CHAPTER < TEN – RENEGOTIATING HUMAN DESTINY

“Before man can transcend the present, before he can view nature in this new dimension, he must first change himself.” Conservationist and Biologist Dr George B. Schaller

There is a phenomenon that humanity shares with the rest of the animal kingdom, from bees in a hive to matriarchal elephant herds roaming the African savannah. It is the phenomenon of population regulation as dictated by density-dependent and density-independent factors.

When in times of plenty, populations of insects and animals multiply by leaps and bounds their numbers reach a certain point beyond which they begin to push the outer limits of the carrying capacity of their environment. At this point the individuals within that population are forced to compete with increasing intensity for resources that begin to dwindle. Population density often causes the characteristics of these population members to change; with density-dependent effects ranging from hormonal changes to the way individuals behave, coming in to play. In this way aggression can become a density-dependent effect brought about by overpopulation and correspondingly inadequate resources.

One example that a density-dependent effect has on a community is the savagery displayed by a colony of rats that has outgrown its habitat. In the congestion of overcrowding the rats, which previously coexisted harmoniously, now turn on each other in a desperate attempt to ensure that their individual needs are met.

Perhaps in a similar way the aggression in humans that builds under conditions of overcrowding until it eventually explodes into a situation of regional conflict or even global war, is also a density-dependent effect; a built-in survival mechanism designed by evolution as a safety valve to ensure the long-term continuation of the human race, as conflict decimates human numbers to levels the Earth can continue to support. And if density-dependent effects do not have the required result, then density-independent factors are able to regulate human numbers: factors such as extreme climate variability, water scarcity and geological catastrophes.

So far we have been able to avoid the unrecoverable effects of both scenarios through strong procreative instincts, advanced technologies, relatively stable food supplies, improved hygiene and sanitation, better healthcare, improved education for greater numbers of people, watchdog regulating influences such as the work done by the United Nations and a fair degree of luck. Thus, though our stay on this Earth has been marked by geological upheavals such as earthquakes, avalanches and other natural disasters, as well as plague, famine, and conflict, which have at times significantly reduced our population, we have been able to recover and even advance from these bases of denuded numbers.

However, although in most countries around the world today people have reached a stage of sociological development whereby they have been able to tame most of their aggressive instincts, as well as achieve a remarkable level of mastery over their natural environment, there can be no doubt that we are still hostage to aspects of our human character. We are also at the mercy of the vagaries and dictates of planet Earth. And although we have undoubtedly made considerable gains over past decades we are still at risk, for the intelligence that is threatening our civilisation and bringing us to the point of planetary depletion: the intelligence to conceive and build nuclear weapons and achieve a level of technological advancement capable of wholesale stripping of the Earth’s resource base within decades, could ultimately be the agent of our destruction. Unless of course we are able to out-intellectualise our own intelligence!

What I mean by this is that if, by changing as a species and transcending to another level of consciousness and understanding altogether, we are able to avert calamitous devastation either through the avoidance of global warfare or widespread ecological destruction, we will have succeeded in taking our intelligence to another, higher, plane. And if from this higher plane, calling upon a universal state of grace, we are able to develop the wisdom to recognise the wrong turns in the road we have made in the past, we should be able to creatively reroute our progression. If at the eleventh hour we can pull this off it will be a quantum leap for humankind, on a scale that has never been achieved before.

There can be no doubt that we are at an important crossroads and the decisions that we make now will have momentous significance for our own lives and those of future generations. Meeting the challenge will require the harnessing of different characteristics and strengths from the ones we have relied on previously. It will require a heightened awareness and a changed global mindset. It will require different priorities, values and ethics. It will require a shared vision and an unparalleled degree of co-operation, across national boundaries and between national leaders and among nations’ citizens. It will require different individual and group behaviours. And it will require clearer and more intense communication strategies.

But isn’t it just possible that alongside the scale of frightening devastation that could befall us if we fail, there could be emerging a previously unknown human capacity for wisdom and selflessness? And isn’t it also possible that in terms of the human transformation that is taking place around the globe, it could be the time right now for many of us to feel the call to action, heeding the challenges that lie before us? There are many indications I believe for this to be so.

Challenges of Change

Change. It is an image that conjures up a multitude of different emotions in different people. And whether the spectrum of feelings it arouses ranges from flutters of pleasant anticipation to episodes of anxiety or paroxysms of gut-wrenching fear, for most of us change is not something that we undertake lightly. Of course, there are those endemic risk-takers among us who relish every shade of change possible, actively seeking out its each and every nuance in their readiness to live life on the edge, readily turning their lives upside down at a moment’s notice. However, these intrepid people are in the minority I believe, for in my experience, it simply goes against the grain of human nature to want the status quo to be upturned. And for most of us this is certainly not before we have had a chance to settle comfortably into a groove of contented living.

Even when we find that life has become a difficult path, cosy and comfortable no longer, will few of us risk the changes and initiate the actions that have the potential to alter our personal landscapes forevermore. It is only when we get to the point where we feel that enough is enough. When we realise that the circumstances of our lives just will not do for us anymore. When we have given more than we are prepared to or can afford to give at the time. Or when our frustration with the existing status quo overwhelms us and we find ourselves bursting to press onwards regardless of the consequences. Then and only then are most of us galvanised into unravelling the patterns that have become the panoramas of our lives so that a new, more worthwhile and satisfying pattern may emerge.

The catalysts that propel us toward a significant turning point in our lives are as many and varied as the array of everyday circumstances that go into the making up of our individual earthly experience. They are also as intimate and personal as the sacred elements that give our lives meaning. Propellants toward change could be sudden insights or “aha” flashes of comprehension that come to us as bolts of lightning out of the blue, or they could be prolonged realisations that we at long last decide to act upon. They could be momentous life-altering experiences that forever change our reality, or small, everyday situations that daily wear us down, until one day, one becomes the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

They could be a chain reaction of incidents that cause us to flounder in a downward spiral until we reach rock bottom, with nowhere else to go but up. Or single dramatic decisions, which like a stick of dynamite, have the capacity to blast us into an entirely new dimension of being. Catalysts of change could also less dramatically but no less significantly be the result of having negotiated an important life passage with all its twists and turns, crises and growth, thereby attaining a new maturity and with it, a new level of understanding. Whatever the individual catalyst, once past the point of no return when a commitment to a path of change has been embarked upon, there can be no turning back for to do so would be to risk stagnation or painful retrogression.

Negotiating a passage of change often feels like trying to find one’s way in a wilderness of insecurity. It is like climbing a high jagged mountain blindfolded or stumbling through a long dark night without a torch to light the way. It tests the mettle of the strongest among us and yet in the testing it also strengthens the weak. Indeed it is well within the capacity of each and every one of us to transform the circumstances of our lives overnight. And if changing our circumstances seems at first to be too daunting a task, then it is at least possible for us to alter the attitude with which we view our circumstances so that our lives immediately take on a different hue and shade, in this way prolonging the inevitable until we have had a chance to adjust to the new reality…

CHAPTER < NINE CONTD - RETHINKING BASIC ASSUMPTIONS

Since the 17th Century when the telescope was invented and sunspots were first observed, these impressive displays of extraterrestrial temperament have continued to fascinate astronomers. However above and beyond this visual fascination, sunspots and solar flares with their violent solar winds of high-speed electrically charged particles, are believed to cause and affect many diverse phenomena on our planet; from disturbances of Earth’s magnetism to episodes of influenza pandemics which have been found to correlate with cycles of intense sunspot activity.

Solar flares increase negative ionization on Earth and this increase in negative ions affects human beings, seeming to exaggerate erratic behaviour, which could be borne out by the fact that an increase in admissions to mental hospitals has been linked to the occurrence of solar flares and that, many wars, revolutions, rebellions and riots have taken place during periods of maximum sunspot activity.

In the last century alone, major events such as World War One, the Russian Revolution, World War Two, mass civil disobedience in India, the Korean War, the Falklands War, the Chinese Student uprising, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of apartheid in South Africa, the disruption of the peace treaty in Northern Ireland and the renewed fighting between Palestinians and Israelis, have all coincided with periods of sunspot maxima.

Control over the environment within which we live is merely illusory. The little control that we have is dependent on a number of interrelated factors, most of which are beyond our ability to affect. The truth is that we are at the mercy of the elements of the land, sea, sky, and solar system. Powerful magnetic storms; earthquakes that crack open the ground destroying buildings, bridges and road works; mudslides that slice off a side of a mountain; avalanches that envelop everything in their headlong downhill rush; volcanoes that spew out the molten insides of the globe; tsunami waves that race along the surface of the sea to finally crash onto the shore: these are all natural phenomena that are beyond our ability to control. They are dramatic reminders that we are but travelers in time and space, guests of the planet Earth and not its masters.

If It Doesn’t Work Out We Can Always Leave

When the Apollo 11 Mission reached the Moon’s Sea of Tranquility on 20 July 1969, the images that the spacecraft sent back to Earth captured the imagination of people everywhere. Everyone old enough to understand the magnitude of what had been achieved and privileged enough to see the first moonprint and other iconic images that were flashed across television screens and printed in newspapers, marveled at the brilliance and audacity that had resulted in the first lunar walk by previously earthbound human beings.

It was a defining moment in the history of humanity because for the first time we were able to see the Moon, not as we had always seen it, as a far-off mysteriously beautiful silver orb or crescent that hung suspended in our night sky, but close-up as a dusty grey planet, pitted and pockmarked from its battering by other celestial bodies. Perhaps these media images, anchored as they were in the brash authenticity of modern technology, took away much of the romance that had always been associated with the Moon. But for us on Earth, the compensation for this loss of moonstruck romanticism was the images flashed back from outer space of our own planet.

For what these images enabled us to see for the first time, was an exquisite blue and white sphere shimmering with radiance against the vast dense blackness of outer space. And what a sight it was. If we had thought that the Moon from afar was breathtaking, what we learned more than 30 years ago was that lunar brightness was a poor comparison to the matchless incandescence of our own sunlit blue and white planet.What those images also unequivocally brought home to us was the vulnerability of our world as it spun in silent solitude through deep space. With this understanding came a perception about our own vulnerability, because we realised that for the time being there is nowhere else to go. This planet is it. This is all we have for now. Earth is home. Interplanetary exploration continues to reinforce this perception because since the first pioneering interplanetary flight, our spacecraft have orbited, passed by or landed on more than 70 new worlds, none of which have been habitable.

And so the outcome of Cold War nationalism, which led to the first man from Earth walking and setting a United States flag upon the Moon, was surprising. Because quite apart from lunar exploration and superpower one-up-man-ship, it led to the unexpected unification of humankind in the realisation of our interdependence. Perhaps for the first time in human history we realised that there is more at stake here than selfish national interest. Or perhaps this is a lesson that the ancients knew well but one that was forgotten over time and one that we have had to relearn?

Perhaps the words on the plaque that the astronauts set upon the Moon that read, “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969 AD. We came in peace for all mankind.” were more prophetic than we had then realised. Now we know them to be true. The achievement of the goal of lunar landing by three men from the United States represented an achievement for all of humanity.

Conversely, in the same way that the positive actions of some can benefit all, the negligent or destructive actions of some nations and some corporations and some people also have the potential to adversely affect us all. For good or bad we are all in this life on Earth together and for the meantime at least, there is nowhere else for us to go. His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama has said, “We must make this new century a century of peace and dialogue”.

Today’s world cannot withstand another World War or Hiroshima with its devastating nuclear consequences. The stakes have risen far too high. With excessive firepower at our command, it has become too easy for global or even regional conflict to escalate until it tips the balance of our entire civilisation and the natural world on which we depend, into a black hole of no return.

For this reason it is imperative that responsible and level-headed leadership at every level of government and non-governmental institution prevails and that we learn to get along, putting aside cultural, ideological, financial and other differences in the goal of the global common good. And failing this, if retaliatory acts of aggression are inevitable in order to maintain national security and pride that we negotiate through neutral parties the means of conflict from a long-term perspective, keeping in mind that the effects of today’s confrontations could make the world uninhabitable for our own and generations still to come…

CHAPTER < NINE CONTD - RETHINKING BASIC ASSUMPTIONS

The following are some of the most insidious examples of erroneous thinking of our time:

There’s Always More Where That Came From

In the movie “Wall Street” the main protagonist, Gordon Gekko, played by the actor Michael Douglas, shouts out the words “Greed is good” to a conference room full of company shareholders. He is wildly cheered and applauded for voicing the dark side of the American dream and these words sound entirely plausible within the context of the scene in this movie, which is an examination of rampant 1980s self-interest at work in the American corporate system. This pretty much sums up the thinking of the latter part of the 20th Century.

Hand in glove with this thinking went the mindset that nature was infinite. That nature was there to serve us. That disposability and planned obsolescence equaled profitability. That constant growth and demand were positive forces and that environmentally damaging activities were justifiable in order to drive a world economy that was spiraling ever upwards. Consequently it was easy to rationalise away the plunder of the Earth’s resources on a scale never before attempted.

Practices such as discounting over distance enabled nations in some parts of the world to close their eyes to the reality of ecological ransacking in other parts of the world and a self-centered, isolationist, island mentality enabled such practices to exist in the first place. However, the stark reality of the 21st Century is quite different.

In our present ecological circumstances there is no way that greed can ever again be seen as being good, for we now live in a world where there is no longer always more where that came from. We now know that the supply of essential non-renewable raw materials and other resources is exhaustible and that stockpiling is not the answer over the long term, regardless of the ability to be able to afford to do so in terms of material wealth. Because stockpiling in some parts of the world could mean dwindling supplies in other parts of the world. And over time this imbalance could lead to a net global deficit with all its dreadful ecological implications, as well as the possibility of competitiveness for these last remaining resources spilling over into deadly conflict. With the arsenal of frightening weapons at our disposal, this is a possibility that we dare not entertain.

I’m All Right Jack

The individual is undeniably the primary unit of humankind. However, the last decades of the 20th Century were characterised by a mindset that set undue store by the individual. It was the era of the “me-decades” when “me-ness” abounded and the individual was king. Along with this overemphasis on individual needs and rights flourished an attitude of expanded expectations and voracious entitlement. In fact this period of human history became known as the Age of Entitlement, during which our individual personal interests took precedence over the interests of the collective and in the process the entire focus of our lives changed.

The post-war baby-boomers of the affluent Western world became known as the “me-generation”, and with this dramatic paradigm shift “me-ism” drowned out “us-ism”, until we had moved away from the value system of our forefathers; a creed that had emphasised mutual co-operation, consideration and support as essential preconditions for survival.

Looking out for Number One became big business. However, for many people it meant that self-interest precluded friendship, with generosity of spirit and altruistic involvement in other people’s lives, flying out of the window. “I’m all right Jack”, effectively became one of our defining cultural cornerstones and with it we lost the attitudinal bedrock of our species. With this incursion into rampant self-interest confusion reigned as certainty over roles, responsibilities and life tasks became blurred.

Within the family, this paradigm shift took the emphasis from the good of the family unit and replaced it with that of the individual family member. In many families around the world, this changed attitude translated into either one or both parents believing that it was their right to go off and find themselves in various activities and relationships outside the family unit, or in different places of contemplation, leaving their families to fend for themselves.

With an increasing number of fathers going off into the sunset, mothers left with the challenge of raising their children single-handedly, were propelled into the pace and competitiveness of an unforgiving workplace. Acting on the necessity to compete, as well as the strident cue from the women’s movement which stressed personal achievement and fulfillment at all costs, meant that many women reduced their lives to a blinkered focus on their careers, often to the exclusion of all else. And children, with the example set by parents each going about their own lives and doing their own thing without much thought for anyone else, also learnt to go their own way and do their own thing, reinforcing in another generation this rising tide of rampant self-interest.

From the most basic and important building block of society, the family unit, this attitudinal and behavioural tide washed into every corner of our lives, flooding upwards, downwards and sideways until it had infiltrated into the loftiest global corridors of power. Once there, it permeated the thinking and decisions of politicians and bureaucrats, and in the process the control and management of vital resources all too frequently became currency for political maneuvering and personal gain.

On the ground this ethical malaise translated into government policies that patently did not take the big picture into account. The result were practices that have harmed rather than benefited the majority of world citizens and from a global perspective, this has meant that greed, corruption and short-sighted self-interest have virtually guaranteed ecological bankruptcy in many parts of the globe. As we progress further into the 21st Century, it is glaringly obvious that unless we change this thinking, and with it the malignantly self-serving practices that have brought us to this point, none of us will be all right, Jack.

Might Is Right

Svetlana Alliluyeva, the daughter of Marshall Joseph Stalin and one of the people closest to him, was able to observe first-hand and at close quarters the effects of unchecked power. Growing up in her father’s official residence in Soviet Russia, she had ample opportunity as a child, and then as an adolescent, to reflect on the destructiveness of the policy “Harm thy neighbour, before thy neighbour harms thee” as many members of her family, including her mother, were systematically destroyed by Stalin’s tyrannical ambition.

As an adult she was later able to compare two ideologically opposite approaches to life; the ruthless power mongering of Stalin who ruled communist Russia with an iron fist and the humane philosophy of Brajesh Singh, her Indian friend, rejecting the one and embracing the other. As Svetlana wrote in her book Only One Year: “What two approaches to life could have differed more drastically? The tolerance of one, the dogmatism of the other: calm and fear, trust and suspiciousness, modesty and ambition, forgiveness and revenge, kindness and wrath, the strength of the spirit and the strength of arms.”

After renouncing the Godlessness of Soviet Union communism, Sveltana Alliluyeva was baptised in the Orthodox Church, and it was upon reflecting back over her life after her baptism that she observed: “And it was then that my father’s whole life stood out before me as a rejection of Wisdom, of Goodness, in the name of ambition, as a complete giving of oneself to Evil. For I had seen how slowly, day by day, he had been destroyed by evil, and how evil had killed all those who stood near him. He had simply sunk deeper and deeper into the black chasm of the lie, of fury and pride. And in that chasm he at last had smothered to death.”

Stalin’s slide into darkness, according to his daughter, was the result of untrammeled power. As the supreme military ruler of the Soviet Union, he was able at a whim to exile people to the furthest reaches of frozen Siberia, or in a fit of pique to order their execution without trial or normal investigation. Consequently, few people chose to oppose him for fear of repercussions out of all proportion to their opposition.

In his personal and political life Stalin was rude, autocratic and arrogant, and he believed and acted on the premise that his power gave him the unopposed right to do as he wished. Instead of creating positively with the influence of judicious power, he chose to destroy with the negativity of absolute rule. And in the end this power, untempered by any moderating influence, destroyed him. In the words of his daughter Svetlana, “At the peak of his glory and power he had experienced neither happiness nor satisfaction; instead, he was tormented by an eternal fear. Having created a void around himself, he then led up a blind alley all those who had gone on blindly believing in him”.

There is a powerful lesson to be learnt in the story of Stalin and that is that unchallenged power, used unwisely, has the capacity to destroy from the inside out as well as from the outside in. From the ancient dynasties of Imperial China, through the republics of the Roman Empire, to the monarchical reigns of Great Britain, virtually every major civilisation since recorded time has been propped up by the conscious and unconscious presumption that the mightiest are the worthiest. It has been the underpinning philosophy of capitalism.

Yet even communism, the supposed leveler of humankind, has its ruling class with its corresponding access to disproportionate power. More recently, during the second half of the 20th Century, this assumption spread across society reaching to its furthest possible point across the globe. The premise for this mindset was that the power to obtain the wherewithal, either through fair means or foul, entitled the powerful to have their wishes granted and their actions executed, often with little fear of long-term repercussions.

The result of power without broad-picture accountability enabled the government of one of the world’s most pro-nuclear countries, France, despite worldwide outcry and the boycotting of French products in some countries, to continue underground nuclear testing long after other more prudent nations halted the practice. And with the might to prowl the ocean in powerful sea-going vessels, the government of Japan seized the right to continue hunting whales on the premise of scientific study, whilst more ecologically-enlightened nations halted whale hunting altogether.

Even in the United States, the world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gasses, the Bush administration decided that, despite evidence of the danger to the global environment caused by greenhouse emissions, the United States would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol. By taking this stance, it effectively put economics and the interests of a comparative few before those of the majority of world inhabitants. However the “might is right” ethic unfortunately has not begun and ended at a national level.

With short-term gain as their motive, many corporations have also seen fit to undertake harmful and unfair practices with little restraining intervention: practices such as the mining of oil in the Niger Delta which has caused extensive environmental damage to vast tracts of land, polluting important sources of water. This has had far-reaching and long lasting consequences for thousands of people living in the area, many of whom have had to evacuate their homes and the fields that constituted their livelihood.

However, knowing this, knowing that the “might is right” mindset effectively eliminates consideration for the broader picture; this short-sighted thinking has continued to play a part in corporate operating procedures across the globe. Unfortunately individuals have also subscribed to the belief that their money, power and position guaranteed them the right to do as they pleased, without fear of repercussions or any regard for the effects of their actions on the broader picture. Because of this malignant mindset, people thinking only of their short-term personal gain have exploited many terrestrial and marine species up to and even beyond the point of extinction through greed and ignorance.

In a world teetering on the brink of catastrophe, the day of reckoning for these perpetrators is fast approaching. Unfortunately their actions threaten to take the rest of us down with them. Affluence and position, cast-iron protectors in the past, will be useless shields against the particular ecological and sociological woes of this century; for they will be unable to guarantee a safe and secure future for the world’s privileged on a planet damaged beyond its ability to recover. All they will be able to do in the medium term is buy time.

For how can money buy clean air once the planet’s atmosphere has become too poisoned to breathe? How can wealth purchase water if all the rivers have run dry? How can position secure space when the globe has become too populated for comfort? How can privilege restore forests and wetlands and polar ice sheets that have disappeared forever? How can status bring back plant and animal species that have been tipped over the abyss of extinction? An attitude of “might is right” is not the answer to these potential woes of the 21st Century. In fact this mindset is the very antithesis of what will be needed in the time to come.

Don’t Worry We’re in Control

Feeling in control of one’s life and destiny is a profound human need and the feeling of being out of control is one of our greatest human stressors. Yet the fact remains that we actually have very little control over our relationship with the planet on which we live and depend, and the solar system within which it revolves. It seems, if we are to take an anthropomorphic viewpoint that the Earth and the heavens allow us to go about our minuscule business for a while letting us believe that we have things under control, before jolting us out of our complacency with a show of temperament that conclusively demonstrates that we’re not in control at all.

he Sun’s tantrums are evidenced by violent solar flares, seen as sunspots that explode on the Sun’s surface with the force of millions of Hiroshima-type bombs, as well as coronal mass ejections; which together with sunspots, spew ultraviolet radiation, electro-magnetic waves and electrically charged particles and gas out into the solar system. Within a day this galactic bombardment reaches Earth, colliding with Earth’s magnetic shield causing magnetic disturbances as well as fluctuations in atmospheric pressure and electricity, among other anomalies.

A dramatic illustration of the havoc that one such solar eruption can wreak here on Earth occurred on a frosty night in early March 1989, after a large sunspot appeared on the Sun. It began emitting powerful flares and this explosive outpouring of high-energy particles caused a fierce magnetic storm to trip the circuit breakers at the James Bay generating station in Canada at 2:44 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Within minutes the entire power system of Quebec Province had collapsed, disrupting the lives of millions of Canadians. Powerful solar flares had also affected the electrical power systems of Ontario and British Columbia, parts of the United States and Sweden.

When the people living in Quebec and Montreal, the areas hardest hit by the magnetic storm, woke up on that cold March morning, it was to find that their houses had cooled during the winter night. They were unable to make breakfast or heat water for washing, the subway had closed and traffic in the streets had jammed. However, beyond the inconvenience of having household electrical appliances and suburban utilities cut, as well as the services of airports, hospitals, police and fire stations paralysed; radio communication was affected, disrupting all kinds of telecommunications, including marine and navigational signals worldwide.

The overall cost of the violent sunspot, in terms of dollars, was astronomical. Commercial satellites were damaged resulting in malfunctions, burned circuits, loss of altitude control fuel and reduced orbital lifetimes. Some businesses, as well as a General Motors car-assembly plant, lost costly production. A steel manufacturer was forced to scrap over a million dollars worth of steel caught in hot rolling mills at the time of the blackout and power companies were forced to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in order to upgrade their equipment to prevent further such outages…

CHAPTER < NINE – RETHINKING BASIC ASSUMPTIONS

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” Physicist Albert Einstein

There is so much to understand about the incredible planet on which we live and depend. Its marvellous complexity still astounds us. Its moods have shaped our existence over millions of years, honing us into a race of wanderers and making us masters of change. It is an integral part of who and what we are. Yet the margins of our survival on planet Earth have become disconcertingly narrow. In spite of our advanced technology we are vulnerable to many natural and man-made factors: factors such as geological upheavals, extreme global weather variability, soil depletion, water stress, ozone thinning, ocean pollution, rising background radiation levels, dwindling natural resources, overpopulation, disease and rising nationalist aggression. Of these various factors, some are beyond our ability to control and others not.

Because of our vast and unwieldy numbers, we are not able to move about the Earth as freely as we once did. Therefore, as we no longer have recourse to the traditional migratory survival strategy of our ancestors, our challenge is to stay and find a way around our problems, and the primary means at our disposal for finding sustainable solutions to these problems is our universal mind – a resource of epically powerful dimension.

Recognising that we are as much alive as we keep the Earth alive, there is much that we can do to influence our future and it all begins with how we think about our position on this planet. We are not the first generation of Homo sapiens sapiens to have befouled the Earth. The Roman historian, Pliny, observed that, “It is true that the Earth brought forth poisons, but who discovered them except Man? … It is not unusual for us to poison rivers and the very elements of which the world is made; even the air itself, in which all things live, we corrupt till it injures and destroys.”

From this observation it is clear that the process of planetary contamination has been carried out by many past cultures over a long period of time and admittedly there is a certain amount of comfort in this fact, indicating as it does, that not all planetary woes can be laid at our door. However, what differentiates modern societies of people from others that have preceded us is a deep well of ecological awareness and concern, as well as significant levels of scientific and technological knowledge that were not available to previous cultures, but which we have been able to benefit from.

And although we are the first generations of Homo sapiens sapiens to have intentionally intervened in the process of planetary destruction, implementing initiatives to protect our planet from further pollution and other damaging practices. In effect we have little option but to correct the imbalances between planetary systems and the way we interrelate with them, because unlike the times that other peoples lived in, the margins of our survival have become progressively narrower, making our survival on this planet a matter of grave concern.

Time and circumstances are no longer on our side. In the time ahead our thought patterns and cultural biases will redefine global survival, and hopefully beyond that, worldwide prosperity. However if we are to avoid ecological impoverishment in the present and with it powerful transnational tensions and conflict; practices such as “discounting over distance”, a practice whereby some nations of the world expropriate resources from other geographical areas without any consideration for the impact of such a practice on the regions from which the resources were taken, are patently no longer appropriate. Environmental depletion, whether it is legally or illegally carried out on a nation’s doorstep or executed far away from home, is of equal consequence. For in a world that is precariously poised it has now become a dangerous practice for out of sight to signify out of mind…

Unequal Resource Distribution

Goethe stated that, “In order to spend on one side, nature is forced to economise on the other”. Ecological bankruptcy is a powerful potential destabilising factor, yet no international agreement is yet in place to fully regulate the maintenance of the Earth’s resource base. Global per capita use of resources is currently all out of kilter, with some countries utilising resources sparingly while others consume resources wastefully and unsustainably according to their means. This reality translates into a widening gap of consumption levels between the rich and poor nations and between wealthy and impoverished people; with the most affluent top per cent of the world’s people consuming unsustainable quantities of resources whilst the world’s poorest people, marginalised into poverty, of necessity under-consume.

In the United States for instance, which represents the top end of the affluence spectrum, some families use up to 3000 litres of water a day, the equivalent of 20 bathtubs for their household use, while in parts of the developing world, the bottom end of the affluence spectrum, over a billion people have no safe and reliable water supply at all.

National diets are also unequal in terms of global resource expenditure. Hamburger-rich, meat-intensive diets require a high grain investment. It takes seven kilograms of grain to beef up cattle by one kilogram, four kilograms of grain to add one kilogram of live weight to pork and two kilograms of grain to feed up fish and poultry by one kilogram, while one kilogram of cheese represents an investment of three kilograms of grain. These ratios represent a disproportionate share of global agricultural carrying capacity as well as grain utilisation.

In India each person consumes approximately 200 kilograms of grain per year and this is mainly eaten directly. In Italy a pasta-rich diet translates into approximately 400 kilograms of grain per person per year, whilst in the United States, with some men and women eating as much as double their body weight in meat each year, this figure jumps to a per person grain consumption rate of approximately 800 kilograms per year, mainly eaten indirectly in the form of beef, mutton, pork, poultry, milk, cheese, yogurt, ice cream and eggs.

This grain consumption figure is eight times higher than that consumed by people living in Haiti, Tanzania and Kenya, and should the rest of the world’s people start eating meat at the rate of that consumed by North Americans, more than two-and-a-half times more global harvest would be required. In the case of food this excessive fat-rich animal protein consumption is counterproductive, not only in terms of global agricultural carrying capacity, but also manifestly in terms of national health.

At no other time in the history of our species has a single nation consumed such a high percentage of refined foods and hydrogenated fats, and correspondingly had so many overweight people as there are living in North America today. But the United States, while leading the field, is not alone in this situation. Obesity has become an international health problem trend.

Carved into an Egyptian pyramid more than 5000 years ago is an observation that is as relevant today as it was then: “Man lives on one quarter of what he eats. On the other three-quarters his doctors live.” Is it any wonder then that in affluent developed countries and parts of developing countries, where for many people overfeeding is literally overkill, abnormal health conditions such as obesity and degenerative diseases abound?

With the illusion of such plenty as well stocked supermarkets, restaurants, fast food outlets and food vendors on almost every city street, inherent restrictive mechanisms such as appetite control have become skewed, resulting in hundreds of millions of obese adults and children worldwide. It seems that with affluence and the illusion of over-abundance, our relationship with a resource as fundamentally essential as food, has changed to the point where a normal association is no longer possible for many people in the developed world. With the fear of widespread hunger disappearing from the modern mindset, food has lost its inherent survival value and in the process it has become everything from a personal enemy to a friend; from self-medication to a status symbol; from a relationship pawn to a substitute security blanket.

In terms of other important resources, worldwide consumption is just as unequal. The average United States citizen’s annual utilisation of electricity is the equivalent of two West Germans, three Swiss or Japanese, nine Mexicans, 16 Chinese, 53 Indians, 109 Sri Lankans and 1072 Nepalese. With regard to the pollution generated by this disproportionate electricity consumption level, as can be expected North America is the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gas, with the average American accounting for approximately five times more carbon annually than anyone living anywhere else in the world.

If we are to use what the Earth is able to provide in terms of resources, more efficiently. If we are to distribute these resources in a fairer way so that everyone in the family of Man has their fair share, without some having too much and others having too little, thereby avoiding the destabilising effects of need and resentment. If we are to reduce overall consumption of these resources to levels that the Earth’s carrying capacity is able to sustain now and in the future. If we are to prevent waste generated by a throwaway mentality from choking us to death. If we are to slow population growth to numbers that will not tip the Earth, and with it humanity, into the darkness of an overpopulated abyss: all practices that are essential if we are to establish a sustainable future, then it is vitally important that certain fundamental shifts take place in our thinking. However, in order to effect significant global paradigm shifts, our first task is to examine and challenge the existing cognitive status quo…

CHAPTER < EIGHT - THE REBELLIOUS ATOM CONTD...

The Industrial Radiation Age

“Good evening comrades. All of you know that there has been an incredible misfortune – the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant. It has painfully affected the Soviet people, and shocked the international community. For the first time, we confront the real force of nuclear energy out of control.” These were the words of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that first alerted the world to the worst nuclear power disaster that had ever occurred.

On 26 April 1986 on the eve of a long weekend, an experiment that had begun as an exercise to improve safety went horribly, terribly wrong. At 1:24 a.m. reactor no 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station exploded in a blazing fireball, blowing off the reactor’s heavy steel and concrete lid. Spumes of radioactive material were released into the chill night air.

This radioactivity released in peacetime, was a hundred times more intense than that released by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs detonated during World War Two. The peaceful atom was no longer peaceful and the fearful results of the Industrial Radiation Age had come home to roost.

As fiery graphite, gaseous clouds of radioactive particles and steam spewed out of the stricken reactor, firemen on the ground and on the roof of the turbine building, knowing full well the danger they were in, battled to contain the raging beast that had been reactor no 4. Many of these firemen later paid for their amazing heroism with their lives. At grave risk also were the inhabitants of the atomic town of Prypiat, as well as thousands of farm labourers living and working on the fertile farmland within a dangerously close radius of the blazing reactor.

Yet the authorities, compounding the human errors of complacency, bad judgement, negligence, irresponsibility and gross mismanagement that had caused reactor no 4 to explode in the first place, placed an immediate embargo on all information about the explosion. It was only 48 hours later, and only after considerable pressure from the government of Sweden, that the Soviet authorities broke their silence.

Prior to the announcement by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, there had been no warnings to the nearby people or anyone else for that matter, to protect them from the radioactivity of the plume billowing from the stricken nuclear power station. There were no warnings about the profound dangers of eating food or drinking water contaminated by radiation from the explosion’s fallout. There were no protective lids placed over drinking water wells.

There were no trucks bringing in uncontaminated food, milk and water. There were no evacuations carried out for the villagers and townspeople now living within radioactively hot buildings. There were no medical precautions, such as handing out iodine to people living in the affected area, to be taken in order to prevent their thyroid glands from absorbing radioactive Iodine-131. There were in short, no protective or educative measures taken at all within those first two days of the explosion that could have improved the safety of the populations surrounding the stricken nuclear power station.

Eventually more than 100 000 people had to be evacuated from the radioactive hot zone and resettled elsewhere. And the rich farmland, over 1000 square kilometres of some of the most productive soil in the Ukraine, was contaminated to the point that it may never again yield crops for human or animal consumption.

Meanwhile the winds of the Northern Hemisphere had carried the deadly plume of radioactive debris across Europe, Scandinavia and other parts of the Soviet Union, scattering radioactive particles wherever it was blown. This carcinogenic cloud of uranium dioxide fuel and fission products eventually passed over 20 different countries dropping its lethal particles onto millions of people in these northern lands. The official death toll of the Chernobyl disaster was 31 people. However the actual number of people who have already or will still succumb to cancers and other horrific diseases caused as a result of exposure to Chernobyl’s radiation, will never be known.

In order to contain the still-raging beast of reactor No 4, an enormously thick sarcophagus of steel and concrete had to be built to enclose it. It is a dark sombre testament to humanity’s complacency with nuclear power; a complacency that led to the violation of six safety regulations, each one designed to prevent the unthinkable from occurring. These human errors, committed in a far-off corner of the Ukraine, resulted in incalculable human suffering across a wide range of northern countries. Such is the stealthy power of the rebellious atom.

Radioactive particles are able to drift with the wind over a wide area to eventually settle unseen, unsmelled and untasted onto city pavements that children innocently skip along. Onto leafy vegetables growing in fields. Onto green grass that cows process into radioactively contaminated milk. Onto river sediments where it is absorbed into plants that are eaten by fish, which are then eaten by people. Onto trees and flowers and shrubs. Onto water and soil and pebbly beaches. Onto brick and plaster and wood. Onto wild animals and birds and insects. Onto people and pets and livestock. Until, unsuspected and undetected, these particles wreak their radiological havoc on everyone and everything onto which they have settled.

Once the rebellious atom is out of control there is no hiding place from its deadly energy force. And we know the dangers from past experience. Know that exposure to high levels of radiation causes people to suffer great psychological stress and to age prematurely. Know that it renders us unable to function or reproduce normally. Know that it destroys our natural system of immunity. Know that it makes us vulnerable and susceptible to cancers and other dreadful diseases. Know that irradiated land is land rendered unfit for agriculture or any other use at all for years and years to come.

Yet despite this, some nations of the world have increased and continue to increase the planetary level of radioactive pollution by the testing and detonation of still more atomic bombs. By the building of yet more nuclear power stations. By the mining and transport of more uranium fuel. But the nuclear problem does not stop there.

Perhaps even more insidious than these overt, well-known and dramatic applications of nuclear technology, are the widespread uses of radioactive materials in the production of a multitude of everyday household products. These are products such as Teflon-coated pans and high-gloss paper. A variety of foodstuffs that we eat every day are also irradiated to ensure that they are able to stay longer on the supermarket shelf.

Worldwide, the level of background radiation has increased and is continuing to rise steadily. In this way it is adding its own considerable health threat to the problems already caused to humanity by daily exposure to some 200 000 chemicals such as cadmium, lead and mercury in the water that we drink, in the food that we eat, in the air that we breathe, and in the substances that we use to make life easier, better, faster.

These are problems such as DNA and nervous-system damage, infertility, premature births, impaired immune system functioning, sickness and chronic disease, psychiatric symptoms, memory loss and even sexual orientation as caused by chemical oestrogens which upset the endocrine systems in humans, mimicking and interfering with the actions of natural hormones.

It seems that with our 21st Century lifestyle, there is no getting away from the rebellious atom. It is around us everywhere. The grave problem for the future is that, should global background radiation rise to a critical level either through continued nuclear testing and/or the uncontrolled use of radioactive materials, it could mean the eventual disappearance of the human species. In this situation whole generations of children would be so badly affected by rising background radiation levels that humanity’s gene-pool would be irreversibly damaged, which would eventually have the effect of wiping out the human race. The effects of this scenario would be long-term.

In a worst-case scenario, perhaps not as far-fetched as it would at first seem, where radiation levels exploded massively and instantaneously, either through aggressive confrontation or a devastating nuclear accident, there would literally be no place to hide. The result of this scenario would be immediate and total obliteration of our species and most other species as well. Whichever scenario potentially comes to pass, and of course it is fervently hoped that neither does, there can be no doubt that through the combined activities of many nations on Earth, we are wreaking radiological havoc on our own and future generations that are still to populate the planet. This is an indescribably horrible legacy for tomorrow’s children…

CHAPTER < EIGHT - THE REBELLIOUS ATOM

“If we don’t heed the Nobel laureates warning of things to come. We’ll all be incinerated warriors of the sun.” Joan Baez, Folk Singer and Human Rights Activist

When Joan Baez, 60s folk singer, Woodstock performer, pacifist and founder of the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence Humanitas, was taken to the Hiroshima Memorial Museum, she saw photographic images that haunted her. As she was later to write in her book And A Voice To Sing With, she saw “fossils of people, shadows on the cement, photographs of broken bodies and of faces scarred and pulled into horror masks”. These stark photographs depicted the aftermath in terms of human suffering, of the most powerful weapon ever unleashed in the name of war. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on a hazy August day in 1945, incongruously codenamed Little Boy and Fat Man, had a combined force of 15 000 tons of TNT.

Early in the morning of 1 March 1954, the United States government detonated a hydrogen bomb codenamed Bravo on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. Bravo had a force 1000 times greater than the bombs that had decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which was a force greater than the combined power of all the weapons that have ever been fired in all the wars in the history of the world. The 15 megaton Bravo blast caused a huge blinding mushroom of ferocious heat to soar high into the atmosphere, generating winds of searing intensity that irradiated the sea and atolls surrounding the test site. The atomic bomb had become a weapon destructive enough to threaten all of humanity and indeed all life on Earth.

Prior to Bravo’s detonation, Bikini’s population of 161 people, after being told by the United States military governor of the Marshall Island chain, Commodore Ben H. Wyatt, that atomic tests were to be performed “for the good of mankind and to end all world wars”, were evacuated from their peaceful coral atoll to Rongerik, a smaller, less fertile atoll east of Bikini, before being transferred to Kili Island eight months later. This was to be a temporary exile. However decades after the detonation, Bikinians have still not been able to return to their original island home and the horrifying legacy of Bravo lives on.

Situated directly under the deadly cloud of fallout ash from Bravo’s blast were Rongelap and Ailinginae Atolls, also in the Marshallese chain. This lethal ash, like gritty synthetic snow, covered the atolls in a thick blanket of white radioactive dust. Children innocently played in this fallout ash. It had also rained down onto the decks of a Japanese tuna trawler resting at anchor in the vicinity of the test site, the Lucky Dragon No 5.

Within hours of the settlement of the deadly white ash, both islanders and fishermen began to exhibit signs of acute radiation sickness. Nausea, severe vomiting, diarrhoea, itching of their eyes, as well as burning, blistering and ulceration of their skin: these were the test’s immediate legacy for these unfortunate people. Some hours later their hair began to fall out. One man aboard the Lucky Dragon No 5 died soon after he was exposed to the deadly ash fall. In terms of radiological exposure, the fishing trawler Lucky Dragon No 5 had been unable to live up to its name, being as it were, in the unluckiest place on the planet on that morning in 1954.

Seven months after Bravo’s blast, all 22 fishermen left alive out of the 23-man crew of the tuna trawler Lucky Dragon No 5 were still in hospital receiving blood transfusions. Marshallese islanders fared no better. Many island pregnancies ended in miscarriage or resulted in the births of tragically malformed babies who died soon after their first gasps of air. Other babies were born with limb-twisting deformities.

Some of the children aged under 10 at the time of the blast grew more slowly than other children of the same age group and there was a higher incidence of thyroid and other cancers than is normal in populations not exposed to radioactive fallout. Islanders have since died from various cancers and leukaemia.

In 1985 Greenpeace activists evacuated the people of Rongelap Atoll to another of the Marshall Islands as parts of Rongelap were found to be still too highly radioactive for human habitation. More than 70 years after Bravo’s blast, Bikini Atoll is also still too contaminated by radiation for resettlement of its people. And it remains a lonely place, too radioactively hot for human safety.

Nuclear bombs of the magnitude of Little Boy, Fat Man and Bravo destroy by blast and fire as conventional bombs do. However, their killing capacity extends long after their radioactive residue has fallen to Earth. Silent and invisible, the ferocious energy released by a nuclear explosion; the alpha and beta particles and gamma rays of radioactive materials, ionise the cells of human bodies, causing molecular changes, cell mutations, and in high enough doses, immediate death. At the very least, the immune systems of people exposed to radiation are compromised, opening the way for susceptibility to other diseases and conditions such as asthma and allergies.

Alpha particles only travel short distances and are not able to penetrate human skin. Beta particles are able to penetrate skin but no deeper into the body. Gamma rays are capable of penetrating sheets of steel. Components of nuclear fallout such as Strontium-90, Iodine-131, Caesium-137 and Carbon-14 can be inhaled, ingested in food or absorbed through drinking water or irradiated milk.

Once inside the body, these radioactive substances irradiate tissues, organs and bones from close quarters, often with devastating results for example Strontium-90, the most dangerous of radioactive materials, goes straight to the bones damaging the bone marrow, which produces blood cells. It is believed that varying levels of Strontium-90, which is a compound not found in nature, exist in every living person on Earth.

Human beings have a variable susceptibility to radioactive exposure. The unborn, youngest, oldest and weakest tend to be at greatest risk whist women have been found to be twice as susceptible to radiation-induced cancers than men, and radiation exposure makes all people more susceptible to diseases other than cancers. It also increases incidence of infertility and stillbirths, as well as affecting genetic material causing defects and deformities, which can be passed on from one generation to the next. We now know the dangers of radioactivity, but humankind has not only received radiation from nuclear fallout resulting from the detonation of atomic bombs.

Since 1895, when Wilhelm Roentgen of the University of Würzburg in Vienna first discovered X-rays, many scientists and researchers have been afflicted by the effects of the rebellious atom in their quest for knowledge. Edison’s assistant, Clarence Dally, was the first person to die of cancer as a result of exposure to radiation in the pursuit of research. And Marie Curie, who will forever be associated with radioactivity after her discovery of radium in pitchblende, was another early researcher who died of leukaemia, believed to have developed through her exposure to high levels of radiation in the course of her work.15

Also at risk have been doctors and their patients in a tragedy of medical errors spanning decades and continents. During the early part of the 20th Century radium, an intensely radioactive metallic element was believed to “have absolutely no toxic effects, it being accepted as harmoniously by the human system as is sunlight by the plant”. As a supposedly harmless substance it was injected intravenously and inserted in capsule form into body cavities by unsuspecting doctors in the treatment of many maladies ranging from heart problems to impotence and depression. Just feeling below par was thought by some doctors to warrant treatment with radium.

Between 1949 and 1960 thousands of children in Israel and America had their heads irradiated for the treatment of ringworm of their scalps so that their hair would fall out, making the treatment of the ringworm easier. This treatment overkill was found to result in six times more cancers of the thyroid, as well as more brain cancers and leukaemias than is normal for non-irradiated populations.

In other studies, women who had had their reproductive organs irradiated for the treatment of gynaecological problems, were found to have a much higher incidence than normal of leukaemia and cancers of the intestines and other organs in the irradiated area. But this medical irradiation was irradiation that was consensual, albeit unknowingly, and on a comparatively small scale. Still to come in the annals of human history was irradiation on a much larger scale: irradiation that was nonconsensual, unintentional, and unjustifiable…

CHAPTER < SEVEN - THE GREEN LUNGS OF THE EARTH CONTD...

Every year about 160 000 square kilometres of rainforest are being felled, with an area the size of France having been chopped down from Brazilian rainforests over the past 30 years. And it is estimated that only 10 per cent of rainforests globally will still be standing after the first decades of the 21st Century.

Stripping the Earth of its forests could well contribute to future global ecocide to an extent we cannot now imagine; for just as a human body cannot survive without its lungs, the planet may also not be able to survive without its forests – its great green lungs. For the indigenous people who make their home in the forests, the problems of deforestation are both more personal and more immediate than for the rest of the world’s population, which largely has only an abstract concept of their stake in these unique and valuable ecosystems. As their forest home diminishes day by day, the forest dwellers are rapidly losing a way of life that has sustained their cultures for countless generations.

In countries like Brazil, the self-sufficiency of the many forest peoples has been replaced with government policies and strictures, which have led in many forest tribes to apathy, degeneration, disempowerment and a loss of traditions and cultural references. People who once went about their business along the forest paths freely and vigorously, now sit apathetically in makeshift huts waiting for government handouts, having lost the will of initiative and the lifestyle that made it possible. For the millions of species of animals, birds, insects and plants that live in tropical forests, the process of deforestation is equally serious.

The exact number of species that live in rainforest habitats is a subject of great debate, eliciting wide disagreement between biologists. There is also no consensus in scientific circles as to the exact percentage of species that live in tropical rainforests relative to the global number of species, although this percentage has been put at 50 per cent of all terrestrial species, which is very high in accordance with the latitudinal species-diversity gradient, which puts highest species diversity in the tropics. What biologists do universally agree upon, is the importance of tropical rainforest biodiversity both to the natural world and to humankind, and the depredation that a loss of such biodiversity would bring about should the majority of these species become extinct due to deforestation of their rainforest habitats.

Should deforestation continue at its present destructive rate, biologists believe that as many as 50 000 species of plants could disappear out of a world total of 250 000 species. One-fifth of the world’s total of butterfly species could disappear, whilst the number of bird species lost could be 2000 out of a world total of 9000 species. Like the lost dodo of Mauritius, which after being hunted into extinction disappeared forever into eternity, many of the most interesting and exquisitely plumaged birds would be eliminated from the planet’s lands and skies.

From an ethical viewpoint this is a catastrophe of enormous consequence for both the natural world and the human race combined for, as we have seen, each and every species represents the culmination of evolutionary links in a chain that stretches back thousands of millions of years. In order to have survived this far, species must have run a gauntlet of major extinctions and ice ages across landscapes that have challenged only the fittest to survive.

To unravel this amazing tapestry of life, on such a huge and significant scale within such a short period of time, is to bring about a vast blight on our collective human conscience. From another perspective, if we take cognizance of the Buddhist belief that wrong deeds bring down negative karma on the perpetrators, such wholesale ecocide could be expected to result in terrible repercussions for all of humankind.

However let us put these important moral and ethical considerations aside for the moment and consider other practicalities from the perspective of pure self-interest. For millennium upon millennium organisms have been the only means of sustaining human beings. They have provided food, medicine, clothing, shelter and energy down through the ages. Many of these needs have been derived from plants grown in forests, biologically some of the richest biomes on Earth.

In modern times for example, countless human headaches have been soothed with aspirin, the most widely used medicine in the world. Salicylic acid, a component of aspirin, was originally discovered in the bark and leaves of the willow tree. Muscle relaxants used during surgery have come from curare, an Amazonian vine. The rosy periwinkle found only in Madagascar has been found to be effective in treating certain forms of leukaemia, giving children treated with drugs derived from this plant a greater chance of survival. The contraceptive pill, which has been so significant in helping to curb human population figures and improve quality of life for millions of women and children around the world, was originally manufactured from a wild yam grown in forests in Mexico.

It is entirely possible that a cure for HIV/AIDS and certain cancers is growing in a quiet, green forest glade somewhere on the planet. But perhaps we shall never find it for yet again, instead of valuing the world’s natural forest resources for their unique contributions to our health and welfare, their importance as a habitat and last refuge to myriad forest creatures, as well as their vital significance in sustaining the chemical composition of the atmosphere; we have been chopping them up in a one-time orgy of consumption that will never be available again. And what we have not chopped up, we have burnt down.

From outer space it is possible to see the hundreds of fires that are burning away the Earth’s precious green mantle. What is left of the forest after the burning, we have carved up into pockets criss-crossed with roads and highways that slice through the integrity of the natural forest, marooning animal and plant populations into fragments of species-destroying isolation.

With the destruction of the forests, the Earth’s green lungs, we are bringing an incalculably terrible blight down on our own heads and the heads of our children and grandchildren. The late 19th Century American writer John Muir, one of the foremost conservationists of his time, wrote: “The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort, are done in the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, for when light comes the heart of the people is always right”.

This quotation appeared in an article titled “Save the Redwoods” which was published in the Sierra Club Bulletin in January 1920. At that time in world history, with World War One having run its agonised course, people’s considerations were taken up with other more pressing problems. Saddened and exhausted by the carnage of the war to end all wars, people of the early 20th Century did not consider environmental concerns to be a top priority and, for most of them, the darkness of ignorance and unbelief probably did prevail – there was too much else to engage their attention. However at the start of this new century this is definitely not the case. We now understand full well the implications of global deforestation and still we allow this destructive practice to continue. Will we, as with so much else that is going on in the world at this time, only find the light and the right heart when it is too late?…

CHAPTER < SEVEN – THE GREEN LUNGS OF THE EARTH

“God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, levelling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools…….” Nineteenth Century Conservationist John Muir

Just like the heaving, temperamental surface of the ocean, the forests of the Earth are its lungs, taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and breathing oxygen into the air in a life-giving cycle: oxygen that is vital for the 20 000 litres of fresh, clean air that is needed every day by every person on Earth.

Unfortunately, however, just like in the ocean, atmospheric pollution levels are continuing to rise all over the world, especially in the Northern Hemisphere where the ideal of clean oxygen-rich air to breathe is in many cities becoming a far-off dream. On a hot, smoggy day in Los Angeles for instance, where millions of vehicles ply the city’s roads and freeways belching out exhaust fumes, the air becomes like “battery acid”, heartbreakingly noxious and difficult to breathe. Every day, every person in this city and many other cities around the Northern world are breathing in this atmospheric poison, taking a multitude of pollutants into their lungs along with the oxygen needed to keep them alive. The net results for many are asthma, allergies and other disease states. But the human population is not the only one at risk.

Photographs of the Camels Hump Mountain in Vermont, United States, taken 20 years apart clearly show the result of pollution. In 1963 when photographs were first taken, the forest covering the mountain was thick with healthy, green growth. Twenty years later in 1983 photographs of the same forest showed tracts of diseased and dying trees; sad, naked victims of acid rain. But this forest is not unique. In the Northern Hemisphere where high-sulphur coal burning is a major source of energy, sulphur dioxide in the flue-gas of power stations being the main cause of acid rain, vast tracts of coniferous and temperate deciduous forests are in dire distress from acid precipitation. In the Southern Hemisphere the problem is similar and yet different.

In a city like Johannesburg, South Africa, which is both a First and a Third World city, atmospheric pollution sometimes builds to the point where it becomes a noxious, gaseous soup, thick and visible to the naked eye. This is especially evident during wintertime when the air is still and unmoved by cleansing winds. Seen from above ground level, on some days the pollution is so thick that little can be seen of the city below. And from the street level looking up, the sky seems no longer blue but a dirty, indiscriminate, brownish colour.

To blame for this gaseous pall are industrial emissions and exhaust fumes. But much of Southern Hemispheric pollution relates to the fact that worldwide one-and-a-half billion people depend on firewood for fuel, with most of them living south of the Equator. By burning firewood, oxygen is consumed and smoke and carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere. Also the important carbon dioxide fixing capacity of the chopped-down trees is lost. This is a double negative in terms of carbon dioxide and general pollution level build-up in Southern Hemisphere cities. However for the people living in the tropics and lower latitudes there are few alternatives to this traditional energy source and so the practice of burning wood for fuel continues.

The Value of Global Forests

The forests of the Earth are of inestimable value to a sustainable future for us all. They are vast green carbon sinks, which regulate atmospheric chemical compositions and constantly renew the air that we breathe. They also regulate water cycles. Almost all of the water that reaches the atmosphere over land-locked areas comes from trees and plants through transpiration. Just one rainforest tree pumps millions of litres of moisture from the soil to the air during its lifetime.

At ground level, by absorbing rainwater and releasing it into streams and rivulets by a gradual process wholesale flooding is prevented, and the availability of water is extended during the hot, dry months when it is most needed by thirsty forest inhabitants; human, animal, amphibian, fish, insect and plant alike.

Forests also regulate nutrient cycles. All organisms require elements such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, iron, magnesium, potassium, sulphur and other elements to sustain life. Tropical rainforests and temperate forest vegetation are no exception. Most nutrients in a rainforest ecosystem tend to be locked-up in the vegetation rather than the soil, which retains few nutrients. Nutrients come into the forest community from stream water, weathered rock, soil, human and animal activity; as well as dispersal by wind, rain, snow and fog, and once into the community, plants, animals, water, soil and the roots of other plants circulate them.

When forests are undisturbed they are very efficient at recycling and retaining nutrients. However, once trees are felled nutrients are lost to the community through water running out of the area in streams and rivulets. Burning of forest biomass also contributes to the loss of nutrients to the ecosystem.

Apart from influencing atmospheric and ground moisture levels as well as nutrient cycles, forests also regulate temperatures and influence climate by the complex interaction of trees, ground, air and water. Like the icy white expanses of the Arctic and Antarctic, naked ground reflects the sun’s incoming rays back into space, absorbing little heat. Dark green forests on the other hand reflect only 10 to 20 per cent of the sunlight that reaches them, which is very significant in terms of weather patterns because the moisture-holding capacity of air increases when it is warmed. Warmed air is also less stable which increases convection currents, the atmospheric circulatory system of the planet which shares out energy and warmth across the continents.

Indeed without moving air life on the landmasses of the globe would be unendurable, with the tropics being searingly hot and the other latitudes being inhospitably cold. Water on Earth would be largely confined to the ocean, with the continents being great desert expanses except for a narrow belt of temperate vegetation. There would be little weathering of rock, and without erosion, the stripping away of tiny fragments of rock that the wind accomplishes, there would be no soil. There would be no weather to create cloud cover and water vapour with which to govern the amount of incoming solar radiation reaching the Earth. There would be no cleansing of pollution from the atmosphere and people would eventually suffocate under a blanket of waste and greenhouse gasses.

The Earth’s self-regulatory energy systems have maintained equilibrium for over 3000 million years, and for much of that time ancient forests have played a significant part in the links and feedback cycles between the lithosphere, the hydrosphere and the atmosphere. Yet with blatant disregard for the interconnection between the vitality of the Earth as an integrated system, the health and extent of the planet’s forests, and ultimately our own survival, the human race has deforested the planet at a rate that is alarming to say the least: a study by the World Resources Institute in Washington found that 76 countries around the globe have cut down all their ancient forests and 11 countries retain less than five per cent of their original woodlands…

CHAPTER < SIX - OCEAN OF LIFE CONTD....

Approximately one trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide is dissolved in the ocean, with a colder ocean absorbing more carbon dioxide than a warmer ocean. Global warming could result in a significant increase in the mean sea temperature with more carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere and less carbon dioxide being dissolved, which in turn would increase the greenhouse effect in a feedback cycle.

Studies of sea level around the world show that over the past century, the global mean sea level has risen by about 12 centimetres or slightly more than one centimetre per decade. It is believed that this could be due either to polar ice caps melting or to thermal expansion, whereby the upper layers of the ocean expand much like milk expands when heated, often overflowing the mug in which the cold milk was first measured. Either way, both scenarios point to global warming with a rising global sea level corresponding to changing trends in average global air temperatures.

This could have a potentially disastrous consequence for millions of people around the world. Should global warming result in an average temperature rise of four degrees centigrade over the next 40 years, with sea levels correspondingly rising by 140 centimetres as was hypothesised at the “Changing Atmosphere” Conference held in Toronto in 1988, tens of millions of people living in river deltas and lowlands around the world would be forced to leave their homes and agricultural holdings. Most affected would be areas such as Bangladesh, some Pacific islands, the Netherlands, some Mediterranean cities especially Venice, the State of Florida in the United States and Alexandria.

Methane is a gas that has 25 times the greenhouse strength of carbon dioxide. It is released when peat in the frozen tundra region thaws, when fossil fuels are extracted from the ground and when trees and vegetation are burnt during the destruction of tropical rainforests. It is also produced in swamps, landfills, municipal and industrial dumps, as well as sewage-treatment plants by methanogenic bacteria.

Rice paddy fields, termite mounds and intestinal “gas” from cows, also release methane into the air. Human activities from agriculture to garbage disposal have doubled methane concentrations in the atmosphere, but of greater concern in relation to the world’s ocean, are the methane hydrates found in the mud at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean and in the depths of ocean trenches. These deposits are held in the deep, dark depths by pressure from water above as well as the stability of cold water; cold water being more stable than warmer water. It is feared that if the temperature of the water in these ocean depths warmed in response to sea warming trends, these deposits could be released, further exacerbating the global warming scenario.

Ocean currents

Ocean currents move in great surface spiral patterns known as gyrals, sweeping clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counter-clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere, with currents originating in the northern latitudes eventually arriving in Antarctica. In this way they are a significant transportation medium, circulating cool and warm water, chemicals and other matter around the globe, as well as redistributing heat, thereby profoundly affecting life not only in the ocean, but also on coastal lands.

This oceanic circulatory system, together with atmospheric circulation, are the reasons why fallout material produced by aboveground nuclear testing as well as chemical insecticides and other toxins, have found their way into the bodies of far-off Antarctic wildlife. It is also the reason why cholera microbes defecated into the ocean, can be transported via algal blooms across thousands of kilometres of open sea, to finally infect a person eating contaminated seafood on the other side of the world.

The health of the ocean, its inhabitants and the people who live alongside it are dependent on a complex interplay of diverse factors such as global climate changes, population concentrations and practices, pollution, micro-organisms, atmospheric chemical concentrations, ozone depletion, solar activity, ultraviolet radiation increase and oceanic and atmospheric circulatory patterns. Humankind has always viewed the ocean of the world as enduring and everlasting. It has seemed to be the last stronghold of nature, imperturbable to the works of Man. However this is not true.

As with each terrestrial biome on the landmasses of the Earth, we have made our presence felt in the sea. This has been felt through deadly, black oil-spills that coat the feathers of seabirds. In radioactive substances that cause cancers in sea mammals. In pollution that clouds seawater and clogs the gills of fish. In tin cans that are found at ocean depths. In sonar “noise” pollution from the military, commercial and recreational vessels that ply the shipping lanes of the world, drowning out the singing of whales and affecting their ability to feed, mate, detect predators and take care of their young. And in underwater nuclear testing which obliterates underwater habitats, killing valuable sea life.

All these factors and more have compromised the Ocean of Life, our ancient evolutionary birthplace and the evolutionary birthplace of all other life forms on Earth. What will our fate be, if we trash this planet’s mighty ocean beyond the point of its ability to recover? And how will we know when this point of no return has been reached? If we continue to blatantly disregard the health of the ocean, these could well be questions we will be forced to answer in our lifetime, when the sea of life becomes the sea of death. For our children’s children they could well be questions we attempted to answer too late…

CHAPTER < SIX - OCEAN OF LIFE

“The sea shapes the character of earth, governs climate and weather, regulates temperature, and comprises much of the biosphere – yet it remains largely unknown. It is not, however, untouched. Everywhere, the changes brought about by humankind are evident.” Marine scientist Dr Sylvia Earle

Every living creature on Earth has a profound and formative connection to the ocean. We are bound to the sea by ancient and inseparable ties. Like fire, the ocean is an integral part of our deep collective consciousness, yet this connection goes way beyond human percipience. It is the very foundation of Earth’s life support system, for the sea shapes the character of the planet. Always in motion and responsive to the immense forces of the Earth’s rotation and the gravitational pull of the Sun and the Moon, the sea exerts its influence far and wide. Climate and weather patterns are powered in a continuous, interactive cycle of energy exchange between the atmosphere and the ocean. In summer heat is absorbed and in winter heat is released by the sea with ocean currents evening out air temperatures to a global mean temperature of 15 degrees centigrade.

The ocean also plays a vital role in planetary chemical cycles such as the carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and oxygen cycles. It drives other important fundamental cycles such as the rainfall cycle, without which all life on the continental plates would perish. It shapes land configurations and the character of land formations. It holds much of the Earth’s biomass and is a reservoir of biodiversity. The ocean is also a heat sink that is capable of maintaining the Earth’s temperature for a period of time.

Far from being featureless interlocking expanses of water held in vast uniform basins like tea in a smooth porcelain cup, the ocean represents one of the most diverse and extreme environments on the planet. Comprising 90 per cent of global habitats, marine environments are inhospitable worlds of perpetual darkness, near freezing water temperatures and water pressures that can crush a man to soup within seconds. On the other side of the coin or the blue divide, marine environments are also warmly benign and abundantly rich in colourful plant and animal life.

The ocean is immensely powerful, capable of generating tsunami waves that can race along its surface at speeds of up to 800 kilometres per hour in wave lengths of over 150 kilometres. Geography of the ocean floor is in many places more spectacular than that of the continental plates, with mid-ocean trenches plunging further below the level of the ocean than Mount Everest soars above it. Yet it is also a fragile realm vulnerable to outside influences, most significant of which are the works of humankind.

Throughout the world coastal sites have been commandeered for human development because access to harbours, fisheries and recreational facilities enhances our lives. In order to maximise their positions, two-thirds of the 50 most densely populated cities in the world are coastal cities. Through the effects of population density; as well as runoffs from vehicles, sewage, forestry, farming, mining, dredging, industrial discharge, offshore drilling, shipping and oil tanker spillage, garbage disposal, beach litter and landfills, we have polluted our global sea to the point where in many parts of the world it is empty and devoid of life.

In some of these areas seawater has been transformed from a clear blue liquid, teeming with life, into a scummy brown sludge that has become lethal to the creatures that swim in it and the birds that skim atop it. It has become as barren, brown and lifeless as that cup of lukewarm tea, but the destructive agents of human activities have unfortunately not stopped there.

Drift netting on the high seas has indiscriminately trapped sea birds, sea turtles, marine mammals such as dolphins, and other non-target or commercially non-viable species known as trashfish or bycatch. Commercially exploitable fish species have been caught in numbers that are bringing many species such as the Atlantic bluefin tuna to the point of extinction, which has forced fishermen in some regions to look further down the food chain to species that are in turn an important source of food to other species. And the mismanagement of fisheries, as well as the destruction of fish breeding and feeding grounds such as mangrove swamps, which provide a sheltering habitat for juvenile fish until they are able to survive in the open ocean, have added to the problem.

Unaddressed, this downward spiral could have disastrous consequences for fish stocks worldwide. It could also adversely affect the livelihoods of millions of people employed in the global fishing industry. But pollution and overfishing aside, fish stocks have also become vulnerable to other factors. The depletion of ozone in the stratosphere and the resultant increase in solar ultraviolet radiation could affect the ability of fish larvae to reach maturity. Should ultraviolet radiation increase significantly as a result of further stratospheric ozone depletion, fish larvae in the top 10 metres of the sea could be killed off.

The Ocean and Global Warming

Every day the Earth receives enough radiant energy from the Sun to equal one million Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs. However, this output can vary, with an increase of 20 times more ultraviolet radiation during maximum sunspot activity. Solar energy is radiated as “visible” light. Of this energy, a third is reflected back into space immediately, whilst the remaining two-thirds is absorbed by the Earth and converted into heat. Plants, algae and some photosynthetic bacteria capture a tiny fraction of this energy for use in the photosynthetic process. The process of photosynthesis involves the fixing of carbon from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the release of oxygen as a by-product. This “harvesting” of light energy and conversion into chemical energy, has been the primary driver of life on our planet since life began.

Of all photosynthesis that takes place on Earth, approximately 40 per cent is accounted for by the phytoplankton that lives in the top 100 metres of the sea, which is the zone penetrated by light from the surface. This activity generates about a third to a half of all global oxygen. Marine phytoplankton, like all living organisms, is sensitive to the destructive properties of ultraviolet rays, which render it less productive in terms of photosynthesis.

When ultraviolet radiation intensifies, phytoplankton moves from lighter to darker waters. As stratospheric ozone becomes depleted, allowing increased solar ultraviolet radiation to penetrate to the sea’s surface, photosynthesis slows down. The resultant build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over time could further increase the greenhouse effect, consequentially increasing global temperatures. This effect of ozone depletion is serious enough but its deleterious effect doesn’t stop there…