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<text id=89TT0042>
<title>
Jan. 02, 1989: What On Earth Are We Doing?
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
Jan. 02, 1989 Planet Of The Year:Endangered Earth
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
PLANET OF THE YEAR, Page 24
COVER STORIES: What on EARTH Are We Doing?
</hdr><body>
<p>By Thomas A. Sancton
</p>
<p> One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh:
but the earth abideth forever.
</p>
<p> -- Ecclesiastes
</p>
<p> No, not forever. At the outside limit, the earth will
probably last another 4 billion to 5 billion years. By that
time, scientists predict, the sun will have burned up so much of
its own hydrogen fuel that it will expand and incinerate the
surrounding planets, including the earth. A nuclear cataclysm,
on the other hand, could destroy the earth tomorrow. Somewhere
within those extremes lies the life expectancy of this
wondrous, swirling globe. How long it endures and the quality
of life it can support do not depend alone on the immutable laws
of physics. For man has reached a point in his evolution where
he has the power to affect, for better or worse, the present
and future state of the planet.
</p>
<p> Through most of his 2 million years or so of existence, man
has thrived in earth's environment -- perhaps too well. By 1800
there were 1 billion human beings bestriding the planet. That
number had doubled by 1930 and doubled again by 1975. If current
birthrates hold, the world's present population of 5.1 billion
will double again in 40 more years. The frightening irony is
that this exponential growth in the human population -- the very
sign of homo sapiens' success as an organism -- could doom the
earth as a human habitat.
</p>
<p> The reason is not so much the sheer numbers, though 40,000
babies die of starvation each day in Third World countries, but
the reckless way in which humanity has treated its planetary
host. Like the evil genies that flew from Pandora's box,
technological advances have provided the means of upsetting
nature's equilibrium, that intricate set of biological,
physical and chemical interactions that make up the web of life.
Starting at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, smokestacks
have disgorged noxious gases into the atmosphere, factories
have dumped toxic wastes into rivers and streams, automobiles
have guzzled irreplaceable fossil fuels and fouled the air with
their detritus. In the name of progress, forests have been
denuded, lakes poisoned with pesticides, underground aquifers
pumped dry. For decades, scientists have warned of the possible
consequences of all this profligacy. No one paid much attention.
</p>
<p> This year the earth spoke, like God warning Noah of the
deluge. Its message was loud and clear, and suddenly people
began to listen, to ponder what portents the message held. In
the U.S., a three-month drought baked the soil from California
to Georgia, reducing the country's grain harvest by 31% and
killing thousands of head of livestock. A stubborn seven-week
heat wave drove temperatures above 100 degrees F across much of
the country, raising fears that the dreaded "greenhouse effect"
-- global warming as a result of the buildup of carbon dioxide
and other gases in the atmosphere -- might already be under
way. Parched by the lack of rain, the Western forests of the
U.S., including Yellowstone National Park, went up in flames,
also igniting a bitter conservationist controversy. And on many
of the country's beaches, garbage, raw sewage and medical
wastes washed up to spoil the fun of bathers and confront them
personally with the growing despoliation of the oceans.
</p>
<p> Similar pollution closed beaches on the Mediterranean, the
North Sea and the English Channel. Killer hurricanes ripped
through the Caribbean and floods devastated Bangladesh,
reminders of nature's raw power. In Soviet Armenia a monstrous
earthquake killed some 55,000 people. That too was a natural
disaster, but its high casualty count, owing largely to the
construction of cheap high-rise apartment blocks over a
well-known fault area, illustrated the carelessness that has
become humanity's habit in dealing with nature.
</p>
<p> There were other forebodings of environmental disaster. In
the U.S. it was revealed that federal weapons-making plants had
recklessly and secretly littered large areas with radioactive
waste. The further depletion of the atmosphere's ozone layer,
which helps block cancer-causing ultraviolet rays, testified to
the continued overuse of atmosphere-destroying
chlorofluorocarbons emanating from such sources as spray cans
and air-conditioners. Perhaps most ominous of all, the
destruction of the tropical forests, home to at least half the
earth's plant and animal species, continued at a rate equal to
one football field a second.
</p>
<p> Most of these evils had been going on for a long time, and
some of the worst disasters apparently had nothing to do with
human behavior. Yet this year's bout of freakish weather and
environmental horror stories seemed to act as a powerful
catalyst for worldwide public opinion. Everyone suddenly sensed
that this gyrating globe, this precious repository of all the
life that we know of, was in danger. No single individual, no
event, no movement captured imaginations or dominated headlines
more than the clump of rock and soil and water and air that is
our common home. Thus in a rare but not unprecedented departure
from its tradition of naming a Man of the Year, TIME has
designated Endangered Earth as Planet of the Year for 1988.
</p>
<p> To help focus its coverage, TIME invited 33 scientists,
administrators and political leaders from ten countries to a
three-day conference in Boulder in November. The group included
experts in climate change, population, waste disposal and the
preservation of species. In addition to explaining the
complexities of these interlocking problems, the specialists
advanced a wide range of practical ideas and suggestions that
TIME has fashioned into an agenda for environmental action.
That agenda, accompanied by stories on each of the major
environmental problems, appears throughout the following pages.
</p>
<p> What would happen if nothing were done about the earth's
imperiled state? According to computer projections, the
accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere could drive up the
planet's average temperature 3 degrees F to 9 degrees F by the
middle of the next century. That could cause the oceans to rise
by several feet, flooding coastal areas and ruining huge tracts
of farmland through salinization. Changing weather patterns
could make huge areas infertile or uninhabitable, touching off
refugee movements unprecedented in history.
</p>
<p> Toxic waste and radioactive contamination could lead to
shortages of safe drinking water, the sine qua non of human
existence. And in a world that could house between 8 billion and
14 billion people by the mid-21st century, there is a strong
likelihood of mass starvation. It is even possible to envision
the world so wryly and chillingly prophesied by the typewriting
cockroach in Donald Marquis' archy and mehitabel: "man is making
deserts of the earth/ it wont be long now/ before man will have
it used up/ so that nothing but ants/ and centipedes and
scorpions/ can find a living on it."
</p>
<p> There are those who believe the worst scenarios are alarmist
and ill founded. Some scientists contest the global-warming
theory or predict that natural processes will counter its
effects. Kenneth E.F. Watt, professor of environmental studies
at the University of California at Davis, has gone so far as to
call the greenhouse effect "the laugh of the century." S. Fred
Singer, a geophysicist working for the U.S. Department of
Transportation, predicts that any greenhouse warming will be
balanced by an increase in heat-reflecting clouds. The skeptics
could be right, but it is far too risky to do nothing while
awaiting absolute proof of disaster.
</p>
<p> Whatever the validity of this or that theory, the earth will
not remain as it is now. From its beginnings as a chunk of
molten rock and gas some 4.5 billion years ago, the planet has
seen continents form, move together and drift apart like
jigsaw-puzzle pieces. Successive ice ages have sent glaciers
creeping down from the polar caps. Mountain ranges have jutted
up from ocean beds, and landmasses have disappeared beneath the
waves.
</p>
<p> Previous shifts in the earth's climate or topology have been
accompanied by waves of extinctions. The most spectacular
example is the dying off of the great dinosaurs during the
Cretaceous period (136 million to 65 million years ago). No one
knows exactly what killed the dinosaurs, although a radical
change in environmental conditions seems a likely answer. One
popular theory is that a huge meteor crashed to earth and
kicked up such vast clouds of dust that sunlight was obscured
and plants destroyed. Result: the dinosaurs starved to death.
</p>
<p> Whether or not that theory is correct, an event of no less
magnitude is taking place at this very moment, but this time its
agent is man. The wholesale burning and cutting of forests in
Brazil and other countries, as one major example, are destroying
irreplaceable species every day. Says Harvard biologist E.O.
Wilson: "The extinctions ongoing worldwide promise to be at
least as great as the mass extinction that occurred at the end
of the age of dinosaurs."
</p>
<p> Humanity's current predatory relationship with nature
reflects a man-centered world view that has evolved over the
ages. Almost every society has had its myths about the earth
and its origins. The ancient Chinese depicted Chaos as an
enormous egg whose parts separated into earth and sky, yin and
yang. The Greeks believed Gaia, the earth, was created
immediately after Chaos and gave birth to the gods. In many
pagan societies, the earth was seen as a mother, a fertile giver
of life. Nature -- the soil, forest, sea -- was endowed with
divinity, and mortals were subordinate to it.
</p>
<p> The Judeo-Christian tradition introduced a radically
different concept. The earth was the creation of a monotheistic
God, who, after shaping it, ordered its inhabitants, in the
words of Genesis: "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the
earth and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea
and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that
moveth upon the earth." The idea of dominion could be
interpreted as an invitation to use nature as a convenience.
Thus the spread of Christianity, which is generally considered
to have paved the way for the development of technology, may at
the same time have carried the seeds of the wanton exploitation
of nature that often accompanied technical progress.
</p>
<p> Those tendencies were compounded by the Enlightenment notion
of a mechanistic universe that man could shape to his own ends
through science. The exuberant optimism of that world view was
behind some of the greatest achievements of modern times: the
invention of laborsaving machines, the discovery of anesthetics
and vaccines, the development of efficient transportation and
communication systems. But, increasingly, technology has come
up against the law of unexpected consequences. Advances in
health care have lengthened life-spans, lowered infant-mortality
rates and, thus, aggravated the population problem. The use of
pesticides has increased crop yields but polluted water
supplies. The invention of automobiles and jet planes has
revolutionized travel but sullied the atmosphere.
</p>
<p> Yet the advance of technology has never destroyed man's
wonder and awe at the beauty of the earth. The coming of
England's Industrial Revolution, with its "dark Satanic mills,"
coincided with the extraordinary flowering of Romantic poetry,
much of it about the glory of nature. Many people in this
century voiced the same tender feelings on seeing the first
images of the earth as viewed from the moon. The sight of that
shimmering, luminescent ball set against the black void
inspired even normally prosaic astronauts to flights of
eloquence. Edgar Mitchell, who flew to the moon aboard Apollo
14 in 1971, described the planet as "a sparkling blue-and-white
jewel . . . laced with slowly swirling veils of white . . . like
a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery." Photos of the
earth from space prompted geologist Preston Cloud to write,
"Mother Earth will never seem the same again. No more can
thinking people take this little planet . . . as an infinite
theater of action and provider of resources for man, yielding
new largesse to every demand without limit." That conclusion
seems all the more imperative in the wake of the environmental
shocks of 1988.
</p>
<p> Let there be no illusions. Taking effective action to halt
the massive injury to the earth's environment will require a
mobilization of political will, international cooperation and
sacrifice unknown except in wartime. Yet humanity is in a war
right now, and it is not too Draconian to call it a war for
survival. It is a war in which all nations must be allies. Both
the causes and effects of the problems that threaten the earth
are global, and they must be attacked globally. "All nations
are tied together as to their common fate," observes Peter
Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden. "We are all
facing a common problem, which is, How are we going to keep this
single resource we have, namely the world, viable?"
</p>
<p> As man heads into the last decade of the 20th century, he
finds himself at a crucial turning point: the actions of those
now living will determine the future, and possibly the very
survival, of the species. "We do not have generations, we only
have years, in which to attempt to turn things around," warns
Lester Brown, president of the Washington-based Worldwatch
Institute. Every individual on the planet must be made aware of
its vulnerability and of the urgent need to preserve it. No
attempt to protect the environment will be successful in the
long run unless ordinary people -- the California housewife,
the Mexican peasant, the Soviet factory worker, the Chinese
farmer -- are willing to adjust their life-styles. Our
wasteful, careless ways must become a thing of the past. We must
recycle more, procreate less, turn off lights, use mass transit,
do a thousand things differently in our everyday lives. We owe
this not only to ourselves and our children but also to the
unborn generations who will one day inherit the earth.
</p>
<p> Mobilizing that sort of mass commitment will take
extraordinary leadership, of the kind that has appeared before
in times of crisis: Churchill's eloquence galvanizing his
embattled countrymen to live "their finest hour," F.D.R.'s
pragmatic idealism giving hope and jobs to Depression-ridden
Americans. Now, more than ever, the world needs leaders who can
inspire their fellow citizens with a fiery sense of mission,
not a nationalistic or military campaign but a universal crusade
to save the planet. Unless mankind embraces that cause totally,
and without delay, it may have no alternative to the bang of
nuclear holocaust or the whimper of slow extinction.
</p>
</body></article>
</text>