B.3 – Ecological Perspective

Catastrophes & Sixth Extinction

We should admit that the society we have created in thousands of years is the main building block of our species and the most complex system that human kind ever developed. Hence, running it in a sustainable way must be the leading concern of all. Not for only us, also for the sake of the environment we live.

After thinking about the Ecological Catastrophes (such as climate change, extinction of species, fatal hurricanes, pollution in air and oceans, etc.) that we have terrifyingly observed/experienced only in last decade, it would not be a hard-to-reach conclusion that the system (society) we are living in does not seem to has enough longevity since it start to destroy itself by defecting and poisoning environment we are all living in.

Human species began building societies in the agricultural era. The change on the global temperature is the main building block of that era to be exist. After the first exit of our modern version (sapiens) from Africa, it takes appr. 70 thousands years that the global temperature stabilized. Geologists call that epoch as ‘Holocene’.

The Ice-Age ends around 12.000 BC and Holocene epoch began. Great historic civilizations established with the help of environmental consistency and conformity. Massive production of food via the agricultural technologies was possible due to the global climate convenience. After 80.000 years of wildness and primitiveness, our modern species became to be civilized and tasted the prosperity.

But not long after, around second millennia after Christ (2000 CE), some changes on climate became to be apparent. Industrial Revolutions and our corrupted attitude towards environment (God created everything for humanity, we are the blessed ones!) cause dangerous volatility in temperatures on oceans and atmosphere. The ‘Anthropocene’ epoch begins, as geologists say.

At 2021, we already increased the global temperatures apprx. 1 degree Celcius and according to scientist warnings we are very close to the ‘no-return’ threshold 1.5 degree Celcius. If we do not cooperate against it (e.g. abandoning fossil fuel based energy system) the 6’th extinction is on the door of our home.

This is just one side of the wide destruction of humanity on Earth. Planet has 9 defined ecological boundaries to be habitable in the future [4]. According to scientist. we already exceed and passed to the no-return side for 4 of them. Figure-8 is a nice visualization of the situation we are in and the urgency we need to realize.

1. Climate Change
2. Biosphere Integrity (Biodiversity)
3. Land System Change (Forests (Amazon,Taiga), Savans, Deserts, etc)
4. Freshwater Usage (Underground Water cycle)
5. Biogeochemical Flows (Azot and Phosphor cyle (nutrition giving elements))
6. Ocean Acidification (carbon-dioxide returns to carbonic-acid and reduces carbonate in the ocean which mollusks need to grow)
7. Atmospheric Aerosol Loading
8. Stratospheric Ozone Depletion
9. Novel Entities (heavy metal, radioactive materials, plastics, etc.)

Boundaries are listed as counter-clockwise with respect to Figure-8. Biodiversity and Biogeochemical-Flow are in the red side that we may not return to back! We still the orange side for the Land-System-Change and Climate-Change but we are drifting quickly into the red zone. Freshwater-Use and Ocean-Acidification boundaries are in the green zone that we should keep in at any cost. But remember that, according to ice-drilling records, all of these boundaries were in green zone just 70 years ago!

Three of the boundaries do not have any defined thresholds. The Ozone-Depletion is the only one that humanity showed its resilience and co-operation ability and return it from orange to green area. Countries and companies exhibited a remarkable commitment and collaboration against a treat on our blue home, Earth. We need to make apparent the lessons of this success and spread it to other critical boundaries.

Bringing the transparency aspect of data into the ecological problems may solve the problem of attention of citizens to this crucial subject and can persuade them to take collaborated actions against it. With the help of the New System, everyone can easily and conspicuously see the real-time numbers and statistics about the main climate features like average temperatures in poles, density of carbon in the atmosphere and oceans, about the drought and water reserves of humanity and about the frequencies and magnitudes of hurricanes and floods. Hence, nobody can manipulate the reality of the upcoming homo sapiens caused annihilation of Earth!

For short term, best urgent and beneficiary actions are declared by scientists.

1. Abandoning fossil fuel based energy consumption in the next 30 years totally.
2. Reducing the over-consumption esp. in the food area which uses %80 percent of our freshwater and causes %35 of greenhouse gas emissions.

The first one will help us to reduce acidifications in oceans and control the climate change which are crucial effects on Biodiversity. The second one will help us to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions if we decrease the individual meat consumption and keep the freshwater usage in confidence level if we leave the starch based nourishment which have proved causality on obesity and cardiovascular deceases. Is’n it really exiting that having a healthy diet has the potential to make our planet healthy, too.

References

[1] http://www.igbp.net/globalchange/anthropocene.4.1b8ae20512db692f2a680009238.html

[2] http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/Mann/research/res_pages/MannPNAS2008/index.html

[3] https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/sst-data-noaa-extended-reconstruction-ssts-version-4

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries#:~:text=Planetary%20boundaries%20is%20a%20concept,from%20the%20Australian%20National%20University.