Our impact on the planet

Dec 5, 2007 15:49 GMT  ·  By

1.What makes too many people on this planet for too few resources? The demographic boom, increased carbon dioxide emissions, the thinning ozone layer, deforestation and soil erosion.

2.The global warming will raise in 100 years Earth's temperature by 1.4-5.8o C, and this is already increasing the sea level. The first human settlement wiped out by this could be the village of Lateu (Tegua island, Vanuatu). The dwellings have been repeatedly swept away by waves and violent storms.

3.Once Nauru, a nation island in the middle of Pacific, was renowned for its tropical beauty. The first Europeans stepping on this 20 square km island during the 18th century called it "the Island of Pleasure". Today, only a narrow strip along the coast can be still inhabited, Nauru being the country with the most destroyed environment worldwide. The reason: mining exploitations for phosphates. For 90 years, phosphates, the product of sea bird dropping accumulated along the millenia, have been excavated, leaving behind a moon-like landscape, full of holes and gray limestone peaks, some 22 m (73 ft) tall. This forms now 80% of the island. The heat raising from this area chases away the rain clouds, leaving behind a dry land. And the phosphate reserves are now ending.

4.From the 60s, the energy industry has produced over 200,000 tones of nuclear wastes. Annually, 10,000 tons are produced. Most of them are simply stocked in the reactor area. But this places can stock the waste just for decades. After that they must be stored in long term deposits. At the moment, no country has an underground depositing place for the nuclear wastes produced in the same country to avoid them becoming dangerous.

5.In the last 30 years, 33% of the natural places have disappeared: over 10% of the forests, 30% of the ecosystems and 50% of the freshwater ecosystems, due to increased agriculture and industry contamination, and increased water consume. Soil degradation and habitat modification doom many species, together with poaching. In the last 500 years, 844 vertebrate species disappeared because of the human activity. In the last 200 years, over 250 species of birds and about 200 species of mammals have disappeared. Annually, the poachers kill 20,000-30,000 animals only in the Serengeti National Park.

Deforestation spurs global warming as carbon dioxide absorption is reduced. And in 20 years tropical forests could be gone. In some areas, deforestation caused rat invasions, as with the forests their predators were gone, like in Philippines. Connections between plants and animals are complex, in many cases unsuspected, and the breakage of a link in the chain can have disastrous effects. There are no useless and useful species in a network.

Over 70 % of the fishing places are so exploited that breeding does not compensate exploitation. This is the case in the Northern Atlantic where the cod, hake, haddock and flounder populations reduced by 95 % between 1989 and 1994. Annually 20-40 million tonnes of sea creatures are returned to the sea, wounded or dead. This are accidental captures collected by the nets.

When people started to settle in Seychelles, soon they eliminated the population of dugong (sea cows) and endemic giant turtles (which reached up to 200 kg). Colonies of sooty terns are intensively exploited; all eggs are crashed in one day, and the collectors return next day to collect the fresh eggs. Eggs of sea turtles too are heavily collected.

6.Inside your house contamination could be 10 times higher than in your garden. The formaldehyde vapors emitted by pal furniture and synthetic materials are that much higher than outside. Furniture, synthetic accessories, vinyline flooring, building and decorative materials, cleaning products or home devices for cooking or heating can emit vapors of carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, benzene and other volatile organic compounds. Benzene, a renowned cancer inducing agent, is found inside the spray-type cleaning products but also in the tobacco smoke, another pollutant factor of the dwellings.

7.Radioactive, heavy metal or plastic wastes cause anomalies, diseases, and even death in both humans and animals. Plastic contamination is a huge issue in the ocean. In 2006, a huge mass of waste was found near Hawaii. It brought to the beaches fishing tools, nets and plastics. A large amount of oceanic fish contains toxins that could have come from plastics. Many weapons are disposed in the sea water: on the bottom of the Adriatic Sea are estimated to be found about 20,000 chemical bombs, thrown there by the Italian Army between 1946 to 1970. Leaking from these weapons killed 'till 1997 five Italian fishermen, while 236 were hospitalized. On the bottom of the Baltic Sea, there may be 100,000 tones of chemical weapons and such deposits are also found in US, Japan and UK. 120,000 tonnes of mustard gas and phosgene were left on the sea bottom off Northern Ireland following the Second World War.

8.Annually, about 3 million people (5-6 % of the deaths) die because of air contamination, and 1.1 billion are affected by it. Very small particles cause about 10 % of the respiratory infections in the European children. Only in Ontario, this contamination causes losses of $ 1 billion annually in medical care and work absenteeism. The smoke of Diesel engine is carcinogen (cancer causing). Facial masks can not filter most toxic particles, and as they are not hermetical, they give a false sense of security.

9.Acoustic contamination can cause deafness, stress, hypertension, insomnia and a drop in productivity. Children assisting to classes in a noisy environment can have lecture problems.

10.In the '50s, along the Great Chinese Wall trees were planted on large areas, in a number of about 300 million, as a barrier against the sand storm coming from the Gobi desert. As a result, if in the '50s Beijing experienced 10-20 sandstorms each spring, reducing visibility to less than 1 km for 30-90 hours, by the '70s their number decreased to 5, each lasting less than 10 hours.