Fred Hageneder author of Earth Spirit: Healthy Planet / Moon Books The good news first. Our planet, and thus humanity, has only three major problems: climate disruption, species extinction and the all-penetrating contamination by plastics and other chemicals. The bad news: They are all interrelated and mutually reinforcing. And humanity has known about this for half a century, but has not been able to change course.
So let's take a brief look at the symptoms which threaten life on Earth. Climate disruption The time for discussing "climate change" is over. Scientists have been choosing this term again and again for decades in order to remain neutral – after all, that's their job. But when we take up this topic in general discussion, we should choose terms that do justice to the situation, including its social and human implications. Climate science is no longer a theory that exhausts itself in computer models – as it was often accused of until 2012. The climate crisis has long been a reality: the melting of the ice caps and glaciers, the warming of the oceans, the intensification of droughts and heat waves, and not least the enormously increasing frequency and vehemence of large-scale fire disasters,. All of these are slowly shaking even the last sceptics awake. There are already millions of climate refugees. We can’t tell people who have lost everything that they’ve been hit by "change"! No, it is about the – man-made – disruption of the world climate, the destruction of local living conditions. That is why terms like climate disruption or climate emergency are simply more appropriate. Since the COP26 in Glasgow (November 2021), the focus is slowly turning to big industry instead of just the car journeys and air travel of the “common people". But the biggest drivers of global climate disruption are still not being discussed in full. The biggest driver is the extractive economy, i.e. mining and "resource development" – again, terms that sound much more harmless than their reality! And in second place worldwide is industrial agriculture, mainly through factory farming, as well as the release of gigantic amounts of carbon through lack of soil care, i.e. via soil erosion. Mass extinction Ecosystems are more stable the more species they contain. Biodiversity is not just a luxury of nature, it is an existential safety measure to ensure the continuation of life. Life is abundant – and must be! If life is continue on a planet, it must be strong in number and in diversity. Only once life is abundant enough to have a significant impact on the ecosphere can it influence it and further enhance its life-friendliness. For example, microorganisms have detoxified the composition of seawater and the atmosphere over hundreds of millions of years so that plants and algae could develop. And these in turn have filtered CO2 from the air and enriched the atmosphere with oxygen over equally long periods of time, so that animals (and also humans) could flourish. Did you know that today about 99 percent of the air in the atmosphere in being produced by living organisms? We live in a living world! In the world's ecosystems, everything is interconnected. Wolves or lynxes are not the terror of deer, but keep their gene pool healthy and lively by predominantly weeding out the sick animals. Without these so-called "predators", the other wild animals would died slow, agonising deaths. In a similar way, sharks are important in marine ecosystems. Whales, on the other hand, actively contribute to climate protection: they feed on krill and zooplankton in deep water strata, but then come to digest them in surface waters, which they "fertilise" over wide areas. This gives a huge boost to phytoplankton and algae, which absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Human digestion also only works because of biodiversity. Hundreds of species of bacteria populate our colon, making it possible for us to digest a wide variety of nutrients. Our skin is also densely populated with little friends, without whom our immune system would be completely overwhelmed by the invasion of stranger microorganisms. Biodiversity is part of life, it is a cornerstone of the living planet! Besides biodiversity, it is also simply a matter of quantity. In ecology, we speak of "biomass" or "abundance". Since 1970, humans have destroyed 60% of the world's vertebrate abundance and 83% of freshwater habitats. And 76% of insect mass has disappeared since 1970. And where insects are missing, birds are disappearing next… If we don’t stop the great killing, the sixth great mass extinction is ultimately also a death sentence for the human species. Plastic contamination Microplastics can be found at the poles, in the mountains, on every beach and in every ecosystem on earth. And the peak has already been reached: in December 2020, microplastics were detected in the placenta of mothers and their babies. This is the ultimate bad news: if a species starts to produce so much waste that its own offspring is poisoned by it, what about the survival chances of this species? Over 300 million tonnes of more plastic keep being produced every year. After decay, microplastics enter every organism – plant, animal, human – and some individual molecules dock onto the DNA in our cells. This interferes with essential cellular processes such as protein production and cell renewal, metabolism, and as a result it weakens our immune system, leading to autoimmune reactions, symptoms of exhaustion, and far worse. Even if we manage to stop climate disruption and species extinction, plastic pollution alone could finish us off in the next few decades. And now? We still have a choice! The choice is quite clear and simple: Are we too comfortable, do we want to hold on to our luxuries as well as our delusions and excuses to keep business a susual running? Do we want to try that – until reality (see above) will finally catch up with us by the end of the decade? Or we realise that we can simply no longer participate in a form of society that accepts the unscrupulous exploitation of all living beings and all ecosystems. Our compassionate heart is awakened, we take back our inner ethics, our moral compass, and we realise: This great shame is not worthy of the human being! We can do better. If we should not be able to do that, it is maybe not a pity if humanity extinguishes itself by the middle of the century. But there is so much more in us! All the dignity and beauty of nature is also within us. We can create a human society more graceful and nurturing than anything that has ever existed in history! Which is embedded like a jewel in intact ecosystems on a healthy, happy planet. Ask your heart and gut feeling how we get there and what your part is in it. Step by step, one by one, we joyfully enter into our own healing and that of the planet. Not only the whales will thank us. Earth Spirit: Healthy Planet is available from Moon books and from wherever books are sold. Book Link: https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/moon-books/our-books/earth-spirit-healthy-planet |
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