Right now, it seems to me and to a lot of other scientists, that the human species is at a crossroads in regard to our longterm survival. The earth really cannot support 11 billion people, as the UN now projects as the world population in 2100. This is not just because of crowding or food resources, but because of numerous predictable and unpredictable factors. Water, as I said in an earlier diary, is a big issue in arid lands, but also potable safe water is a problem in places where fresh water is plentiful, such as the Niger River in Africa (See: http://water.org/....) Other problems include other forms of pollution, displacement of habitats, species extinction and many more. For those who think we can just do as we please with forest, deserts, lakes, rivers, and oceans, or even farmland, I think it would be instructive to watch a recent TED talk by Bernie Krause that was recently pointed out to me. Krause has recorded the sounds of environments around the planet. See: http://www.ted.com/...
Krause early in his presentation contrasts the difference between natural forests and "selectively cut" forest in regard to the diminishing of bird song. Clear cut forests are even more damaged (as one might think- there is simply no habitat left! See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...), but we humans do seem to like the idea that we can have our cake and eat it too. If you want birds and bees, you have to leave a fair amount of the forest alone. This is also true of fish and the oceans, rivers, ponds, and creeks and other creatures in other natural habitats. Are we following that absolutely necessary path? No - not at all! Are we smart enough to stop this process before the seas are fished out, all the forests are gone, the birds no longer sing, and we have no fresh water to drink or enough food to eat? It does not look good! I wish I could be more hopeful and there are some bright spots as countries like Namibia and Bolivia start to think in terms of "Nature's Rights." However the trends in the developing and developed world as a whole are still downward as Russia vetoes a sanctuary in Antarctic, whaling countries bribe the whaling commission, fishing fleets violate international agreements, climate and biodiversity conferences get nowhere, and even commercial shell collecting companies take advantage of civil unrest to pillage the coral reefs in places like the southern Philippines. We keep building pipelines, transporting dangerous cargo by rail or ship, dumping toxic waste, trash, etc. These mount up into the huge floating waste dump of the Pacific Gyre, now at least twice the size of Texas (although estimates of it being much larger have been made,) for example.
Population is another contributing issue and it seems ironic that we are having an argument over even having easily available birth control, let alone abortion, in the 21st Century. We should be encouraging voluntary birth control and the empowerment of women, both of which would at least slow the population growth. Some environmentalist may have been wrong about how soon we would have a dire population crisis (in Africa AIDS slowed population growth for a while and modern food production has for a time delayed the crisis), but at the rate we are going we certainly will have it. In some parts of the world we have it already!
Being a Cassandra is not pleasant, but people often forget that Cassandra was cursed with seeing the future, but never being believed. In the myth Apollo had cursed her because she had spurned his advances. Unfortunately both she and Agamemnon were murdered by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, Clytemnestra's lover, as she had foreseen. She was thus not an idle doom-sayer like the boy who cried wolf was initially. Cassandra should be rehabilitated in the public eye!
Even if we were not staring at massive global climate change, the agricultural crisis (water availability, fertilizer, diseases, pests, lack of pollinators), pollution of the skies and waters (mitigated in some places, but not completely gone away, while in others it gets worse,) our mountains of trash, our destruction of biodiversity, the overfishing of the oceans - all of these would be almost insurmountable problems. Yet our House of Representatives only seems to have time for voting Obamacare out of existence for the umpteenth time rather than at least trying to deal with a very real train approaching us at an ever faster clip.
Some, I know, believe that Christ will come by 2050 or at least soon enough apparently to save us from our folly. There will be a new heaven and a new earth! As a person who sort of grew up in that tradition, I to some extent understand these people. The main difference was that most of the preachers I heard back then said that the time of Christ's coming could not be known. Some more reasonable evangelists have since formed a sort of good earth stewart movement, but they are certainly not as loud as either the religious right or the Tea Party types who resent being told that they need to sacrifice a bit or that some people may know more about a subject than they do.
As a biologist who had a college education I found the whole notion to be questionable at best and quite possibly very dangerous. Why do anything to improve things on earth if it will only be replaced by a brand new and perfect world? We are to some extent held prisoner by this religious belief, but it is not a totally mainstream Christian tenet. Nor is it the only false concept that is keeping us from dealing with global climate change and other environmental problems. Rampant radical Capitalism, in both Capitalistic and Communistic societies (think China) are working against us. It is thus important who we elect to office, despite some cynical views to the contrary, and it seems in this case that our lives may indeed depend on it, assuming that anything can be done to stop the process that we have unleashed.
George Carlin in a monolog (See: http://www.youtube.com/...) says that we worry too much about the environment. In some ways he is correct; worry seldom helps, but of course we should be at least trying to avert disaster, which Carlin appears to disparage. He did say one thing that does strike me as very true - nature is capable of dispensing with us as she would fleas that had become especially bothersome.
That said, despair is not useful and is not an option. Unlike Cassandra we are not able to exactly predict the future, although we can say that it does not look encouraging. Perhaps we can at least mitigate the problems and it seems to me that we would be wise to try. If we do nothing than the future will certainly be bleak. If we at least try we could perhaps aspire to be Homo sapiens, as we arrogantly call ourselves - man the wise! Otherwise we may find ourselves to be a failed experiment and have to hunt for a new home (See: http://www.spokesman.com/....) Mother Nature is, of course, a metaphor, but she is a useful one. If what some physicists say is likely (See: Smolin, Lee. 2013. Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) time is possibly the only unqualified reality. Let us hope that we have enough of this to at least extend our survival within it.
This will probably be my last diary on this depressing subject. I am almost certainly preaching to the choir anyway, but I think that I had to lay these thoughts out for the record and for my own clarity. From now on I will continue my series on Women in Science and the occasional essay on natural history subjects. Now is the time to act, based on what we know to be likely, and at the same time appreciate what we still have. Earth is our home and I intend to stay and fight, even if it is a an uphill, or even hopeless (as Carlin would have it), battle. For one thing I need to fight for the future of our grandchild, as well as for the future of everybody's grandkids. Even if we can only save a small part of what is good, it should be done. Action without attachment to the results of action in this case means that it is important to act without the necessity of having the result one wants (although accepting of what good things come of the action,) simply because the action is the right thing to do. End of sermon!