— Dr Jyotirmoy Das Chowdhury Though the origin of the earth remains a mystery, the process of destruction of the earth is visible everywhere. The ominous reports from the frozen Antarctic regarding the dwindling rainy forests of the tropical region, the receding glaciers and drying rivers all over the world give us an evidence of an unprecedented scale that we are facing an emergency in future. The only abode of mankind, the planet earth with fixed mass and volume is in danger and crying for survival.
The four vital components of earth, atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere and biosphereare attached like a chain to nourish the flora and fauna surviving in our earth. The world is now confronting the fundamental question regarding the future of biosphere and its capacity to sustain, both society and nature. In ancient time, the use of fire by the cave dwellers may be treated as first symptom of human interference with nature. But soon people learnt harvesting food through agriculture, and in the process they set up permanent settlement. As its size started growing, township originated and thus urban settlement developed. Man’s need increased rapidly and with the Industrial Revolution, the scale, rates and kinds of environmental changes have fundamentally altered all earlier concepts of human intervention on nature.
Heavy industries like iron and steel, railway engines, cars, paper, fertilizer, chemicals have dumped toxic wastes into perennial rivers and streams; automobiles have guzzled irreplaceable fossil fuels and fouled the air with their waste materials. The modern society, especially the developed countries depleted forest cover, lakes and swamps being poisoned with pesticides, underground aquifers pumped dry and to extract minerals, earth’s surface has been ruthlessly deracinated to the maximum extent possible to facilitate open cast mining.
At the same time, population explosion is a world wide phenomenon and is staggering and unpredictable in its space allied distribution and socio-economic repercussions. In 1800 A.D., there were 1 billion human beings living on the earth. The number has doubled by 1930 and again doubled in 1975. In fact, the growth of world population since the end of the 19th century is of a magnitude unparalleled in history. Between 1920 and 1950, in spite of enormous death and destruction of the catastrophic World War 11, population increased by 31 per cent from 1834 million to 2406 million. By 2015 world population would cross 8 billion.
Thus unnatural growth of population has created a number of uncalled for problems. Our climate is warming, species are disappearing and human population on the other hand is increasing at a very fast rate. The rising temperatures are transforming polar landscapes and global epidemiology. Added to this, the West Antarctica’s massive ice sheet is shrinking, sea ice and glaciers melting, in the North Polar Region, permafrost is thawing, the Tundra region abdicating its grassy plants to shrubs.
All these changes took place because of unwise destruction of resources. Coal for example takes million of years to transform from biotic matter to lignite and ultimately to high grade anthracite. Today we are consuming 6.2 billion tonnes annually. China produced 2.38 billion tonnes in 2006 and India produced 447.3 million tonnes. Being unconcerned of its impact, China generates 68.7 per cent of her electricity from coal. The developed county like US even generates 70 per cent of her electricity from coal, exerting tremendous pressure on earth. As a whole, 40 per cent of world’s electricity comes from coal. This has caused a number of adverse effects on our environment as it releases carbon dioxide and methane causing climate change and global warming. In fact, coal is the single largest contributor to human made increase of carbon dioxide in the air. In a materialistic world, human greed for resources is so acute that of the last 10,000 years of use of copper, 95 per cent of copper smelting was performed only in the last 100 years. The rate of exhaustion is such that with the present rate of consumption of copper, it will last only for 25 to 61 years.
Consumption of resources not only attenuates the geologically transformed materials, but also causes pollution which expands beyond a regional area to cause global effect. The stratosphere (16km - 50km) above sea level is the layer of atmosphere. It is rich in ozone, which forms a protection layer absorbing ultraviolet - B (UV-B) that damages deaxyribo nucleic acid (DNA), the genetic molecule found in every living cell, bemusing one at the risk of cancer. The chlorofluoro carbons (CFC)3 breaks under intense UV radiation releasing chlorine atoms. These chlorine atoms when mixed with ozone, convert oxygen molecules that do not absorb UV - B. A single chlorine atom can destroy up to 100,000 ozone molecules in the stratosphere which is responsible for thinning the ozone layer causing more and more skin cancers and cataracts.
The growing pollution has also cast its imprint on world fauna and flora also. There are now 41,415 species on the IUCN ( International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List and 16,306 of these are threatened with extinction. Last year the number of Red List species was 16118. In fact one in 4 mammals, one in 8 birds, one third of all amphibians and 70 per cent of the world’s assessed plants on the IUCN Red List are in danger. Our hopeless unconcerned attitude towards our environment made 785 species extinct till today and another 65 species are found only in captivity. It is the history of last 500 years that human activity has forced most of these species into extinction.
Another vivid example of human impudence with nature is to control half of the world’s large rivers by building dams. The ubiquity of changed landscape caused its direct impact on natural flow of water, rate of erosion and deposition. In each minute, we are destroying 50 acres of rainforest and thus impinging its associated impact on our ecosystem. On average, one US citizen uses 50 times more energy than an Indian, signifying the rate of consumption differences in a developed and in a developing country. As a whole, there are 500 million automobiles in our earth using an average 2 gallons of fuel per day. Each 2 gallon releases 20 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air. Now, it is time for us to ponder how much pollution we are adding everyday to our atmosphere.
Now, what should we do to protect our earth? Should we wriggle our hands and do nothing? Should we wait for an absolute proof a disaster and then to act? How long will our planet take to reach the irreversible stage? Is not it the most opportune time to exert force for a recovery process of our damaged earth?
What we can do now? Can scientists protect our earth from destruction? No Scientists and environmentalists can only evaluate the degree of damage incurred to our earth, prognosticate the future and pin point the severely damaged areas for immediate attention. It is the general people who are to be conscious about preserving our earth. We should have to take collective protective measures and extend unequivocal support to those organisations and clubs who are relentlessly working for protection of our environment. The student community, who would be the direct victim of ecological degradation in future, should take the lead in environmental protection and sustainable development. The local press, news channels too should give extensive coverage to environment related programmes and make people more and more conscious of the impending danger that may destroy earth and threaten the existence of life on this beautiful planet.
(The writer teaches Geogeaphy in Jagiroad College) ASSAM TRIBUNE
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