Friday, October 29, 2010

Another generation...


Life on Earth has survived for millions of years and undergone genetic changes because of evolutionary processes that coincided with climate conditions. Even when the Siberian traps and out pouring of volcanic gases occurred 250 million years ago or with the Deccan traps 65 million years ago, plant life and animal life continued.

Humanity may try to geoengineer the planet and in the process may find beneficial aspect to continue on several other planets in this solar system, especially Mars or Venus.

Yet, the philosophical question and aspect would be "Why should humanity have dominion over the Earth?" when the reality is that humanity is part of the Earth. Over the last 700 years many species have gone extinct because of human settlement and human population that has needed the space for their own living. In the next 100 years many of the larger species of animals will become extinct in the wild with only genetic material frozen and stored.

The Earth cannot support the current population of 6.7 Billion individuals indefinitely, even with proper allocation of resources of food and water. How can humanity expect that the Earth is going to support 9.1 Billion individuals in the next 50 years with a life-span of those individuals at 70 years? With the aspect of raising the poverty levels of the people in every Nation on the planet, over that 120 year time frame is unrealistic?

Cutting down the forests to "Pave Paradise and Put up a Parking Lot" is going to leave the world very impoverished. Well see what the next 50 years brings upon the Earth.

(Initially posted on Cosmic Log). JMW

2 comments:

Paulie said...

When the animal or plant kingdom feels self-important enough to blog about their existence (a shot at myself and bloggers in general, not a specific shot at Jerry), then they can share domain over the Earth.

We will most likely not have to deal with the consequences of our action today, but within the next generation or two, they will have some terrible problems to solve, since our profit driven culture refuses to deal with them now.

Jerry M. Weikle said...

Awe, the "Bloggers World". Yet, what we are leaving behind is vast amounts of data and information for the future society to reflect upon the words of "The Early 21st Century" and the apparent struggles that occurred.

Just in the event that the portrayal of "future events defined by StarTrekian databases"; Ahem...a third world war and radiation events that left 600 Million dead occur(hopefully, not, as there isn't any known Vulcan's in the general galactic neighborhood).