The future of the Planet - Pollution & Climate Change
iasparliament
September 23, 2017
Is the planet’s health failing?
The population of vertebrate species on Earth in the wild saw a dramatic fall of about 30% between 1970 and 2006.
This is due to destruction and degradation of natural habitats.
The freshwater ecosystems in the tropics are the worst affected.
The ecological footprint of humanity currently far exceeds the biological capacity of the earth to replenish it.
What are the epochs that modern humanity has seen?
Epoch is a geological time period that has a characteristic climate, life forms and other planetary features of its own. Ex: Jurassic
Holocene - For 12,000 after the last ice age, the Holocene epoch has offered a stable climate.
This was a period of grace for humanity to grow and flourish, with settlements, agriculture and lately economic and population expansion.
Anthropocene – Holocene has since morphed to a new epoch called anthropocene, the beginnings of which are being debated.
This epoch is marked by over-reliance on fossil fuels.
It also is an era of high industial pollution, warming up of the planet and loss of species.
Antropocene has thus been defined as an age in which human activities will produce a significant impact on the planet’s health.
Is a catastrophic collapse of the planet possible?
Many of the planet’s systems respond in a non-linear manner and hence we usually don’t see immediate proportional reactions to pollution, degradation and climate change.
Some systems tend to see a sudden collapse if particular threshold levels are breached.
When ecological tipping points are crossed, significant large-scale changes may occur - such as breakdown of glaciers, the loss of rainforests or failure of monsoons.
Since systems interact with one another, crossing a threshold in one domain can influence another.
For instance, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions increase ocean acidification and land-use change often increases GHG emissions.
Humans haven’t yet understood many of these systems in detail and hence a sudden collapse is very much possible.
Some experts opine that we are already at critical levels of concern for climate change, fresh water, species biodiversity and changes to nitrogen and phosphorus cycles.
How can the future be best approached?
Identifying interlinkages between biophysical planetary boundaries and development is essential to keeping the world safe by initiating transformative changes.
While the future looks gloomy, the best we can do is to recognize sustainabilitly as indispensible for survival and work towards the ideals framed in the 1992 Rio-Earth summit.
