the Earth has, though there are multiple different scenarios going on. If any one of these scenarios were to break down, all life on the planet would eventually die. And at the moment they’re all about to break down—it’s just a matter of which one breaks down first. And whenever one system goes, then all the rest of them will go eventually, and that’s it, there won’t be any more human life. It will be over with, and we’ll end up just like Mars or the dinosaurs. A few years ago, around the turn of this century, there were 30 million species of life forms on Earth—30 million different species of life. In 1993 there were about 15 million. It took billions of years to create these life forms, and in less than a blink of an eye, a mere hundred years, half of the life on this dear Earth is dead. Around thirty species a minute are now becoming extinct somewhere. If you were to watch this planet from space, it would appear to be dying very, very rapidly. Yet we’re going on as though nothing’s happening and everything’s great. We’re sticking money in the bank and driving our cars and just wiggling right on. Yet from an honest point of view, we have a real life-anddeath problem going on here on Earth, and few people seem to be really serious about it. When they tried to get the entire world to come together in Rio in the early ’90s to discuss the worldwide environmental problem, our president didn’t even want to go. Why not? Because the problems are so serious that if we were to fix them, another problem would happen that would be an even more serious problem, from the president’s point of view: We would be plunged into a worldwide financial breakdown, after which a large portion of the Earth’s population would die from starvation and other problems. In essence, we cannot afford to repair the environment. On the other side of the coin, can we afford not to?
Dying Oceans It was in the August 1, 1988, issue [Fig. 3-2] that Time magazine focused its attention on the oceans and what was happening there. Jacques Cousteau wrote a book about this around 1978. He was a very respected person, but when he wrote this book, he lost credibility in scientific circles because he made a statement that nobody could believe. He founded his statements on pure science, but people simply could not or would not accept the truth. Specifically, 70
Fig. 3-2. Divulging the status of our seas.
for humanity immeasurably diminished. We the undersigned, senior members of the world’s scientific community, hereby warn all humanity of what lies agead. A great change in our stewardship of the Earth and life on it is required if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated.” Yet most of the world rejected this statement even though it was created by one of the most respected scient ific bodies ever assembled on Earth. You would think we would pause and say, “If this is true, what can we do? Let’s drop everything and do whatever is necessary.” But the governments know that if we are to avert this crisis, we must change the way we live, and that would not be politically comfortable. No politician wants to be the one to introduce this unpopular change. To the government s, the economy would suffer and