Tread gently on the earth 1 | 10greencommitments

Tread gently on the earth

Resources such as water and minerals are to be used with care. World population growth has a large footprint. Mining companies should remediate sites once mining has ceased and their materials should be rated in terms of their environmental impact. When building, allow space for a garden (if possible) to aid water absorption into the soil (rather than surfaces which cause water run-off and erosion) and to help create a harmonious setting. Try to keep the footprint of buildings and roads to a minimum. Development needs must be balanced with the environment. Education is crucial in order for the world’s poor to eradicate poverty and for the rich to understand their impact on our planet.

Development along coastal regions and rivers must be done very carefully (or best if not at all) so as not to tamper with nature and to prevent soil erosion and loss of biodiversity. The use of water in coastal aquifers must be carefully managed to prevent the ingress of saline water.

Buildings and roads add to the heating of the planet as they absorb the sun’s energy – especially roads because they are black. Vegetation by comparison turns the sun’s energy together with water and CO² into chemical energy during photosynthesis to produce carbohydrates. These fuel the plants growth and give off life-sustaining oxygen as a waste product.

In the space of one decade the population of India has risen by 181 million to 1.2 billion. The world’s population is currently 7.1 billion - it took just 13 years to add one billion! (4) At that rate of reproduction, there will be at least 14 billion of us at the end of the century. And producing more food will accelerate climate change, as food production accounts for 30% of all greenhouse gases produced by human activity (5). Education of the world’s poor must be a priority here.

Promote good family values, faithfulness, marriage and contraception in stable relationships. Cultures will have to adjust their values to accept smaller families. The earth is big but finite. What future will our progeny have to look forward to with soaring population growth? It is quite simply not sustainable and ignoring Malthus’s warnings will have consequences.

Finding food and water for this growing population is going to be a formidable challenge not to mention finding work for the youth. As Professor Emmott points out we will need a food revolution far smarter than the first supposed ‘green revolution’ (which he regards as a myth). It ‘increased yield by using chemical fertilisers to breed shorter crops with increased production of seeds and flowers. We had to compensate for this by deploying chemical herbicides to kill the weeds, which would otherwise have grown taller than the crops and out-competed them for light. We also bred out the crop’s natural defences against pests, because plants’ natural defences to pests slow their rate of growth. We had to compensate in turn for this by introducing chemical pesticides. We also bred crops to be ludicrously profligate with water’ (5). When you interfere with nature, you reap what you sow!

But CWG warns us of another concerning factor here.

God: ‘There is rapidly developing a soil shortage on your planet. That is, you are running out of good soil in which to grow your food. This is because soil needs time to reconstitute itself, and your corporate farmers have no time. _ _ _ the age-old practice of alternating growing fields from season to season is being abandoned or shortened. To make up for the loss of time, chemicals are being dumped on the land in order to render it fertile faster. Yet in this, as with all things, you cannot develop an artificial substitute for Mother Nature which comes even close to what She provides.’ (1.3)

Hydraulic fracture (or fracking) is a fairly extreme mining method with consequences for the water in aquifers among other concerns. It uses large quantities of water - it can take 7 million gallons to fracture a single well and 30% of this is lost forever, with the state of Pennsylvania using 1.9 million gallons per day (41). The fluid includes chemicals such as ‘some known and suspected carcinogens such as benzene and methanol’ (41) that could contaminate groundwater depending on the proximity. It is being used extensively in the United States for gas extraction and is a major reason for the lower oil price and lower carbon emissions. Hydro fracking is suspected of at least 36 cases of groundwater contamination in the US and the wastewater generated is another concern:

The amount of wastewater disposed of in state wells has jumped from 46 million barrels in 2005 to 3.5 billion in 2011 (42).

Certainly it must be used with extreme care and only once an environmental impact study has given the green light. The danger is that when accidents occur the resulting leaks could be catastrophic. Gas from fracking is known as a bridging fuel: an interim solution during the transition from coal and oil, to renewable energy.

The full environmental cost of fracking may not be fully appreciated yet. Remember that gold mining in South Africa has caused rising acid mine water beneath the Witwatersrand region due to the consequences of negligent and mostly ignorant mining activity over 125 years – ‘it arises from rock types which contain an abundance of sulphur minerals, particularly pyrite’… which is exposed ‘by large earth disturbances such as … mining’ (43). The risk simply was not understood at the time. Currently in South Africa fracking is being investigated in the Karoo (which is a semi desert). This region would be ideal for producing clean solar power as it has abundant hours of sunshine. Why take the risk of a polluting energy source when a clean source is available? Fracking, as with mining, is an energy intensive operation and leaves a large footprint.

The Aral Sea in Kazakhstan, a 1989 photo on the left, and a 2009 photo on the right, EJF (44)

Agriculture has a large footprint and cotton of course is one of the thirstiest crops. It takes 2700 L of water to produce one T-shirt (44) or about 10 000 L per kg on average (24). This was one of the major causes of the demise of the Aral Sea (above), which ‘remains one of the most iconic global images of mismanaged agricultural policies.’ (44) Even the Murray-Darling river in Australia is threatened with the consequences of cotton farming (19).

Have we exhausted the opportunities offered by hemp - the high growing variety of the Cannabis plant which can be refined into such products as seed foods, oil, wax, resin, rope, cloth, pulp, paper and fuel? This is not to be confused with the low growing Cannabis sativa which has a higher content of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and is commonly known as marijuana. (4) The Wikipedia source referred to a report acknowledging that ‘There is scope for improving the industrial hemp paper production.’ (45)