Taking Care
Of Ma Earth
By Tom Teepen
04 April, 2005
Daily Camera
These are shocking words. We would do well to listen to them:
"Human actions are depleting Earth's natural capital, putting such
strain on the environment that the ability of the planet's ecosystems
to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted."
Thus the conclusion
of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the United Nations' four-year
analysis, the broadest ever of the environment, with some 1,300 public
and private contributors from 95 countries.
There has been a
mini-trend of sorts lately to pooh-pooh environmental concerns as falling
somewhere between overwrought and hysterical. Environmentalism is dismissed
as yesterday's fad, a relic of the counterculture '60s finally put in
its place by the magisterial market economy.
And it is true that
environmentalism has an unfortunate affinity for alarmism. Some of its
gurus mimic the magazine-cartoon cliche of the bearded, berobed crank
with his "The End Is Near!" placard.
The apparently eternal
Malthusian shortfall on predictions that population would outstrip food
is a caution, and in fact the United Nations' paper reports good news
on food production. It's up. And ever-cannier cultivation promises still
more.
But much of what
we consume, and much of what the very concept of life itself depends
upon, cannot be cranked up to meet the demands of endless population
growth and heedless exploitation. We cannot produce more oceans in our
labs if we poison the ones we have. We can't manufacture a new atmosphere
if we degrade today's irreparably. There's no fairy dust for bringing
back dead species.
If not panic, care
at least is called for.
The indicators are
plain enough. The polar ice caps are melting, rain forests are being
felled. We have seen fisheries fail. The ozone layer has thinned and
is fraying. The mouths of major rivers have become dead zones.
We don't know the
carrying capacity of the biosphere. Somewhere out there, down the road,
there's a tipping point that will tilt it irretrievably toward collapse.
And collapse can come suddenly and utterly. The future is not a sure
bet.
The United Nations'
report provides, as one contributor put it, the first world-wide set
of "leading ecosystem indicators." We've now got a pretty
good idea of where we stand.
That will be important
only if we pay prudent attention, acknowledge the realities denial
is not a workable option set sound goals for sustainability and
cooperate internationally to secure them.
This living Earth
appears to be an extraordinarily rare place in the universe, which ought
to engage our vanity if nothing else. And so far the planet has been
remarkably forgiving. It has absorbed and survived our impositions and
insults. But the biosphere is finally a delicate filigree of interdependencies.
It may take nothing more malevolent than simple negligence to create
the big "Whoops."
But perhaps that
wouldn't matter. After all, there'd be no one to notice.
© 2005 Daily
Camera