"Our food should be our medicine and our medicine should be our food."
~ Hippocrates

SAVE OUR PLANET
REACH UNIVERSAL RESPONSIBILITY

By Robin Greenslade

Earth is a jewel in the crown of the cosmos. We have been given a beautiful planet on which to learn to create with love. In our learning we have desecrated our home with nuclear wastes, 'resource' extraction, barbaric wars, mass extinction of species, using rivers and oceans as garbage dumps, and paving life with concrete. Nature is self-balancing. We have pushed it so far off-balance that it is now seeking a new balance by changing planetary conditions. The new conditions may not favor our society. Changes underway include:

Climate change

Arctic ice is melting fast, exposing high-carbon tundra peat to sunlight to release carbon dioxide gas. Arctic CO2 combined with human greenhouse gas emissions causes global warming which in turn is melting frozen arctic methane hydrate to release methane gas. Methane is a greenhouse gas 8 times stronger than CO2. Global warming heats oceans, possibly melting methane hydrate deposits in continental shelves. Resulting runaway global warming could raise temperatures by 20 C.

• The Thermohaline Circulation (THC) ocean currents are slowing down and may collapse because cold, freshwater Arctic and Greenland ice-melt is flowing into the North Atlantic. This may cause severe cooling in countries around the North Atlantic, as happened many times in the past. Global warming can cause ice ages. We are in an interglacial phase of a much longer ice age.
• Antarctic ice sheets are beginning to break up, potentially raising sea levels and flooding many cities.
• El Nino may have entered a semi-permanent phase, changing weather patterns and contributing to increasingly extreme climate events in the future.
• Massive forest fires are likely, including forecasted complete combustion of the Amazon forests by 2050. Massive CO2 release and biodiversity loss would ensue.
• Desertification and flooding are causing crop failures while soil degradation causes declining crop yields.
• Severe freshwater shortages are forecast for 5.4 billion people by 2050.
• Glaciers are retreating worldwide, causing massive depletion of stored freshwater during a time of global warming and forecast huge population increases.

Global migration to coastal cities

• Human migration to coastal cities increases potential casualties at tectonic plate boundaries from earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes and rising sea levels.
  

Sixth Mass Extinction Event

• Human extinction of many thousands of other species has placed us in the later stages of the Sixth Mass Extinction Event. Up to 95% of all species have disappeared in previous mass extinction events. When biodiversity is reduced too much biodiversity collapse may occur; large species usually disappear.
  

Global economic depression

• Economic depressions occurred in the USA, on average, every 43 years between 1779 and 1951. The largest national debt in the world's history (forecast to exceed US$9 trillion) makes another American, and consequent global, depression likely when US interest rates rise and spending falls.
• Wars used to end economic depressions by creating jobs. Now wars worsen depressions. Few new jobs are created by 'lean manufacturing' and the huge cost of modern militaries further increases national debt.
  

Natural resource depletion

• Many natural resources will run out. Resource wars are possible.
  

Disease pandemics

• Forecasted population increases, particularly in poor countries, will speed the mutation of potentially pandemic diseases. Global warming allows tropical diseases to move northward toward large cities.

Each of these crises interacts with between 2 and 10 other crises, increasing their severity. We are inexorably creating far-reaching changes in all our lives. We will have to learn to work together in cooperation rather than competition. By working together toward a common global vision we will become globally conscious. In the process of becoming globally conscious we will learn to love and respect all forms of life.

Now is the time to begin preparing for the coming crises. Preparations include a research institute, "Future Centre", to forecast specific effects of the crises on human life and city-industrial civilization. We need to understand the vulnerabilities of cities so as to prepare in advance. Alternative societal structures, including proposed "Village-communities", need to be examined. It is time for humanity to re-invent itself in love for each other, nature and our Creator. It is time to Save Our Species by embracing universal responsibility.