Opinion Sur
More than being in the center of a crisis of planetary proportions, today, we face a nonreversible process. The Earth will never be the same again. It has been transformed in its physical-chemical-biological base in such a profound way that it ended up losing its internal equilibrium. It entered a process of chaos, i.e., it lost its sustainability and affected the continuity of what has been doing through millennia: to produce and reproduce life.
Every chaos has two sides: one, destructive and, another one, creative. The destructive one represents the dismantling of one type of equilibrium and implies the erosion of part of the biodiversity and, at the edge, the reduction of the human species, that is produced either by the incapacity to adapt to the new situation or by being unable to mitigate the lethal effects. Finalized such purification process, chaos begins showing its generative face. It creates new orders, equilibrates the weathers, and lets surviving human beings build another type of civilization.
The Earth’s history teaches us that she went through fifteen great destructions, like that of the cambric, 480 years ago, that destroyed 80-90% of the species. But as she is a generous mother, she slowly rebuilt life diversity.
Nowadays, the majority of the scientific community alerts us about an eventual collapse of the life-system that can threaten the own future of the human species. We can all perceive the changes that are occurring before our eyes. Great extreme effects: on the one side, prolonged summers associated with large water shortage that affect the ecosystems and the society as a whole, as it is happening in the South-Eastern part of our country (Brazil). In other parts of the planet, as in the United States, harsh winters not seen since tenths and even hundreds of years. The fact is that we have reached the physical limits of planet Earth. By forcing them as our consumerist and productivist voracity does, the Earth responds with hurricanes, tsunamis, devastating floods, earthquakes and an uncontrollable raise in global warming. If we were to increase the temperature by two degrees Celsius, the situation would still be manageable. But if we do not do our homework, by drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions and we do not reorient our relationship with nature towards collective self-restraint and the respect of the supportable limits of each ecosystem, then it is foreseen that the weather might elevate between four and six degrees Celsius. Then, we will meet the “Great Tribulation”, to use a biblical expression, and most of the life forms we know, even parts of the humanity, could not survive.
The renowned magazine Science has just published (January 15, 2015) a paper on planetary limits written by 18 scientists (Planetary Boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing Planet). They identified nine main dimensions for the continuity of life and our civilizing experiment. They are worth citing: (1) climate changes, (2) changes in the biosphere integrity with the erosion of the biodiversity and accelerated extinction of species, (3) diminishing of the stratospheric ozone layer that protects us from the lethal solar rays, (4) growing acidification of oceans, (5) disruptions in the biogeochemical flows, (6) changes in the use of soil such as growing deforestation and desertification, (7) threatening shortage of fresh water, (8) concentration of aerosols in the atmosphere (microscopic particles that affect the weather and living beings), (9) introduction of synthetic chemical agents, radioactive materials, and nanomaterials that threaten life. From these nine dimensions, the first four have already surpassed their limits and the rest are at a high level of degeneration. This systematic war against Gaia can lead to the collapse as it occurs with people.
Despite this dramatic scenario, I look around and watch in ecstasy the woods full of violet lent trees, yellow cassias, and at the corner of my block amaryllis belladonnas in blossom, toucans resting on the trees in front of my window and macaws nesting under my roof. Then, I realize that the Earth is a truly generous mother: faced with our aggressions, she still smiles with flora and fauna. And she instills us hope that this is not the apocalypse but rather a new genesis on its way. The Earth is still going to survive. As it is written in Jewish-Christian Scriptures: “God is the ruler lover of life” (Sab 11.26).
