“We can drift along as though there were still a cold war, wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on weapons that will never be used, ignoring the problems of people in this country and around the world, being one of the worst environmental violators on earth, standing against any sort of viable programs to protect the world’s forests or to cut down on acid rain or the global warming or ozone depletion. We can ignore human rights violations in other countries, or we can take these things on as true leaders ought to and accept the inspiring challenge of America for the future.”
Jimmy Carter
The first cities we know of were located in Mesopotamia, such as Eridu, Uruk, and Ur, and in Egypt along the Nile, the Indus Valley Civilization, and China.
Imagine, if you will, our planet as a great glass sphere full of chemicals. Underneath, there is a large Bunsen burner with a flame regulated by an attached thermostat. Over time, the sphere gradually heats up and cools down according to the control of the thermostat. As this occurs, the chemicals, chemical compositions, and chemical reactions change accordingly.
The Earth was at one time a resource-rich planet. However, as human population and society has grown and evolved, we have managed to deplete its inheritance of metals and petroleum. This has been done for the most part historically by the primary industrialised nations on Earth, which are now known collectively as the ‘G8.’
With the world population passing the 6 billion mark last October, the debate over our ability to sustain a fast-growing population is heating up. Biotechnology advocates in particular are becoming very vocal in their claim that there is no alternative to using genetically modified crops in agriculture if “we want to feed the world”. However industrial agriculture operations strive to increase production and thereby maximize their profit margin without regard for either the environment or human health. The heavy use of pesticides poisons the land and water and has been shown to be carcinogenic.
Believe it or not, there are some alive today (especially in America) who believe that we (human beings) overestimate the consequences of our actions in relation to how it may impact the environment. The truth of the matter is, we are the only species of lifeform on the planet which can and is in fact capable of controlling or altering the world for better or worse. This is nothing new, as humans have been influencing the climate long before the Industrial Revolution.
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