Saving Earth's life support

Blog 5 by Paul Lund (23 July 2009)

This week’s look back to 40 years ago when Apollo 11 landed on the moon has given us a reminder of what it was like in 1969 to watch the first pictures of planet Earth coming from the moon.
Astronauts in 1968, on the Apollo 8 mission, were the first to orbit the moon and emerge from the dark side to take pictures of Earth. They, like many of their successors, described how they were awe inspired at seeing the Earth – their home – floating in a dark pitch of nothingness. These views of our blue planet, swathed in white clouds, with its incredibly thin layer of atmosphere, dramatically illustrated our vulnerability and how essential that thin veil is to maintaining life on Earth.
This view of the Earth’s fragility in space caused the astronauts to wonder about our home’s unique magic to support life in our solar system – like no other known planet. They were so moved they made impassioned arguments for doing all we can to protect our world. Many others, then and since, have shared that concern for how extremely vulnerable this small globe really is, hung like a jewel in space.
Human feelings of love and protection for the greatest planet we know then surfaced and one significant result was the formation of Friends of the Earth – now the ‘most extensive environmental network in the world, with one million supporters linked to more than 70 national organisations across five contents.’
How amazing it would be if we could all fly around Earth, in outer space, and share that sense of wonder and compassion for our dear planet. Sadly, even Richard Branson’s future space jet tours will be out of reach to most of us. The epic films – which started for me with the 2001: Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick’s film of 1968) – and those pictures of Earth from space, even live TV images from space, nowadays don’t’ do the same for us. Perhaps we now expect more excitement than our technology can ordinarily deliver.
Google Earth in 3D is one thing, but to feel stunned and awe struck we need to have something very exciting and close to the real experience. Possibly a simulated ride aboard a space shuttle on 3-D IMAX screens might get close, or a recreated shuttle cargo bay opening out to viewing the expanse of space, with all on-board hearing and seeing what it would be like aboard a spacecraft orbiting Earth.
NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre does have tours which include simulated sound and vision experiences of a space shuttle launch, and a real live astronaut taking part in talking to audiences. Hopefully some of astronaut John Blaha’s incredible journeys and experiences will instil a sense of amazement among his audiences and they will go away with a better insight of how beautiful and wonderful our world truly is. There’s a moment in one episode of Star Trek’s ‘Voyager’ when a crew member was told: “There’s nothing like an ‘away mission’ to remind us of why we are here.”
Those chosen few who have experienced the reality of leaving Earth’s orbit have, in a way, become Earth ambassadors for all humans. However, in many ways we are losing respect and consciousness for how delicately we depend upon our evolved life support system.
If, like me, you remember the Jacques Cousteau programmes on TV then you will be of that generation who were amazed and enthralled by the strange and mysterious life of our seas and oceans. Those programmes were just as fascinating as space travel, perhaps because we were seeing real living creatures so strange and unimaginable they were as good if not better than the alien dramas or moon landings.
Cousteau was famous, before his TV films, for jointly developing (1943) the self contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA) or the Cousteau-Gagnan diving lung. This led to the popular recreational sport that became scuba diving around the world. The design of a simple mouthpiece and links to a pressurised air tank, with regulator and outlet, gave divers the freedom to explore and enjoy the exotic wildlife of coastal waters.
Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his team of divers brought amazing pictures of marine life to our screens from the 1970s through to the early 1990s. He filmed and made television in a unique way which enthralled us all and he became a hero and champion for planet Earth with his impassioned pleas to us all to save this amazing world of wildlife, just like his astronaut counterparts.
Earth is a “limited and fragile spaceship that needs to be preserved,” according to the films Cousteau made. He implored us to do more to protect sea life and all nature, and his legacy lives on in the Cousteau Society for the Protection of Oceanic Life, which has over 300,000 members. Interestingly, he approved of population control and thought 100,000 people on earth would be the ideal number. Just compare that to today’s 60 million in the UK alone!
Now the ‘Calypso’ – his famous voyager – is to further continue this legacy. The salvaged and refurbished vessel is intended to sail again as an ambassador for the seas and oceans – “Carrying the legacy of Captain Cousteau and the Cousteau flag all around the world.”
We are amazed by exploration of the seas and oceans, which cover 70% of our world’s surface. Incredibly, there is still so much more of this marine environment still to explore, especially in the vast underwater mountains, valleys and deepest sea floors. Hundreds of thousands of marine species still wait to be found and named, according to the Census of Marine Life which has been an international research venture between 8o countries. This census will end in 2010, but the work is far from finished.
It seems to me we need space exploration, deep ocean exploration and in fact any kind of exploration of uncharted, unseen, parts of our world and beyond. We need this simply in order not to lose touch with the bigger picture of our own life support systems here on Earth, but we need to be doing much more as the population grows and more people are distanced from nature and their basic sustainable needs.
If you think of Earth as a vessel, an ark or space ship, carrying this fantastic biodiversity through time, then we are the captains of our future. We carry the responsibility of safely transporting life in all its diverse forms into the future.
I think it would be wonderful if one day a space craft was named Calypso – in acknowledgement of man’s exploration to new depths... on Earth and in space.
“One protects what one likes and one likes what enchanted us.” Jacques-Yves Cousteau.
Even with all the media coverage we have today, and with our beloved Sir David Attenborough’s epic series – among them Planet Earth and Blue Planet, we are strangely complacent as a culture about nature’s decline and unmoved by the greatest rate of species decline and extinction ever.
In this 200th anniversary year of the birth of Charles Darwin, I wonder what he would have said if he saw how we are threatening the loss of many thousands of species – not through natural survival of the fittest, but through how we are treating the environment.
It is a sobering and quite frightening realisation that along with climate change, habitat loss and pernicious pollution on Earth, we are causing untold damage to our fellow inhabitants, so much so that an estimated half of all life forms (species) are expected to become extinct before the turn of the next century. That amounts to the biggest loss of biodiversity for 65 million years, since the dinosaurs disappeared, and probably greater than at any time in Earth’s history.
Now add to this the evidence about the speed of this change. It is greater than at any time in the past, with about one fifth of all living species predicted to have gone in just 30 years. Among the figures issued by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), under their Red List assessment, are that one quarter of the world’s mammals face extinction, and these include such lovely species as lions, tigers and orangutans – all of whom are under threat.
On scientific grounds alone, we just have to think about the medical advances which have been made through the use of, for instance, plant substances to cure all kinds of human illness, and then what might be discovered in the future from the one in eight plants now listed as endangered. There are endless numbers of other reasons – economic, scientific, ethical, and aesthetic – for why we need to protect and conserve biodiversity.
We are such an intelligent species, aren’t we, but I wonder where it’s all gone wrong. We have risen to become the supreme dominant form of life on the planet and we are now affecting or influencing all forms of Earth life, so we must assume, without any question, the responsibility of protector of all nature and natural resources. Unless you believe an alien life form is monitoring what we are doing and will intervene before it’s too late – admittedly a stretch of the imagination – then we must be absolutely resolute to not allow our species to cause the destruction of the natural world.
‘In 2002, almost all governments committed to the 2010 biodiversity target “to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth”. The way the 2010 target was phrased highlights the reasons why we should care about nature: its utilitarian value and the fact that it is essential to human wellbeing, but also its intrinsic value (aesthetical, spiritual and recreational).’ This is taken from an IUCN briefing which you can read at www.iucn.org
“The IUCN Red List provides a window on many of the major global issues of our day, including climate change, loss of freshwater ecosystems and over-fishing,” says Simon Stuart, Chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission and co-editor. “Unless we address the fundamental causes of unsustainability on our planet, the lofty of goals of governments to reduce extinction rates will count for nothing.”
According to the United Nations Environment Programme “Human existence would not be possible without such things as water and air purification, nutrient cycling and the maintenance of biodiversity.” This statement is emphatic, it says exactly what will happen unless we save Earth’s life support systems and reverse what we are doing globally, or the consequence will eventually be our own species extinction.
Anthropogenic climate change – or the amount that man has and is causing – accounts for a rise of 30% in the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide. There is a natural level of CO2 in the atmosphere which our climatic cycles and biosphere can cope with over a period of time without causing damage. The excess build up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (Man’s increasing contribution through burning fossil fuels [20%], deforestation and agriculture [10%] over the past 250 years) is now universally believed to be driving excess global warming and the danger is that natural processes could start to break down. This is already causing weather patterns across the world to change and will result in immense disruption to all life dependent upon those natural cycles or processes unless we find ways to take out our industrial proportion of CO2 or stop CO2 emissions by stopping the use of fossil fuels.
If this situation cannot be stopped, science predicts there will come a point of no return – the Tipping Point – when the breakdown of some natural processes will become wildly out of control and even add to the problem, such as the melting ice releasing trapped ancient methane gas which is a far more dangerous gas and will increase global warming still further. This ‘run-away scenario,’ as it has also been called, is a prediction that climate change will become unstoppable, no matter what we then do. Beyond this only guess work and computer modelling can forecast the future which could result in severe human population loss along with much of our natural world disappearing too... sadly, but inevitably, the end of human life as well, though some life forms will survive and evolve under different conditions.
We could even now be at the forefront of Man’s extinction, perhaps more rapidly than the loss of the dinosaurs, as a result of climate change. The irony, however, is that we will have caused our own destruction, something that no other species has done to itself.
Those in positions of controlling global corporate business or international conglomerates – the industries who mine the Earth’s resources, unsustainably exploit the growth of trees, animals and oceanic life – though having become divorced from the reality of what they are destroying, must fundamentally change, or we are not going to be able to manage and survive in a world that has its life support system broken. The world’s governments must also cooperate and the major industrialised nations must act now in ways never before achieved in any other conflict or disaster.
Everyone carries responsibility, but some like the heads of national and international polluting industries carry higher responsibility. They should be accountable to world justice and humanity’s survival as well as our collective responsibility to protecting Earth’s biodiversity.
The Zoological Society of London’s Ben Collen says: “Within our lifetime, hundreds of species of birds, mammals and amphibians could be lost as a result of human actions.”
He continues: “Initial studies on the world’s smaller species such as dragonflies, corals and freshwater crabs indicate that threat levels may be similar or even greater. We must set clear goals to reverse these trends and ensure that our enduring legacy is not to wipe out the small things that provide us with great benefits such as pollination, nutrient cycling, and climate regulation.”
Making money has become more important than anything else and whilst billions of people on Earth suffer through insufficient food, water, shelter and ability to create adequate livelihoods for themselves and their families, the corporate bodies and institutions make more wealth for an exclusive few. For many others there is the lure of affluent consumption and the need to raise more and more finance to afford an increasingly expensive lifestyle. With this comes overwork, stress and what we now call Western diseases, or ills, which are at the opposite end of the scale to those which poorer societies suffer.
A momentum for change is growing – under the threat of irreversible climate damage, mass extinction of species worldwide and severe threats to the survival of people all over the planet. Though scientific recognition has been unequivocal, governments have so far been slow to react.
Somehow several changes must come together quite soon. We need to regain that incredible awe, respect and love for how remarkable this spec of blue in space – perhaps the whole of our galaxy – really is in supporting life. Deals must be struck worldwide on financing a low carbon future and targets must be set – and achieved – from now until the problems of how humans live as part of nature are overcome. If we can all do this, then I think we would (to use that well known phrase) make ‘an enormous leap forward for man and a giant leap for mankind’ – on Earth.
Those who remember the Live Earth global music concerts – just over two years ago – might have been mesmerized by the television pictures and excitement that was building between the capital cities around the world as they linked into that fantastic awareness raising event. Who remembers Madonna’s performance? All those musicians gave us messages to help inspire the world-wide television audience? It seems like a distant memory now and unless Live Earth could be held every year, then it will slip from our memories and just pass into the annals of TV history?
The United Nations – with all that it has spent on its Environment Programme – has yet to achieve the impact on humanity which is necessary; maybe a United Mankind and more space exploration is needed to help convince us that there is simply no other planet like Earth within our grasp.
In the end it all comes down to every individual. Each one of us can decide to do something towards saving Earth’s life support – and if we all do this, as a society or culture, then things will change.
“...I’m starting with the man in the mirror; I’m asking him to change his ways; And no message could have been any clearer; If you wanna make the world a better place; Take a look at yourself and then make a change; You gotta get it right; while you got the time...”
‘Man in The Mirror’ by Michael Jackson (1958-2009).

Author: Paul Lund, for the Mid Somerset News & Media blog
References
2009 Red List of endangered species, International Union for the Conservation of Nature - www.iucn.org
Wildlife in danger of extinction - www.massextinction.net
Climate Change the big picture – 6 facts from the Met Office UK.
Anthropogenic climate change – www.global-greenhouse-warming.com
Cousteau Society for the Protection of Oceanic Life www.cousteau.org