Life on Earth - What is the Future?

While visiting at my mother’s home over the Thanksgiving holiday, I ran across one of my old social sciences textbooks from Henry Ford Community College: The Mermaid’s Head & The Dragon’s Tail (Kendal/Hunt Publishing Co. – Third Edition – 1977).

An essay by David R. Brower entitled The Last Days of Earth caught my attention. The perspective Brower shares is eye-opening. Following is a brief excerpt:

“Let’s compress time even more, and squeeze the earth’s four billion years to the six days of the week of creation. This makes available a startling instant replay.

Creation began … at midnight on Sunday. Until noon on Tuesday it was all a construction job. There was too poisonous an atmosphere when we finally got one, ant there were too many toxic metals – such as mercury, lead, and cadmium – for life. The had to be locked out of the system, except for a few essential traces here and there, before life could take hold.

At noon on Tuesday the miracle happened: there was a cell, there was a chromosome in the cell and genes in the chromosome. The gene said “Let’s split,” We’ve had life on the planet ever since.

Life continued to expand through Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and into Saturday morning. It increased in abundance, diversification, stability, and beauty. Life produced the environmental capital of the earth, the “Biomass,” which is now so important to us. On Saturday morning, at about five o’clock, the oil that we’re now using up so rapidly began to be laid down. … At four in the afternoon, the dinosaurs and other big reptiles came onstage; at nine they were off. …

All of this was the prelude to The Great Event. Three minutes before midnight, something like man arrived. What we readily recognize as man waited until eleven second before midnight. This was Neanderthal man, and with him came the beginning of our political process. Next, at one and one-half seconds before midnight, we had in Southeast Asia the first agriculture. Half a second later, agriculture had already destroyed most of the forests ringing the Mediterranean, such as the Cedars of Lebanon. Then, one-quarter of a second before midnight, Christianity arrived.

We create this perspective for one main purpose: it was not until one-fortieth of a second before midnight, the last day in the week of creation, that the Industrial Revolution began. Out of the marriage of coal and iron, we developed the capacity to destroy the environmental capital of the earth. We came to like tat so much that in the last 1/500th of a second before Sunday we became possessed by an idea that we appear to accept as natural law: the only way we can make the whole thing work is to continue to grow, and to grow faster. …

Growth leads to problems of doubling that we could once forger, but now cannot. Two percent growth per year (the rate our population was growing until recently) will produce a doubling in thirty-five years. Seven percent growth (the rate of our growing demand for electricity) will produce a doubling in ten years. Zero growth (which is all the planet can grow) produces no doubling ever, and there’s the problem. Either rethink growth or expand the planet. You can’t have one without the other, but you can borrow for a while and fool yourself into thinking you got away with it.”

At a time when American political leaders are debating drilling for oil in the Alaskan wilderness, Chinese and Indian demand for energy is accelerating, and wars are being waged in no small measure to help secure strategic oil reserves, it is imperative that people begin to ask tough questions about the future of the human race.

How can we continue to meet insatiable demand with limited resources?

Who will step up to the plate and develop large scale alternative sources of power?

How will we feed, clothe, and shelter an ever-increasing global population?

Why are so few American politicians speaking about these issues in our time of need?

QuestionItNow Blogs