Deforestation - Global Warming - Pollution

ECOLOGY

DEFORESTATION-GLOBAL WARMING-POLLUTION

SUMMARY

Ecology tends to be a new obscurantist ideology. This module gives you a balanced synthesis about facts and solutions.

Deforestation and global warming are real threats but the solutions are too often diverted by political tasks.

Technical progress remains the effective solution to the ecological threats such as global warming and pollution.

1-INTRODUCTION - 2-ANIMALS - 3-DEFORESTATION - 4-WATER - 5-OZONE DEPLETION - 6-GLOBAL WARMING - 7-POLLUTION

1-INTRODUCTION

By the year 1300, a climate change occurred in Western Europe. This was caused by advance of polar and alpine glaciers. Viking settlements in Greenland disappeared and the rains were incessant. People believed in the return of the flood described in Genesis. Scientists say that it was a global cooling called the little ice age and which was to last until 1700.

Today again, rains are incessant. Greenland is becoming green again as it was before 1300. It is said that Ice melt and glaciers are reduced. Media propagate the concept of global warming. Moreover, many people think that this warming is due to human industry. But before 1300, there was not any human industry.

In January 2002, the journal Science published the findings of scientists who had been measuring the West Antarctic ice sheet. Far from melting, it turns out the ice sheet is growing thicker! About the same time, the journal Nature published the findings of another team of scientist: Temperatures in the Antarctic have been getting colder for the last 30 years!

Another story: Tiny amounts of DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) kill disease-carrying insects with no harm to humans, protecting them from malaria, dengue and typhus. However, in 1972, the world community banned DDT because it was suspected to kill all the birds. Now environmentalists are in a panic because malaria is spreading over Africa. Last year, 80,000 people in Uganda alone died of malaria, half of them children.

These stories show that in this matter we have to speak very carefully. Ecology deals with the entire cosmological balance and we are far from having extended knowledge in this field. We should focus rather on:

What we can do.

What we do not know.

1-INTRODUCTION - 2-ANIMALS - 3-DEFORESTATION - 4-WATER - 5-OZONE DEPLETION - 6-GLOBAL WARMING - 7-POLLUTION

2-ANIMALS

Everybody agrees that suffering, in all its physical and psychological forms, must be banished. This elimination of suffering should include all creatures that also have the ability to feel pain and pleasure. We can hope that citizens will become aware of the damage we cause to the animal kingdom.

21-Breeding farms and slaughter houses

Predatory behavior is part of the food chain but modern techniques can replace meat diets with vegetables. Foot and mouth and others diseases turn out in slaughtering millions of poor animals. More and more enlightened people abhor these massacres of animals.

Maybe it is impossible to abolish meat diets right now but we have to take care of animals. It is not the case in our farms where animals are bred in inhuman conditions. In Argentina or Brazil, animals herd in the open air. It would be cheaper for the consumers to import beef from these countries (see the figures in Globalization module).

We can lower tariffs, abolish quotas instead of subsidizing cattle breeders and slaughterhouses in our countries. Seeing the catastrophic results of their activities (bad care of animals, dangerous nutrition, over pricing for the consumers) they merit fines instead of subsidies.

22-Wildlife

Wild animals are going to disappear in many undeveloped countries. We can hope that some species will survive. In countries, such as Rwanda, where 500,000 people were slaughtered, it seems difficult to explain that gorillas must be protected!

It means that the struggle against suffering is a global challenge. It includes humans first and then animals. It again implies freedom, knowledge and civilization.

We still blame Aristotle for having condoned slavery. In the future, we will be blamed for massacring inoffensive animals .

1-INTRODUCTION - 2-ANIMALS - 3-DEFORESTATION - 4-WATER - 5-OZONE DEPLETION - 6-GLOBAL WARMING - 7-POLLUTION

3-DEFORESTATION

On a world scale, between 199O and 1995, we destroyed 500,000 km2 of forests, i.e. the equivalent of the surface area of France. 3,000,000 km2 could be deforested between 2000 and 2030 i. e. six times the surface area of France! At this rate, the rainforests in Latin America, South East Asia and central Africa will be seriously damaged, with irreversible consequences.

In just a few hours, deforestation can cause land to disappear through tropical storms.

We must bear in mind that arable land is an organic composite that is probably unique in the universe. It took millions of years to make this humus. In a few hours, through deforestation and storms, we destroy something that is as precious as the air we breathe.

Ecologists often focus on oil drilling, logging, and new roads, as the cause of deforestation. We must also add nomadic agriculture, over cattle, and overall the pressure of population. Poor people in under developed countries clear the forest to obtain wood in order to cook their food. They also burn soil on a large scale to increase the fertility of the land. From a plane, 20,000 feet high, you can usually see the long channel of fire along the African land just before the beginning of the first plowing.

In fact, we have no control over the major threat represented by the deforestation of billions of hectares each year in the under developed countries. Democratic countries replant large areas each year. By 2000, the US , Canada and France had replanted 9000 km2.

It is not enough to compensate deforestation and its consequences on desertification, water supply and even more seriously on climate (see global warming)

1-INTRODUCTION