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Dwindling natural resources - the real apocalypse
By Brian Alexander
On October 17, 2012
Unless you've lived as a hermit for the past decade or so, there's a good chance
you've heard a few doomsday criers here and there.
From Y2K to the 2012 Mayan calendar fiasco and a cavalcade of Bible-based
predictions in between, there seem to be a growing number of people who believe
we are nearing our end.
I am one of them. But not for the reasons you might expect.
The reason I believe we are sprinting toward apocalypse is our overuse and abuse of
Earth's natural resources.
With a global population of six billion and counting, there's no doubt that humans
are the dominant animals on this planet. Through thousands of years of growing and
asserting said dominance, we've developed an unhindered entitlement to whatever
stuff we come across. Gold, fossil fuels, dodo birds, you name it.
We've achieved a number of incredible feats along the way, but the collateral
damage is daunting. According to an article published by the British Broadcasting
Corporation, if we don't curb our consumption, we'll run out of the majority of our
planet's resources within the next hundred years.
Fossil fuels will be depleted by 2054, many essential minerals will be wiped out by
2092 and coral reefs, agricultural lands and most of the Earth's rainforests will be
gone by the year 3000.
It's simple: the Law of Conservation of Mass, discovered by 16th Century French
scientist Antoine Lavoisier, states that matter cannot be created or destroyed, only
reorganized by way of chemical and mechanical processes.
Based off of this principle, we can infer that the Earth has a finite amount of stuff.
We can also infer that if we take some of that stuff and make more people with it,
there will be less stuff left to make up the rest of the planet. So, if we don't stop
making people who increasingly use up the Earth's stuff, eventually, we're going to
run out of stuff.
There are, among us, those who work tirelessly to conserve and protect the
environment, but they represent a discouragingly small minority. A minority that is
often condescendingly dismissed by the rest as "hippies" or "tree huggers."
I'm not expecting everyone who reads this to go out and chain themselves to the
gate of a nature preserve. There are, however, a few simple things everyone can do
to ensure our planet's precious resources are being used in the best way possible.
First, recycle. This is something we all hear from the time we are kids, but that
doesn't mean it's something we should ignore.
Take a second to evaluate everything you would throw out in a given day, and ask
yourself if it's recyclable. There's probably a lot you're overlooking. I, for one, rinse
out my Greek yogurt cups and throw them in with my plastics. It's a small change,
but it adds up over time.
Second, don't throw out that leftover food you're not going to eat. Mother Nature
could make much better use of those nutrients than a landfill could. If you have the
means, bury it or make a compost heap. Microorganisms will break it all down and
nurture the soil, allowing new life to grow.
You should also do your best to reduce your dependence on gas-powered
transportation. We all need to get places now and again. Often times, however,
we get so used to hopping in our cars to get somewhere close by, that more
environmentally-friendly forms of transportation don't even cross our minds.
If your destination is only a mile or so away, or closer, try walking there or riding
your bike. If it's farther, carpool or take a spin on public transportation.
Lastly, control overpopulation. The human race is already too large to reasonably
sustain itself on this planet. We may forget this in well-developed regions, but it's on
glorious display in places like Africa and Southeast Asia where rates of preventable
disease are high and food supply is low.
The will to raise and nurture a child is valuable. But if you already have a child or
two of your own and still wish to raise more, please adopt. The National Adoption
Information Clearinghouse reports that around 100,000 children go unadopted in
the United States each year.
Basically, it all comes down to responsibility. Not to yourself, but to other living
creatures. What kind of planet do you want to leave them?
Brian Alexander can be reached by email at alexander.record@live.com.
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