WE HUMANS are about as subtle as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.
Acid rain and global warming show that we hold immense power over life on Earth,
yet we wield it indiscriminately.
The damage we do is increasing. In the next 20 years, the population will
increase by 1.5 billion. These people will need food, water and electricity, but
already our soils are vanishing, fisheries are being killed off, wells are
drying up, and the burning of fossil fuels is endangering the lives of millions.
We are heading for cataclysm.
In this supplement you will find three scenarios鈥攖hree routes to
catastrophe that we face unless we can tackle the evils of overconsumption and
the yawning gap between rich and poor.
Climate change,
pollution and
population growth
each has surprising and potentially devastating
impacts. Aspects of all three will strike before this century is out.
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There will be other surprises, too. The Earth鈥檚 myriad control systems
interact in ways we are struggling to understand. Change one and you land in
trouble with another鈥攖he rapid and unexpected appearance of the ozone hole
showed us that. As the ecologist Norman Myers is fond of quoting: 鈥淲hat we
anticipate does not regularly occur, while what we least expect often
丑补辫辫别苍蝉.鈥�
What about your role in this drama? If you think it strange that scientists
can鈥檛 predict how our behaviour will affect the global environment, just try
unpicking the impact of your own actions with the
鈥淎ngel or鈥︹��
鈥凄别惫颈濒?鈥�
questionnaires designed to reveal if you are an angel, with a low environmental
impact, or a devil, helping to consign humanity to the dustbin of evolutionary
history.
You could be in for a shock.
It鈥檚 often said that our goal must be to 鈥渟ave the planet鈥�. But that鈥檚 plain
wrong: Earth can manage fine without us. What鈥檚 really happening is that we are
driving our own mass extinction鈥攋ust like that infamous asteroid. The real
battle is to save ourselves from ourselves.