Losing Earth

In 1970, the boom of industrial revolution dimmed to reveal the ugly underbelly of progression. People became cognizant of the dangers of pollution to our thinning environment and thus constituted the first ever international event celebrating Earth Day on April 22nd. A call to awaken the public to our dwindling natural resources and to pay attention to the silent cry of dying rain forests.

Yet little to nothing has been done to curb the downward spiral and often the countries who were either directly or indirectly responsible for extensive dumping of the toxic wastes into our environment , were busy playing the blame game to stop and take constructive action. It is only the last few years, due to the persistence of visionary few that "going green" has now become the trend. There are still many naysayers including Vice President Dick Cheney, who believe further investigation is required to prove global warming is manmade before further money could be spent on reversing the effect, but what they fail to take into consideration, that while they wait for proof, nine tiny south pacific islands of Tuvalu, boasting of 10,000 inhabitants( according to U.N. 2006) would become the first casualty of Global warming for they stand no more than 13 feet above sea level and if rising sea level is an adverse effect of Global warming, the land they call home would be no more.

It is imperative that countries need to do more and address this problem while we still have a chance. Studies conducted by the United Nations Environmental program indicate the pacific islands are in dire need of proper waste management. They do not have the resources or the knowhow, to maintain an environmentally friendly, clean way for disposal of wastes,. According to Global International Waters Assessment( GIWA)this condition is recurrent in many developing island states as seen in Comoros and in Madagascar, where only 6% of rubbish is routinely collected and in capital Antananarivo alone, the unattended rubbish is approximately 65,700 tonnes, providing a fertile breeding ground for epidemics. You may ask how this may affect a person living in America or the cooler shores of the Riviera, but through our extensive trading practices, the world has become a global village and a death of an individual in a remote village has a universal consequence.

We ask for proof of Global Warming, yet nature reveals her vulnerability to us each day by slow and steady disappearance from our midst. Lake Superior, the world’s largest fresh water lake has dropped to its lowest level in 81 years and is twenty inches below average and dropped a foot from last year. In may 2007, a glacial lake in southern Chile disappeared, the lake was its normal depth of hundred feet and covering a five acre stretch in march when surveyors checked on the rarely visited lake, but when the forest officials arrived in may, they found nothing but dry lake beds with huge chunks of ice and huge fissure, which leads to the question of the mysteriously disappearing lakes, or does it fall under the category of " can you hear the leaf fall in the forest if no one is there to hear it?"

Few may argue that steps have been taken to ward off the inevitable such as expend money on biofuel research to wean ourselves from oil dependency. This will indeed be heartening were it not for the hungry starved faces of the third world countries such as Haiti, where more than half of the 9 million population live on less than $2.00 and this hike in prices on produce, will now make most of the population destitute, according to a report in A.P "In Hungry Haiti" by Ben fox. What do we say to the children in these countries who place wet cloth on their stomach to ward off hunger pangs?

Yes, mankind needs to have forward mobility, and we need to be progressive. But can we not, still find the means to nurture our mother earth while we take giant leaps forward?. We strive to colonize other planets to make earths out of them but why do we not protect and care for the Earth we have?

- Editor