Climate Change and the Future of Mankind

(Photo Courtesy: http://climate.nasa.gov/ )

Since the beginning of mankind, humans tried to master the environment around them. Now thousands of years later in the 21^st century it seems that the humans have finally conquered the Mother Nature. Humans have habitats in all possible places in the earth ranging from freezing Antarctic ice caps to scorching deserts regardless of their hostile environment. It is apparent that human race is unstoppable and they are the master of plant earth. Is it? New developments of how environment behaving now proves otherwise. Is it possible for humans to hold nature’s wrath any longer?

Human population was well under 1 billion until 1804* and the natural environment was relatively intact until the industrial revolution in the 19^th century. Since then, man made his print on earth exploiting its resources and filling it with his offspring. It is true to say that man has altered the global landscape once in for all during the last 2 centuries.

Humans thrive when they have all their basic needs such as food, water and shelter fulfilled. The complexity and sophistication of human needs also increased steadily. All those needs costs energy and natural resources. Those resources need to be extracted in industrial scale. Energy is the key to human success. Starting from coal burning steam engines to electric motors and diesel engines all of which needs energy of some sort, human dependence on energy makes oil, natural gas, coal precious commodities. Timber, metals and water from aquifers also adds to the mankind’s growing resource need. Land is also had to be reclaimed from virgin lands for dwellings and farming not to mention the sea, which is used to fulfill countless needs. Burning fossil fuels and adding nuclear waste as a byproduct of energy generation is inevitable. Humans have littered the environment with waste which is mostly toxic to the environment. Even the space is not left intact by filling it with space junk originating from thousands of discarded spacecrafts and satellites

Early warning signs of the fact that the earth can no longer sustain the beating it gets from human presence was disregarded. Even the melting of the South Pole ice cap was dismissed of having any connection with human activities. Even the scientific community was turning a blind eye to the climate change and the changing environment. Sometimes there were confusions in identifying natural phenomenon such as “El Nino” and “La Nina” different from man made changes. Most of the people well in to the 1980s thought that earth can take anything we throw at her.

With the global temperatures getting higher, natural disasters happening at an alarming rate and with sea levels rising, finally mankind gets a taste of what it is to come. Only now the scientific community and the general public started to see a connection between climate changes and human activities.

It is lucky to see the environmentalists educating the public and lobbying for politicians and policy makers to seriously think what we do to the environment in the so called process of industrialization and development. Still rapid alternation of our way of life is needed. We either have to slow down our impact on earth or find ways to reduce if not reverse our negative effect on the environment. With the growing population it is impossible to slow down the development activities so only option left for us is reducing human footprint on earth. We should be smart and efficient. The technology which made the negative effect on the environment itself can be the savior of both the mankind and the environment. New technologies which help to achieve maximum growth with less environmental impact may hold the key to future. It is true to say that there is no silver bullet to save the planet from eminent destruction in the future. People need to gather at personal level, city level and country level to battle this problem. It is apparent that we only have the plant earth to fulfill all our needs. If we destroy it, our industrial might, growth opportunities and above all our material wealth will be on jeopardy so number one priority should be given to reduce harmful human impact on earth and keeping Mother Nature calm and quiet. 

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Population Crisis; What shall we do?

World’s population is now more than 7 billion and rising rapidly. It has reached that point one year ago in October 2011. As humans, we have an immense impact on planet earth so complications arise naturally with the rising population. Overpopulation is now a major challenge to the long list of obstacles faced by humankind.

Throughout the human history, overpopulation has never been a problem before. Humans like all the other species need resources to survive. If a species have access to plenty of resources, it thrives while that species is starved of resources, its population declines or probably faces extinction (like what happened to Dinosaurs). Usually balancing the population of species is done by nature itself. Story of human population is somewhat different. Until the first half of the last century, the human population stayed under 2 billion. Due to the rapid growth it only took another half a century to nearly triple that population.

We generally think that adding more and more members to our huge human family is a good thing but as any species needs certain resources such as air, food, water and habitat to live, humans also needs those basic necessities and much more to survive and human needs and expectations are getting bigger and bigger every day. Throughout the last 50 years, expansion of quantity and quality of necessities such as energy, transportation, housing leads to perfect condition for a human population boom. Although population rise started with the industrial revolution in the 19^th century, only after the World War 2, it started skyrocketing.

Humans to generate wealth industry, production and economic activity are needed. Those needs more people. With additional wealth humans can breed and feed a new generation which helps to create more and more wealth. This cycle continues to function perfectly until couple of decades before the last century ends.

Above mentioned economic model is obsolete nowadays due to two reasons.

1.       We don’t need much labor and human skills to generate wealth. Smart technologies, industries and production don’t need much labor. The way we create wealth is also changed. World relies more on smart technologies, financial industry and service sector which requires less human participation that age old industry and agriculture
2.  Depleting resources; Humans entirely dependent upon natural resources such as minerals, metals, oil and arable land. Now humans don’t have the steady supply of resources to generate wealth which helps to keep and increase population

Problems

Large population consumes lot of natural resources which took thousands of years t naturally form. Production of those resources can’t keep up with the rising population.

This earth is not only designed for humans but we take the whole world for granted. The truth is humans are mere part of the world’s Eco system. Natural resources and generally the environment are used by every other plant and animal. Over-consumption and rising demand puts strain on the environment as well. This leads to environmental pollution which dangers not only humans’ future but also the whole worlds’ future.

Human standard of living was rising with the increasing population. This means people can live longer. But most of those old people don’t contribute anything to the creation of wealth; it becomes the duty of young to serve their elders from their wealth. This practice is highly appreciated in some cultures, especially in Asia but beyond this duty of safeguarding senior citizens lays a heavy burden in younger generation’s shoulders.

With the rising global population, especially in 3^rd world countries, an emigration boom is created. People are trying to migrate to rich countries in search of opportunities. Most of the Asian and North African people are trying to migrate to Western European countries and to United States. This mass migration creates disruptions between the immigrants and local people. Nowadays when people migrate to other countries they don’t embrace the local culture. They tend to communalize in their own religious or racial segments. Since western countries have lower birth rates compared to immigrants, immigrant community grows faster and creates its own sub cultures. Most of the time immigrant and local cultures don’t jell with each other well. Sudden demographic shifts are dangerous for a county’s future for example, in United Kingdom, immigration and immigrant cultures have become a big problem which has led to racial and religious conflicts more than once.  

Global population is rising in a way that the nature can’t control. Population boom may explode one day but it puts the entire humanity in jeopardy. Experts have found out that the ideal population which should be living in earth is 2 Billion. We have two solutions with us. Either find another plant to put the extra 5 Billion humans or reduce the population.

Since science is not able to find any plant suitable to us other than earth, the one and only option is population reduction. Even with that solution, we may encounter some social problems.

1.       We can’t move population to less populated countries because of cultural problems

2.       We can’t kill old people or reduce health benefits due to social and ethical issues.

3.       We can’t selectively give the chance to live for the healthiest babies like ancient Spartans did (Which sounds like a good idea) but not a single mother will like the idea of killing her baby even for the benefit of entire humanity.

We need a world-wide systematic reduction of births like the Chinese did with their one-child-policy. Like valuation and devaluation of a country’s currency, governments should have a plan specifying how many people are needed for the future to plan the birth policy. If the country can sustain more people, less restricted birth policy can be enforced. If the population is growing, strict laws regarding number of children can be brought forward. While making policy changed, the scientific community should be able to find ways to sustain large population from limited resources without affecting the environment.

We too need to change and adjust their high-end, energy-consuming lifestyles. That surely be uncomfortable since we are too comfortable with our life but if we keep on going like this, the end is painful than ever. Overpopulation is created by us. Before it consumes us and reduce humanity to rubble, we should act bravely and take drastic measures to prevent that from happening. 

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