"For the World"
I would have posted this a couple of days ago if the wireless at home was working. Le sigh.
Apologies for the ranting and preachiness of this post, but this has been bouncing around in my head for a couple of weeks now, so I think it's time I got it out there.
Maybe it's the fact that I've watched a lot of Planet Earth and The Blue Planet recently. Maybe it's the fact that North Bay has a lot more trees than London or Whitby. Whatever the reason, I need to say this: we need to take care of this planet.
Please note that all name-calling and obscenities have been filtered out of that statement.
Seriously though, sometimes this drives me crazy. I know there's a lot of issues to do with poverty, economics, farming, and just general need to survive day-to-day for millions of people, but it boggles my mind that so many people who know better don't act on it.
Consider this:
- In the last few centuries, we have cut down half the world's forests. A portion of the Amazon the size of Switzerland is disappearing every year.
- Approximately 1/4 of all large land mammals are endangered, and over 1/3 of all amphibians are in the same boat.
- A decade ago, liberal estimates said the Arctic ice cap would disappear in the summer by 2050. Some estimates now say it will be gone in the summer by 2012.
- Approximately 35-40% of the land mass of the world still has a human population of 1 person per square kilometre, or less. But one third of that is Antarctica. That means that, basically, in the last five or six thousand years, we have inhabited or developed 3/4 of the available land on the planet
- The estimated number of people that can live comfortably on the planet without having to worry about overpopulation, etc., is anywhere between 500 million and 3 billion, depending on who you ask.
- If everyone alive today lived the lifestyle that Americans (or Canadians) did, we would need 3 planets to hold us all.
- If all the natural services the world did for us (i.e., water filtration, pollenation, protecting places from erosion, etc.) suddenly stopped, it would cost us in excess of $1 trillion every year to make up for it.
I know it's easy to point fingers, and I know I personally am not perfect on this, but whether or not people want to believe it, it affects us. Us here in Canada too. We all know our last few summers have been scorching and our last few winters milder than normal. A lot of place in southern Ontario are experiencing huge population growth and conequently, we're developing more and more land to keep up with this growth. Someone once told a friend of mine that the environment was "not his problem, because he'd be dead by the time the effects were seen, let alone affect him." Right. Tell that to the people in Kenya and Egypt, where deforestation from farming in Kenya is actually damaging the major river that feeds into Lake Victoria. For anyone who doesn't know, Lake Victoria is the body of water that feeds the Nile River. If that lake is drying up, it's going to have enormous consequences for the people who need those bodies of water, let alone the wildlife reserves around the area. When my parents were children, they could watch orcas cruise through the Vancouver Bay area. Orcas now rarely, if ever, venture through the bay because of the extent to which the human presence has increased.
There are ways to fix this. Costa Rica actually pays farmers who let the forest grow back on some of their pasture land. In Africa, local dogs were immunized for free, which benefitted both the people (rabies is a huge issue in the area) and the wild dogs who were contracting these diseases from the domestic dogs. Wild dogs, whom I might add, have never been really hunted and actually have almost enough land to live on, and whose main reason for near-extinction was these diseases. We can work harder to find better sources of renewable fuel so we don't have to go into wildlife reserves and drill for oil or clear-cut the trees. When we do have to cut the trees, we can use sustainable foresting techniques. You can plant trees, or write a letter to your MPP. You can even just walk that extra five steps to the recycling bin to toss your coke can in there instead of the garbage.
This is not just America's doing. It is not just up to Germany or whoever to try and stop it. For the most part, we are making strides as nations, and as individuals, but we still have a long way to go. The world has a lot of problems, but I wholeheartedly believe that unless we focus more on long-term solutions for people and the environment instead of the short-term gains, there won't be a very hospitable world for our kids and grandkids to look after. And they will despise us for it.
We can fix this. We have the resources to do it, and we can do it without wiping out half the population - human or otherwise. But if ever there were a time to try and make it better, now would be it.
As David Attenborough puts it at the end of Planet Earth, "the choice is ours."
- Jeff