Biosphericide

A Bio Big Bang on our planet

The biosphere, along with the atmosphere, are two inseparable entities of the Earth, a system in which each needs the other to exist. That thin biological sphere composed of water, soil and air full of life, has been there since time immemorial. Life was born shortly after the planet, since we have found organisms that lived 3 billion years ago in her. So our Earth could be called Life by its friendly atmosphere, always ready to give birth species of all kinds. How could this extraordinary phenomenon occur so early? For some it is God’s work (including myself), for others it is the work of nature.

590 million years ago came a vital Big Bang, an immense expansion of life on Earth, burst stage where the greatest diversity of flora and fauna ever known, grandmothers immense biodiversity we know today. Different ways of life inhabit side by side in an almost perfect harmony, because, despite species extinctions in the past, nature always manages to restore balance.

Nature always manages to restore balance

Foxes (predators) controls expansion of rabbits (dams). The decline in rabbits controls excessive proliferation of foxes. In Africa predators (lions, tigers, cheetahs, etc.) control the dams (wildebeest, zebra and bison, etc.). So we could find thousands of examples where nature always manages to restore balance.

The Ice Age was about to derail humans and other species. After completion of the Wurm glaciation 70,000 years of ice and snow, a long-awaited spring came, a real rebirth of life. The monotonous white landscape gave way to the flowering of the savannas that were filled with color and greenery, besides the singing of the birds and to light reappeared small and medium-sized animals. All these good weather began, as we know, only 12.00 years ago and has lasted until our days.

It was at this time that the human domain of Earth began, thanks to the weapons that could shoot down several tons animals in a fight extreme asymmetry; to make clothing and housing that allowed live in all regions of the planet: in the desert, poles and all intermediate shades climate; thanks to food because of the abundance of hunt that ensued after the long winter, then enhanced by the invention of agriculture and domestication of animals, seemed to augur an end to food shortages and ad infinitum. Then came the pharmacopoeia, preventive medicine, vaccines, antibiotics, vitamins, modern hospitals, teams increasingly sophisticated and effective diagnosis, mothers, biotechnology and other inventions and discoveries that fall falls every year, cells which have produced a Human increasingly powerful and seemingly invincible predators be free. But, as nature always manages to restore the balance, the question arises:

How will do the nature this time to restore the “unbalanced balance”?

Will she do it by war? We think not. In the 20th century, two world wars, with tens of millions of deaths occurred and yet it was the period of greatest population growth ever known. 1,500 million at the beginning of the century she spent 3,000 million for 1960 and 6000 were 2.000 million. The double world attended the doubling of the population in that short period. With no visible or invisible predators ¡The Humanity was quadrupled in a hundred years! Done unusual, unprecedented in these recent 12,000 years, many have overlooked. Will there be enough resources to sustain such growth? Could it be that nature needs an atomic war with 50% or 60% mortality to restore balance? Personally I do not think so. She does not fault. No need. She has found other mechanisms. She knows that every society, every community, every family and every individual carry their own internal predator incorporated. I quickly explained:

The world economy, local economies and families are reluctant to make the necessary changes to contribute to a more sustainable or necessary to maintain the balance between climate and life system. Governments complain almost always lack of money, wars or economic crises, they say, prevents them from taking the solutions to the problem. The communities, with few exceptions, do not assume their responsibilities by declaring budget shortfalls to meet the required high costs, but also politicking, corruption and crashes group interests are an obstacle to achieving objectives. Families and individuals do not deal the problem by attending their day to day, precarious living or simply because they deny that the problems really exist.

Will that we live in a Brave New World?

Another no less important factor of what we are talking about is the “Brave New World” in which modern societies seem to have found their comfort zone to not look at the problems that spring up. The advent of television, computers, video games, smartphones and social networks that transmit information, but especially entertainment formats of movies, video games, series, sports, viral mini videos of content fatuous spread by millions networks transmitted all day, every hour, all year, as never before had seen, making life in a dizzying career that not enough time for nothing and less to deal with “boring subjects” such as ecology, environmental problems or climate change. We live in what Mario Vargas Llosa called “Civilization Show” to signify our time. Generation “Carpe Diem”, as it could also be called a system introduced by the Roman poet Horace, raised about two thousand years later in the masterful performance of Robin William in the film “Dead Poets Society” and that for about 25 years is adding millions of followers to this “system” which is summarized as “Take everything you can now, because at the end of the day you may be dead”, finding its adherents the perfect excuse to look sideways, taking the views of the problems, to not even look back, history enrolling in the category of matter “endangered”. Worst of all is that the future is not interested in the majority, some because they simply do not believe in it, understandably in many cases, and other for practicing tips from the ancient Roman poet, as is live only the present.

Fracking and other technologies will not help reduce the use of fossil fuels

Finally I stopped the issue of hydraulic defragmentation to extract natural gas at great depths, besides the desperate search for oil fields using old methods for new (non-traditional) areas and the increased use of coal by some countries. We know that oil, gas and coal emit CO2 and methane into the atmosphere, two major GHG, greenhouse gases, which cause global warming and therefore climate change. This eagerness to continue the search and use of fossil fuels worries too much to put in doubt the feasibility of achieving the target put on the table by the UN, which considers reducing emissions by between 40% and 70% by 2050 and to 0 % by the end of the century, subject to the cop21, Paris 2015 (30N-11D). Hopefully it is achieved.

The hope that is the humanity who will untie the Gordian knot of global warming

All of the above in these reflections is a very dangerous cocktail to preserve life on our planet as we know. That amalgam seems to be our relentless predator. Global warming, combined with the gradual extinction of species, can lead to a planetary chaos, a situation that explain the so-called “hockey stick curves” sudden and unpredictable movements, which end in a real “biosphericide”. Finally, our hope is that we humans, with our ingenuity, science and resources who fix our planet and allow returns to be that nice house where all species can live together. It is imperative that we do not wait for nature to do its work, otherwise, she would take care to restore the balance, and this would be very painful.

Sandor Alejandro Gerendas-Kiss