seemingly advancing faster than we can even begin to realize, much less evaluate or mitigate.

You may ask, in the face of this litany of destruction, what can a person do? Here are a few suggestions:

I.                   Take your money out of the bank and put it into a credit union. Big banks stand behind the whole corporate system; money is their food, starve them of their food and they will have less scope for their profit-motivated blind mischief.

II. Join or form, and shop at a member-owned Cooperative. Form all sorts of cooperatives to provide your necessities. When the organization gets too big, split it into two or more organizations. This means taking an active part in the provision and production of your own necessities.

III.             Buy local, organic, heirloom foods. Shop whenever possible at small, locally owned businesses. Avoid large corporate-owned stores, restaurants, etc. Remember we are starving the heartless behemoths of their life-blood and encouraging "economic bio-diversity" when we support our small businesses.

IV. Start a garden and grow your own food. Be ready to use natural methods of pest control - ladybugs, praying mantises, and marigolds, to name just a few. Use only natural fertilizers - no man-made petroleum based products. Start a compost pile and reduce your contribution to landfills while keeping the nutrients in your own yard. Get rid of as much of your lawn as possible and replace it with a vegetable garden and plants that flower so we can keep the bees alive.
II.                Get out of your car and walk, jog or ride a bicycle. If you can, get rid of your car altogether - save money and the planet at the same time. At the very least - always ask yourself - is this trip necessary?

VI. Stay informed and involved. Know who your representatives are - learn what they stand for. Always vote for the person who supports the most of what you believe - abandon party politics for the choices which will help save our lives and the richness of the Earth. Take the time to learn about local, regional, national and international topics under discussion - THEY ALL AFFECT YOU and your children and their children.

VII) Never ever think things are hopeless. The current situation got this way because most people withdraw from action, thinking they cannot make a difference. That philosophy is wrong, and it is the thing the powerbrokers count on to continue having their way. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

VII) Stop fearing each other, or we shall become that which we fear! Unity and cooperation create and encourage the balance necessary to allow life as we want to know it to continue.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and remember - the billions of people on earth are the single greatest force for change - we determine, collectively by the sum of our countless daily actions, the direction in which we are taking each other and our irreplaceable world.