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To
mark Earth Day, which fell on April 22, it is time for us to look at our
environment from the Earth’s perspective.
We should start by using a geological time scale, where natural phenomena
are not measured in days, weeks, months or even centuries, but in
millions of years.
Using the Earth’s temporal perspective, we will perceive things
differently from our human time frame.
The land on which we live is not static as we feel, but is actually
moving. The shapes of our continents are continuously changing, but these
geological changes are too slow for us to notice because we only live for
a very short time.
The Earth is approximately 4.6 billion-year-old, while the first hominid,
Australopithecines, appeared 3-4 million years ago. The genus Homo, to
which the term human refers, evolved from Autralopithecines about 2.4
million years ago. Modern humans, Homo sapiens, evolved around
300,000 years ago, very long in terms of human time but very short from
the Earth’s perspective.
Suppose the history of the earth was compressed into a single year, with
midnight Jan. 1 representing the origin of the earth and midnight Dec. 31
the present. Early humans would have appeared in the afternoon of Dec.
31, while modern humans would have appeared at 11:45 p.m. All
recorded history would have occurred in the last minute of the year.
Columbus would have discovered America three seconds before midnight.
As inhabitants of the Earth, early and modern humans have affected
and have been affected by the Earth. But the impact of humans on the
Earth has not been spread evenly throughout human history. Our
ancestor, Homo Erectus, was probably the first hominid to control fire.
Using fire, our ancestors could change the vegetation cover of land in
order to manage hunting.
The most dramatic changes we have made to the Earth have happened in the
last two hundred years, after the industrial revolution. The invention of
engines powered by coal, oil and gas, have drastically improved our
ability to modify the surface of the earth. Using human and animal power,
it would take more than a week to clear a hectare of forest, but using
chainsaws and tractors, it takes a day to do the same job.
With our technology we have altered a large portion of the Earth’s
surface and atmosphere. Agriculture has converted forest and grassland
into crop fields, turning biologically diverse ecosystems into
monoculture. Open mining has changed the land even more drastically,
turning forested land into degraded land. Transportation, industries and
other human activities pollute the Earth’s atmosphere.
One of our biggest forms of pollution is the emission of carbon into the
atmosphere. Our high consumption of fossil fuels has resulted in the
excavating and burning of carbon buried deep in the earth for millions of
years.
For decades, scientists have warned of the danger of global warming due
to the increase of carbon concentration in the atmosphere, but many
economic and political leaders remain unconvinced.
Apart from economic and political interests, their doubts about global
warming are due to the human insensitivity to gradual change. The
increase in the atmosphere’s temperature is too slow to be noticed by our
senses. In addition, the weather is naturally fluctuating. Despite global
warming, we may soon experience the coldest winter on record.
Unless we seriously curb our carbon emissions, our descendants will
experience the devastating effects of global warming in the next century,
but political leaders are less concerned with centuries than they are
decades. Scientists find it difficult to persuade them to make decisions
that may compromise their economic and political benefits based on a long
term prediction. But from the Earth’s perspective, a century is insignificant.
It is just a point in a long line of history.
What will be the impacts of global warming on Earth? The rise of sea
levels of up to two meters and extreme weather due to global warming will
be catastrophic to the human population, but the Earth will likely
survive the impact of global warming. As an ecosystem, the earth has self
regulating mechanisms to adjust to such changes and set the equilibrium.
In 4.6 billion years, the planet has undergone larger changes in its
atmospheric gas composition.
Will the Earth suffer if the human race becomes extinct? No, it will not.
Humans existence on Earth is just a flash in the planet’s long
history. The Earth existed for several billion years before humans
appeared and will last long after humans disappear, but if we take care
of Mother Earth, we will take care of ourselves and our future
generations. The Earth does not need us to survive, but we need a healthy
environment on Earth to survive.
Happy Earth Day! ●
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