Dystopian Eaarth

 

We have changed Earth in fundamental way. The physical feature of Earth is changing rapidly. The hospitable Earth that we know is gone. We are now on dangerous Eaarth -a dystopian reality.  We have warmed the planet, warm air holds more water vapor than cold, it rains harder and evaporate faster. With sea ice melting, the albedo, or reflectivity, of arctic changes as the mirror of white ice replaced by sun absorbing blue. Global temperature, heat wave, rainfall, landslides, forest fires…have increased dangerously. Thunderstorms, cyclones/hurricanes, lightning are more frequent and last longer. Methane chimneys are opening up rapidly heating the planet further. The great rainforests are dying. Plant yields and nutrition are falling, life giver phytoplankton are dying, species are vanishing, biomass reducing and resilience of biodiversity is falling. Oceans are acidifying, incapable to hold carbon nor sustain diverse life, coral reefs are barren. Bacteria, parasites, algae blooms flourish, water and mosquito borne diseases increase and spread. Extreme catastrophic events are leading post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and variety of phobias, and increased numbers of refugees. Add to it, warmer world is predicted to lead to more wars and discords over shared water, rivers and arable land, violent storms can even topple weak governments. The terrifying reality of end of cycle of growth that institutions are hinged on. We don’t know how to regrow rain forests, defreeze arctic, recreate ecosystems…

This is what this book eaarth: making a life on tough planet (by Bill McKibben) is dealing with, it was written almost 15years back -and that surely is life time back in fast changing world, but still is valuable. As we see climate catastrophes unfold on daily basis, and realtime vanishing of life nurturing planet, these books provide insights. As for me it really didn’t add much to the knowledge on these issues as I have kept abreast with unfolding reality and have read much of the literature and documentaries on climate catastrophe. Unlike 15years back it is criminal to be not aware of these critical matters. There are some mentions in the book that I found interesting, like for instance, this collateral of climate catastrophe in Mozambique presenting unseen unexpected complexities of changing world compounding problems for common people who really haven’t contributed anything to these disasters that is enveloping their life: “…record rains in Mozambique washed out huge quantities of land mines that were planted during brutal civil wars. People, escaping flood, swam into these fields and were killed. To make matter worse…thousands of dollars were spent to map the location of these minefields…some even washed up on local beaches around the lake. Farmers are terrified to plough their fields again because they don’t know what is under the silt”