Although some people felt uneasy about the pollution of their environments, they kept on pursuing affluence and pleasure, thinking that nothing serious would happen, at least in their own lifetimes. One of the reasons for their unconcern was the notion that the world's resources were limitless. Many people who do not care about the environment or preventing pollution still harbor this illusion.
Another reason was doubtless the conceit of "conquering nature." Humanity has received incalculable benefits and gained immeasurable wisdom and knowledge from nature. When people forgot this and began to think that they could conquer nature, their appreciation of nature began to dwindle. At the same time, people forgot to reflect upon themselves, and gradually sank into the one-dimensional quagmire of desire for whatever material prosperity their technology could bring about.
If we do not examine ourselves strictly and put into practice an enlightened environmental ethic, we will never find ways to purify the earth. All the international conferences and legal restrictions in the world will be empty and impotent without the ethical cooperation of industries and consumers alike.
The Greenhouse Effect and Desertification
"Polar bears in the Arctic are now as dirty as rats in the cities." This is the sad warning of a prominent scholar investigating the conditions of wild animals in Canada. There are no factories in the Arctic. Nevertheless, a thick smog cover, 100 miles wide and 200 miles long, blankets the skies of the Arctic. Even the polar bears, among the animals farthest from pollution, are dyed gray by photochemical smog, and an unbelievable amount of PCBs is accumulated in their internal organs. The polar bears are not the only animals to suffer. Fish, seals, and even Eskimos have been polluted by countless poisons for which they have no responsibility. This is the state of the Arctic, long believed to be the purest land on the earth.
Even more dreadful than visible smog is the rise in atmospheric temperature due to the greenhouse effect. The main reason for this is the large amount of carbon dioxide given off when we burn fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide raises the earth's temperature because it absorbs the heat (infrared rays) that would otherwise radiate back into space, and turns the atmosphere into a heat sump. Alaskan permafrost is already starting to melt, disturbing the foundations of many buildings and rendering human habitation of certain areas extremely problematic. Melting Russian permafrost has cracked Russia's aging petroleum pipelines, leading to massive oil spills in the Siberian tundra. And the melting of the West Antarctic Ice Shelf is the beginning of a process that will raise the world sea level by several meters in a few centuries.
As the ice in the Arctic and the Antarctic melts, the oceans will overrun coastal lowlands, from uninhabited Pacific atolls to the Bangladesh delta with the highest population density in the world. Popular concern is reaching serious proportions in countries like the Netherlands, with much land already lower than sea level.
However, the most dreadful phenomenon brought about by the rise in atmospheric temperature is the impact on global climate patterns and resultant desertification.
As global temperatures rise, the earth's climate becomes chronically abnormal, and some areas become too hot and dry for greenery to grow. Then forests gradually turn into scrub, and brushy grasslands into deserts. This disturbance of the millennia-old balance of nature will snowball into an avalanche of abnormal phenomena.
The famines and wars that have plagued Africa for years, the droughts and floods of the Indian subcontinent, news of unusual landslides in the South American Andes—all of these are examples of abnormality caused by human disturbance of the balance of nature.
Acid Rain and Chlorofluorocarbons
Another factor that turns forests into deserts is acid rain coming from the burning of fossil fuels, especially by internal combustion. The sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxides in exhaust gases dissolve into atmospheric water vapor, turning it into nitric and sulfuric acid rain.
Acid rain acidifies lakes and rivers, killing the fish. In Canada alone, over thirty thousand lakes have become dead lakes, so acidic that they cannot support animal life. The process of acidification ultimately leads to the deformity and extinction of numerous species of aquatic life.
Acid rain also decomposes brick, concrete, and limestone, including world-famous artistic treasures made of stone. For example, the stone pillars of the Parthenon in Greece have been eroded, and the goddess's face is dissolving into a smooth expressionlessness. Monuments and cathedrals in England and Germany and the Taj Mahal in India are also suffering damage from acid rain. Each of these countries is devoting billions of dollars just to preserve their historic monuments from the erosion of acid rain.
The most terrifying aspect of acid rain is that it kills the world's soil, vegetation, and crops. Acid rain has withered 75 percent of the pines in the Black Forest of which the Germans are so proud. 28 percent of the trees in all the forests of France have suffered damage. In Norway, 25 percent of the trees have perished. Poland has given an urgent warning to the world that its forests will disappear during the next century if acid rain continues unchecked.
Acid rain also blankets Asia, Africa, and South America. It has browned the pine forests of Japan, partly by directly damaging the pine needles and partly by acidifying the soil. Pines in acid soil lose their resistance to disease and parasites, their brittler branches break easily in even light wind or under a light covering of snow, and they become increasingly appetizing to Japanese pine weevils. Crops in some places in Japan have also incurred severe damage. The rise in temperature and the death of forests are both very serious problems that affect the life of humankind and indeed of the earth itself.
Another frightful effect of air pollution is the destruction of stratospheric ozone by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and nitric oxides. The ozone layer is a layer of triatomic oxygen about twenty kilometers thick that covers the earth. It absorbs most ultraviolet light and other high-energy solar radiation that is harmful to living creatures.
CFCs are used in refrigerators, air conditioners, and commercial cleaning operations. Although outlawed in Europe and America, they are also used in Asia in aerosol cans for paints, insecticides, and hairsprays. CFCs have no known direct effects on the human body, but when they evaporate to the stratosphere they destroy the ozone layer. One CFC molecule can neutralize tens of thousands of ozone molecules. When this happens, harmful ultraviolet radiation penetrates directly to the earth, and this becomes a cause of malignant skin cancer. Japan's Showa Antarctic Research Base has recently reported a continent-sized hole in the ozone layer above the Antarctic.
Japan is the world's largest producer and consumer of CFCs and has refused to sign the international treaties restricting their use. This is another example of how the myopic drive for profit and convenience blinds consumers as well as manufacturers to the environmental consequences of their product choices.
Historical Functions of Forests
Imagine what it would be like if the trees in our neighborhood failed to put forth leaves in the spring, and all the trees withered and died like skeletons. The very thought is enough to make us shudder. In fact, satellite investigations have demonstrated that we are losing vast areas of forestland every year. This is due not only to global warming and acid rain, but also to the deforestation of the developing countries by the demands of developed countries for lumber and beef. Observing the destruction of our tropical forests, no one can fail to sense a grave danger.
Everyone knows that we cannot live without forests. We all unconsciously remember the fact that we humans evolved from forest-dwelling primates. We feel our bodies and souls energized and recharged when we walk through a forest. One reason is that plant photosynthesis turns carbon dioxide into oxygen. Another is that the air is purified and that plants moderate the temperature and humidity. So plants are both the sources of our oxygen supply and natural purifiers of our air. Plants act as the lungs of the earth, keeping our planet alive by circulating water, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide between the soil and the air.
Plants supply food for humans and innumerable other forms of life. Tropical forests also constitute environments for plant and animal life forms so numerous they have not even all been identified. But the vast variety of life in the