My Planet Home-Earth; the future of Mankind and it

Characteristically, my eyes see my 13-year old son waking in the morning like a baby duck- shaking his hands like the feathers, strolling here & there, looking up the soft sky, observing the colored trees, and announced his very presence Quack, Quack, in response to the Caw, Caw, of the Crows. And suddenly runs towards the pond, stand a while on edge, examine thoroughly the greenish blue-water, & the sky with enormous-curiosity and jump over the warm water. Swim across the water-lettuce, hyacinths, and lilies. 

So, you know I do not see my earth as a gaseous tank, such as nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and others. I see my globe as my home, my sweet home! Amazon is our forest where Tarzan lives and protects our pets, the lions, Elephants, Deer, from the prankish. The Oceans are our lakes where Khizir- the righteous servant of God possessing great wisdom or mystic knowledge traveling around the earth on a giant fish and helping the poor, supporting the pious & honest pupils. The Himalaya is the palace of Himavati, who travels around the Himalaya on her white cow, and when needed, encrypted to Kali- equipped with weapons, marched into battle as Durga to confront the Demons. Furious, she furrowed her brow, and Kali emerged in all her terrible magnificence. She leaped into the fight, armed with her sword and noose, decapitated the demons, and presented their heads to Durga as a gift. I clap with big hands with joy.

On Jan 18, 2017, a press released- The planet's average surface temperature has risen about 1.1 degrees Celsius since the late 19th century, according to independent analyses by NASA. More importantly, it also stated, We do not expect record years every year, but the ongoing long-term warming trend is clear. NASA claimed- a change driven mainly by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere.

For humans, this means more destructive hurricanes, floods, forest fires, droughts, and bone-chilling Arctic blasts resulting in thousands of deaths, billions in property destruction, and massive interruptions of life as we know it.

But let me understand! The first reason NASA claimed against the rising temperature is the increased carbon dioxide. Can I tell that we human beings are not contributing to it? No way, but Carbon dioxide releasing is the base of our modern civilization! How? Only see around- the chimneys of our factories, the automobile traffic on our roads! According to the Journal Nature on Sep 2, 2015, we cut down about 15 billion trees each year! The other reason NASA claimed was directly accusing human-made emissions. So, are we the human being a caravan of suicidal pilgrims? 

I am not going to decide so fast. The earth Day Network announced their theme for Apr 22, 2019- Protect Our Species! They pointed out 10-animals threatened with extinction because of climate change are,

1. Climate change has impacted Bumblebees in two ways: Rising temperatures force populations northward to remain in cold weather, and spring flowers bloom earlier than in general, leaving less time for bees to pollinate.
2. Whales rely on specific ocean temperatures for their migration, feeding, and reproductive habits. As sea temperatures rise, these changes disrupt the attitudes necessary for whale survival.
3. Asian elephant habitat is negatively impacted by both lower rainfall and higher temperatures. Together, these threats have decreased the reproductive capacity of an already endangered species.
4. Giraffes have seen their population decline by 40% in the last 30 years. In addition to illegal poaching, the most pressing dangers are shrinking habitat and fewer acacia trees (their principal food source) due to climate change.
5. Insects stand to suffer drastically from climate change. At the current rate of warming (2°C), roughly 18% of all insect species would be lost by 2100; if the planet were to warm by 3.2°C, that number would rise to 49%.
6. Oceanic bird species are directly threatened by rising sea levels due to climate change. Rising waters can submerge their coastal habitats and nests completely.
7. Sharks have difficulty hunting and a higher embryo mortality rate as ocean temperature and acidity rise worldwide. In the Pacific Ocean, rising temperatures force sharks northward by an average of 30 kilometers annually. It is disrupting ecosystems that depend on sharks.
8. Rising sea temperatures endangered Coral reefs. In the last three years alone, 72% of the world's coral reefs protected by UNESCO experienced severe heat stress. Sustained heat stress causes coral bleaching, an often-deadly occurrence in which coral starves from loss of nutrition.
9. Monarch butterfly populations in California have fallen by as much as 95% since the 1980s due to habitat loss, increased use of pesticides, and loss of milkweed cultures, all related to climate change caused by humans.
10. Great apes of Southeast Asia, perhaps the most endangered ape species, are in jeopardy of extinction due to deforestation caused by climate change, with nearly 75% of forest cover at risk of deforestation.

However, significantly, the earth Day Network accused human beings of these changes.

Again, we blame ourselves for arranging the gas chamber for other animals of the earth to extinction. We are blaming ourselves as the force to destroy the planet. What is the globe? What is the relationship between us?

While visiting a large textile factory, big boilers always attract me to visit their giant sheds. Like someone enjoys ghost movies, although the heart-throbbing & throat is drying. Generally, for a big textile mill, the boiler is a maximum of 35 MW with a maximum temperature of 510-degrees Celsius. However, do we think about the temperature in the core of our earth continuously firing at 6000 degrees Celsius? We know the iron melts at around 1510 degrees Celsius temperature, so if the globe blast-good that, we would not notice how we died, so no pain! So, you think, how an angry mother-earth is raising her children gently in her lap! 

Considering nothing but only the temperature, I can tell we have nothing to do below the surface of the planet-earth but above the surface? Yes, we can do many things. However, before proceeding further, the question-will we do for what we are responsible for?

Mark Twain, how he sees- Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. He thinks it is open to dispute. Indeed, his experiments have proven to him that Man is the Unreasoning Animal. In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things that other animals quickly learn; he is incapable of learning. Among his experiments was this- in an hour, he taught a cat and a dog to be friends. He puts them in a cage. In another hour, he trained them to be friends with a rabbit. In the two days, he was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel, and some doves, finally a monkey. They lived together in peace, even affectionately.

Next, in another cage, he confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame, he added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next, a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China, and a Brahman from Benares; finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then he stayed away for two whole days. When he came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh-not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.  

Neither I agreed wholly with Mark Twain, nor did I ignore his perception. But I preferably want to cite E. B. White on the Silent Spring by Rachel Carson; I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its Wellbeing. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively. But we are skeptical and dictatorial to it. 

Whether we are compassionate to our humankind, living-nonliving things, and the mother Dharitri- it has its rule of law. So, I should confess, I am a big fan of Lovelock- the Creator of Gaia theory-the idea of the planet as a self-regulating entity. It sees the earth as a system made up of all the rocks, atmosphere, the ocean, and all the living things, and these interact together to sustain a state that keeps the living part of it surviving. It has to. If the biotic part dies, then so does the whole darned system, and it goes back to becoming a dead rocky planet like the ones we have in the Solar System already.

At the age of 92, in an interview with the Guardian, before the Rio-2012; UN Conference on Sustainable Development- Lovelock, getting upset with the initiatives of the World leaders taking to combat Environmental changes. He said he is doubtful that internationalist efforts of this sort achieve much: Whenever the UN puts its finger in, it seems to become a mess. The burden of my thoughts is that the climate situation is more complicated than we can handle, or possibly even in the future. You can not treat it as a scientific problem alone. You have to involve the whole world, and then there is the time constant of human activity. Look at how long ago the Kyoto treaty was – 15 years ago – and damn all have done. The human time constant is slow. You do not get remarkable changes in under 50-100 years, and climate does not wait for that. 

However, I still see him as an optimist. In an interview, at his 100, in 2019, with the Discover magazine, he says- Yes, we are making pretty prideful mistakes leading to global heating. Even so, the earth is still about balance. Throughout earth history, there have been some very disruptive phases; think of the Permian Period. But life did survive all of it. Amazingly, we did. So, whether humankind will survive or not, by the very nature of our planet, living may continue here until the sun is warming up and nothing will stop it. It will heat up until it becomes a red giant, and there will be no earth worth having then.

I completed the article; however, my instinct disagreed. Forget the red giant sun- it is too far to imagine also. Let me believe in us, the humankind. Yes, we have had many actions against nature. But still, we love our planet-earth, our humanity, nature. So, I want to look at Rachel Carson. In the article The Obligation to Endure in her book Silent Spring- she explained beautifully- we have to give time. She wrote,

Only within the moment represented by the present century has one species—man—acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world. During the past quarter-century, this power has not only increased to one of disturbing magnitude, but it has changed in character.  

It took hundreds of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the earth—eons of time in which developing and evolving and diversifying entity reached a state of adjustment and balance with its surroundings. Given time—time not in years but millennia—life adjusts, and a balance has reached. Time is an essential ingredient, but in the modern world, there is no time. 

Good that she explained the root causes of the problem and gave direction on what way to go. 

She explained- This is an era of specialists; each sees his problem. And unaware and intolerant of the larger frame into which it fits. It is also an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged. When the people protest, confronted with some clear evidence of damaging results, it fed little tranquilizing pills of half-truth. We urgently need an end to this false assurance to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. The people must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the data.

So, considering the contemporary environmental global movements, whether the people succeed or not, I think they are responsive to their earth and are on the right track. 

Reference Reading:

1. The History of Tarzan; The official site- Edger Rice Burroughs tarzan.com

2. Encyclopedia Britannica, www.britannica.com/topic/Tarzan

3. The History of al-Tabari, Volume III, The Children of Israel, Translated by William M. Brinner, www.kalamullah.com/Books/The%20History%20Of%20Tabari/Tabari_Volume_03.pdf

4. Encyclopedia of Ancient Deities edited by Charles Russell Coulter, Patricia Turner; https://books.google.com.bd/books?id=sEIngqiKOugC&pg=PA257&lpg=PA257&dq=Devi+Himavati&source=bl&ots=3ws2l6X8-z&sig=ACfU3U12eYCdNZX4fi_1LMea7VX8NZmY4g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj_yqzz_7LgAhUNfisKHXE_BGsQ6AEwEHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Devi%20Himavati&f=false

5. NASA Press release, Jan 18, 2017, https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-noaa-data-show-2016-warmest-year-on-record-globally

6. Nature; Sep 2, 2015, https://www.nature.com/news/global-count-reaches-3-trillion-trees-1.18287

7. Earth Day Network, https://www.earthday.org/campaigns/endangered-species/earthday2019

8. https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/core/

9. Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

10. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jun/15/james-lovelock-interview-gaia-theory

11. https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/james-lovelock-cyborgs-turning-100-and-the-come-age-of-the-novacene/

12. https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/at-100-james-lovelock-has-new-ideas-about-gaia-and-earths-future

13. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson