My science teacher asked me to wirte this essay, because I like to read/write/learn stuff about science! So, I'm looking for general feeback, and overall impressions!
Fare Thee well, Gaia...
"Life just wants to be; but it doesn't want to be much." – Bill Bryson.
Well, humans want to be, but we want to be in style. We want to be with a high definition flat screen T.V. – the country of origin isn’t relevant. We want to be with a Flash car – relevant not how much it is killing the planet. We want to be with a fancy brand of clothing – how far it has come doesn’t matter.
We want to be - whatever the cost, we can pay it. Period.
Perhaps not. What’s the cost of the petrol you have just pumped into your car – not the charge for you, but the price that the environment has to pay?
The petrol has travelled far and wide, but its break in your oil tank doesn’t stop there. It travels into the atmosphere, where it lies wait for millions of yeas in carbon deposits. You aren’t the only one. Billions of litres of petrol are being passed along the line daily. And there will be billions more in the future.
The predicted population for 2050 is nearly double what it was in 2000. With extra people, the human race will have to build more homes, more schools and more factories. The impact on the earth will be astronomical. It is known that almost nine thousand species die out every year due to human over-population. The planet is taking a hit for what humans are doing; careless and irrevocable damage that is being done daily without a second thought.
So how will Gaia cope? Not very well.
With human trends continuing as they do, the earth is predicted to have incomprehensible changes – most of which are irreversible and inevitable.
In the last 100 years, the sea level has risen six-to-eight inches, with a global temperature rise of half a degree Celsius. If the current trends continue, the population will rise – and with it the temperature. In the next thousand years, the ice caps will melt, raising the sea level by up to five meters - depending on which source you choose to believe. This will have dramatic ramifications to the beach life, and coastland continents such as us. With sand dunes eroded - because the sea is high enough to reach them and wash them out to sea - the inland has no protection from wind and harsh weather. The land will become more and more eroded, wasting away until every continent on the planet is changed dramatically from present-day.
With less land to live on, humans will presumably come up with more eccentric ideas on how to save Gaia. For the sake of my essay, these are predicted to be inadequate, unconventional and ineffectual.
Try as they might, humans will come to only one conclusion: We’re doing it wrong. Now, take a moment to think about what you would do if you hade the human race, the future of our planet and all things known to man weighing down your shoulders. Come to a conclusion? I have. You would build expensive equipment and undergo arduous tasks to come to a conclusion that you haven’t figured anything out, and you have just made the problem worse. You have made the problem worse by constructing high-tech facilities, using up more of the earths resources and polluting the atmosphere further.
Even more shocking than the erosion that the global warming (Created by over population in the near/distant future) will cause is the destruction of clean, green earth that flourishes all over the planet.
With oceans rising, the world will become damper. The moisture will only have a wet or cooling effect on some places though, mainly the coastline. Harsh weather will batter the helpless land, forcing the inhabitants to retreat inland or they will become extinct. The problem arises that the moisture will have to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is inland. The calm and peaceful cities as we know them today will not survive the famine that will come. Sweltering hot temperatures will force life to exist only at night, or underground. The earth will dry out and crack into a vast and terribly torrid desert.
… Human life will not survive.
“You [humans] move to an area and you multiply. You multiply until every natural resource has been consumed. And the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet. That is… a virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer to this planet and everything on it.” – Agent smith.
