There are enough facts available about global warming in print and through the Internet – one only needs to Google “population density” and in five seconds over three million hits appear on the screen – that we are faced with it daily. The subject is no longer relegated to the domain of doomsayers, but now politicians, in power and in opposition, constantly press the issue as they stump for new environmental policies.
But during a recent conversation, a work colleague pointed out to me that the planet has been here for over 3.5 billion years, give or take a thousand or two either way. He said that for some reason we are concerned more about the health of the planet and less about how we will survive, and suggested that we need to be more concerned with the quality of life we have right now. The planet, he suggests, will take care of itself. But life, as we know it, may end.
“It’s not something new,” said Clevon Fraser of the World Environmental Group (WEG) located in Washington, D.C. “We are seeing more of a shift from saving the earth to self-preservation, though one set of thinking seems as valid as the other.”
The questions rising are: will humankind still be here? What form of life will have evolved? Will the planet, in its natural cycle of renewing itself, de-select us as insignificant and change us? Will we evolve? Will we de-evolve? Will the planet kill us all off and re-invent the wheel?
These are questions that raise theological, evolutionary and existentialist concerns, but they are also questions that suggest we may be erroneous in how we think about global warming today. Are we beginning to shift away from the “Save-the-planet” placard-waving protests to a more important question of “What about us?”
What about us? We’ve been here for a couple of thousand years. We are insignificant with regard to time. But the time we have been here and what we have done in that time changed everything. It’s only been in the last 100 years that we have proven to be significant, and it isn’t something we should be proud of.
Since the industrial revolution, the release of harmful emissions into the atmosphere has been on the rise. In the last 40 years, it has shot off the charts. In his documentary An Inconvenient Truth, former presidential candidate Al Gore showed a graphic that demonstrated this spike in emissions. a spike that corresponds exactly to the rise in the global population.
“Perhaps if our population stopped growing, then maybe the levels of emissions we shoot into the atmosphere would hopefully level off, or begin a slow return to normal levels,” Fraser said.
But Fraser believes that this is wishful thinking because predictions from many sources indicate that by the year 2050 the earth’s population will reach 9.8 billion, up almost 3 billion from our present 6.2 billion. On a population graph that is a significant spike, Fraser said. Al Gore’s graphic would be even more pertinent 44 years from now.
Still, how does one separate saving the people on the planet from saving the planet? Our ecological footprints are growing and certainly, as we approach 9.8 billion, there will be less livable land for each person. Ample estimates suggest that the present 1.8 acres per person available today will narrow to 1.1 per person by 2050.
Beyond that is anyone’s guess.
“Thirty years ago we were all thinking about our quality of life,” said Doreen Montgomery from Atlanta NGO Earth Essentials. “But we thought that meant having gas guzzling cars, big houses and two to three children. Today we are thinking about the quality of our air and if we’ll all get lung cancer.”
Montgomery is almost certain that the planet will survive but she isn’t so sure about humans. “To survive we’ll have to slow down population growth and level off at some point. It may sound selfish but the more people we have the less resources available. And that means our quality of life will diminish.”
So while some people think of saving the planet and others think of saving humankind, the deadline of 2050 is looming. Some action must be taken today.