Euthanizing planet Earth

Tracey Lindeman-Jarvis

MONTREAL (The Link) — The apocalypse is fast approaching. Well, at least that’s what it seems like, anyway. With years of talk of global warming and the recent discovery of warm-water fish in the Arctic’s Bering Sea, it’s hard to deny that the world is experiencing a major ecological shift.

Before the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide levels hovered around 280 parts per million. Since then, those levels have risen by 100 parts per million, a number that Tim Flannery, author of The Weather Makers, says is the fastest rate of increase in the world’s history.

Flannery paints a dismal picture. “The atmosphere of Venus is 98 per cent carbon dioxide, and its surface temperature is 477 degrees Celcius,” he writes in his book. As of 2004, carbon dioxide composes about 0.038 per cent, by volume, of Earth’s atmosphere.” Should carbon dioxide ever reach even one per cent of Earth’s atmosphere, it would . . . bring the surface temperature of the planet to the boiling point of water,” Flannery asserts. And he points out that humans are largely to blame.

A jump in carbon dioxide levels from 280 to 380 parts per million over the past two centuries doesn’t necessarily seem astounding. But it took around four billion years for it to reach 280 parts per million, and 250 years to increase by nearly a third. Once the numbers are added up, the results are downright terrifying

Humans are largely responsible for the planet’s suffering. When the most powerful nation in the world hums and haws about ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, it sends a clear message — the world is only here for human consumption and the relentless pursuit of capitalism. We take no responsibility, nor do we have any consideration for future generations.

This sentiment echoes that of many industrialized nations. They’d love to help the dying planet, really — but not to the extent that it hinders mass production and the viability of the free market.

In the average student’s lifetime, the world has changed drastically. Ten years ago, Montreal winters were actually cold. Since then, we’ve witnessed massive natural disasters wrack the globe. The sheer number of floods, tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes and other destructive forces that have occurred in the past 20 years is a serious cause for alarm, and its link to global warming is beginning to be taken seriously.

Global warming skeptics have discounted human beings’ influence on the environment by downplaying figures that have been released over the past few years. Yes, the Earth’s surface temperature has increased by a tiny one degree Celcius in the past century, but according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “the 20th century’s 10 warmest years all occurred in the last 15 years of the century.”

The EPA estimates that if little progress has been made to bring carbon dioxide emissions under control by 2100, the pollutant’s concentration in the atmosphere could rise by 150 per cent from current levels.

Scientific jargon definitely dilutes the message scientists have been trying to get across in recent years, but simply put, the planet is dying. Even if everyone stopped driving cars tomorrow, and multinationals respected the Kyoto Protocol to a T, there is little hope for any reversal of the damage done. National Geographic reports that “even if humans stop burning oil and coal tomorrow . . . we’ve already spewed enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to cause temperatures to warm and sea levels to rise for at least another century.”

However, environmental groups and governments alike should continue to strive toward creating more planet-friendly policies, and members of the global community can take a proactive stance by supporting more environmentally-friendly initiatives. The acceleration of global warming and the changes it has caused within our lifetimes are lessons that are begging to be learned from.

We may not be able to stop the deterioration of our planet, but we can slow down the process by petitioning the government and the corporations they’re in bed with to respect gas emission standards, to encourage alternative methods of transportation, and to limit our patterns of consumption. It may be a lot to ask of six billion-plus people, but if we don’t act, we are ensuring the extinction of the human race itself. It’s not a simple matter of priorities — it’s a state of emergency.

Because of technological advancement in the past half-century, human beings have developed a sort of God complex. We control the universe, or at least we’d like to think so. We are invincible, and pay no mind to the consequences of our collective actions. But who are we to think there won’t be another Ice Age? With the polar ice caps diminishing at an increasingly rapid pace, a massive flood could very well eliminate the world’s population. Mother Nature can only take so much abuse.

And the effects are not only felt by humans. The appearance of salmon in the Arctic is not normal. The inability of bears and seals to hunt because of the thinning of winter ice is not normal. The increase in temperature in the Gulf of Mexico ensures that more Hurricane Katrinas are on their way. Natural disasters are becoming more and more man-made. We could have prevented a lot of destruction had we acted when global warming first became an environmental concern, but we scoffed, much like our parents scoffed when links were made between cigarette smoking and lung cancer.

Lung cancer is now one of the leading causes of death in Canada. We are facing an environmental apocalypse. The plight of the planet is on our shoulders.

Tracey Lindeman-Jarvis is Editor-in-Chief of the Link, a student newspaper at Concordia University.