Stop hammering away at the Earth's foundation
Friday, 18 June 2010
Maswood Alam Khan
IN an interview with Politico last Monday US President said the way 9/11 profoundly shaped the Americans' view of their vulnerabilities and their foreign policy the recent disaster of oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is also going to shape how the Americans from now on should think about the environment and energy. Terming the spill as an assault on the shores and citizens of USA, President Obama in his first national address from Oval Office last Tuesday stressed upon the need to end the US "addiction" to fossil fuel. Obama warned that the risks of another such incident would continue to rise because "we're running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water".
By the analogy drawn by Obama between 9/11 and the oil spill and by his terming the need of fossil fuel an addiction, one may now feel prompted to say that the humanity is at long last perhaps hearing the razing sounds of the Earth for their flirting with the very core foundation of the planet.
The recent volcanic eruptions and frequent earthquakes all over the world were wakeup calls from the Mother Nature for us to behave properly. But our insatiable greed for power and comforts has distanced us many light years away from our original behaviour and we have forgotten the biogenic necessity to maintain a symbiotic relationship with living beings and resources in nature.
The way we are taxing our Earth to meet our gluttony is more alarming than the way we are proliferating our nuclear arsenals to meet our ego. A nuclear explosion killing the human race altogether could perhaps do lesser harm to the planet than the ravenous way we are exploiting the natural resources that constitute the very bedrock of the planet's existence.
The amount of fossil fuels that the humanity is extracting and burning in a few seconds took millions of years to be formed from decomposed organisms with no possibility in the foreseeable time of replenishing the same that are being sucked up from the niches deep down the ground.
Every second's consumption of fossil fuel will have to wait for 650 million years to be reformed and it needs a powerful computer to calculate how many zillion years will be needed to replenish what we are mining every year, forget about the extractions already made in the last hundreds of years.
Thousands of barrels of oil a day had been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico since a rig exploded and sank on April 20 and perhaps hundreds of barrels of oil have still been leaking. British Petroleum (BP), the rig operator, somehow managed to place a cap over the leaking oil pipe and is now siphoning off much of the oil. But there is no certainty when the spill will completely stop. BP initially estimated that 1,000 to 5,000 barrels were gushing out every day after the rig exploded. But a government panel of scientists now believes 35,000--60,000 barrels were leaking each day, up from its estimate last week of 20,000--40,000. The spill has caused colossal damage to the environment in and around the Gulf that will need decades of time and billions of dollars in repairing efforts and the repair, if at all possible, will never reverse the damaged environment back to its pristine condition.
Humans' helplessness in tackling their own machine after its malfunctioning is a chilling reminder of how fallible we are and just how dangerous it is not to follow the lessons from the nature on how we should harness the strength and force of nature to live our living on this planet Earth.
The way we are perforating the crust of the Earth and boring the deeper foundations of this planet is tantamount to boring the floor of the ship we are journeying on in our voyage by sea.
There cannot be more demanding a time than now when the citizens of the world must rise to the challenge and stop hammering away at the Earth's very foundation and embrace a cleaner energy future through using renewable resources exactly the way other animals, fishes, birds and insects are harnessing their energy from flowers, fruits and other living organisms that are in the continuous process of renewal, rebirths and replenishment -- not by devouring the trees that are bearing the fruits.
The writer can be reached at
e-mail : maswood@hotmail.com
IN an interview with Politico last Monday US President said the way 9/11 profoundly shaped the Americans' view of their vulnerabilities and their foreign policy the recent disaster of oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is also going to shape how the Americans from now on should think about the environment and energy. Terming the spill as an assault on the shores and citizens of USA, President Obama in his first national address from Oval Office last Tuesday stressed upon the need to end the US "addiction" to fossil fuel. Obama warned that the risks of another such incident would continue to rise because "we're running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water".
By the analogy drawn by Obama between 9/11 and the oil spill and by his terming the need of fossil fuel an addiction, one may now feel prompted to say that the humanity is at long last perhaps hearing the razing sounds of the Earth for their flirting with the very core foundation of the planet.
The recent volcanic eruptions and frequent earthquakes all over the world were wakeup calls from the Mother Nature for us to behave properly. But our insatiable greed for power and comforts has distanced us many light years away from our original behaviour and we have forgotten the biogenic necessity to maintain a symbiotic relationship with living beings and resources in nature.
The way we are taxing our Earth to meet our gluttony is more alarming than the way we are proliferating our nuclear arsenals to meet our ego. A nuclear explosion killing the human race altogether could perhaps do lesser harm to the planet than the ravenous way we are exploiting the natural resources that constitute the very bedrock of the planet's existence.
The amount of fossil fuels that the humanity is extracting and burning in a few seconds took millions of years to be formed from decomposed organisms with no possibility in the foreseeable time of replenishing the same that are being sucked up from the niches deep down the ground.
Every second's consumption of fossil fuel will have to wait for 650 million years to be reformed and it needs a powerful computer to calculate how many zillion years will be needed to replenish what we are mining every year, forget about the extractions already made in the last hundreds of years.
Thousands of barrels of oil a day had been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico since a rig exploded and sank on April 20 and perhaps hundreds of barrels of oil have still been leaking. British Petroleum (BP), the rig operator, somehow managed to place a cap over the leaking oil pipe and is now siphoning off much of the oil. But there is no certainty when the spill will completely stop. BP initially estimated that 1,000 to 5,000 barrels were gushing out every day after the rig exploded. But a government panel of scientists now believes 35,000--60,000 barrels were leaking each day, up from its estimate last week of 20,000--40,000. The spill has caused colossal damage to the environment in and around the Gulf that will need decades of time and billions of dollars in repairing efforts and the repair, if at all possible, will never reverse the damaged environment back to its pristine condition.
Humans' helplessness in tackling their own machine after its malfunctioning is a chilling reminder of how fallible we are and just how dangerous it is not to follow the lessons from the nature on how we should harness the strength and force of nature to live our living on this planet Earth.
The way we are perforating the crust of the Earth and boring the deeper foundations of this planet is tantamount to boring the floor of the ship we are journeying on in our voyage by sea.
There cannot be more demanding a time than now when the citizens of the world must rise to the challenge and stop hammering away at the Earth's very foundation and embrace a cleaner energy future through using renewable resources exactly the way other animals, fishes, birds and insects are harnessing their energy from flowers, fruits and other living organisms that are in the continuous process of renewal, rebirths and replenishment -- not by devouring the trees that are bearing the fruits.
The writer can be reached at
e-mail : maswood@hotmail.com