We Homo sapiens were the last to arrive in this beautiful paradise called Earth, our spherical blue and green house that floats and travels with its exuberant vital load in the dark cosmos. With our brand-new intelligence, abilities, natural curiosity, and unique existential awareness, we were amazed to see what was discovered before our eyes, after 60 thousand years of ice and frost. Glaciers began to melt twelve thousand years ago and the long white monotony gave way to new landscapes. The sun shone, the meadows were green, the sound streams flowed, the birds sang, the butterflies fluttered and from time to time they alighted on multicolored carpets of flowers.Finally, the bears came out of their caves and life took on new shapes, sounds and colors, in a setting that really seemed like a wonderful theme park, ideal for living, enjoying and enjoying life. The long winter had come to an end and the most formidable human adventure was beginning in that emporium of resources that seemed infinite, but time would show that they were not.
That handful of men and women surviving the last stage of the ice age, the coldest, the true ice age, began to expand and admire that new world that they falsely believed that they belonged. It is true that the Earth is our rotating home, that of our ancestors and descendants, but it is also that of our non-human neighbors. With the speed of our science and technology we acquire knowledge with which we leave other species out of competition with a brutal asymmetry. We were the last to arrive, we did it late (on December 31, at 11:03 pm in geo year 13, according to the geo almanac we proposed) andin a few minutes we take control of the planet and turn it into a theme park that we grant ourselves as our exclusive property. The difference with the real parks is that they close at night and an army of cleaning and maintenance leaves them the same or better for the next day, which does not happen with Earth.
So we have dominated airs, seas and lands, defeating almost all of our predators, from the largest to the microscopic, and occupying almost every corner of the planet. In our triumphant domain we have extinguished species, felled entire forests, released tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, and we are eating whales, dolphins and fish, depopulating rivers, lakes and seas. We have poisoned airs, waters and soils. We are rapidly depleting the resources that our mother Earth has so generously offered us. If we do not rectify it, it will be too late and Mother Earth will not respond to our calls and all will have been lost for the human species and many other species.
Twelve thousand years after that bucolic stage, human intervention on the planet has been on a large scale. Borneo's rainforest has been 75% depleted, largely during the last three decades of the last century. As a consequence, an unprecedented local climate change has occurred, which no one doubts its anthropogenic cause. Another example is the Amazon rainforest where the destruction of the forests has given way to urbanization, agriculture, livestock, the timber sector, oil and mining exploitation, the construction of roads, penetration roads, pipelines, hydroelectric dams, in addition to that some 30 million people live in the Amazon basin.Everything and expense of the exuberant jungle. With this and other interventions we have modified our natural greenhouse effect, mainly through fossil gas emissions, with which we are changing the climate and increasing the temperature of the Earth to alarming levels.
Within this context, we set out to analyze the “three themes” of our “park” and the “three ways” in which we deteriorate it, in order to have a better understanding of the damage. The themes: "the world of waters", "the world of the air" and "the world of soils". The ways of affecting them: "injection", "extraction" and "invasion". So we have nine different ways of degrading our environment.
Injection
The air receives massive injections of gases and particles. We inject into the troposphere and into the stratosphere carbon monoxide and dioxide, sulfur dioxide and trioxide, nitric and nitroso oxides, nitrogen dioxide, methane and freon gas. The particles correspond to dusts, fumes, mists and aerosols. Dusts of industrial origin contain heavy metals such as iron, zinc and lead, those that come from eroded soils contain mineral particles, animal waste and dried plants. Smokes and mists are groups of gases that carry various particles with them.
We make injections into the soil that can be toxic and dangerous. We introduce harmful substances in the lands of towns and cities, in agricultural and livestock soils, mining camps, in plains, mountains, forests, beaches, river banks, glaciers or deserts and even in our small gardens. There are few places on the planet that remain virgin, that is, with surfaces free of contamination. We inject fertilizers, pesticides, pesticides, solid waste, heavy metals, radioactive pollutants. Acid rains inject toxic substances into the earth.
Throwing a can into the sea is an act of injection, just like a plastic bag. Injections in oceans, seas, lakes, lagoons, rivers and ponds comprise practically all kinds of substances and materials. Wastewater from industrial landfills contains oils, phosphates, nitrates, fluorides, lead, arsenic, selenium, cadmium, manganese, mercury, and even radioactive substances. Many cities dump large volumes of fecal material, pathogenic microorganisms, detergents, insoluble gases, all kinds of garbage, rubble and glass, many of which are impossible to recycle. Another type of very lethal injection is massive oil spills.
Extraction
We extract the flying fauna from the air, that is, we shoot down birds for different purposes: edible species, exotic birds as hunting trophies, predatory birds from agriculture, livestock farming and farm animals, or we kill them indirectly. due to collateral effects of atmospheric pollution or due to the extinction or decrease of its prey or food or destruction of its habitat or reproduction site.
From the soils we extract a quantity of resources for our food, protection and decoration. The felling of a tree in the Amazon is the extraction of a retired unit of our largest plant lung. The killings of elephants, rhinos, wolves, coyotes, foxes, bears, to name just a few examples, correspond to the category of extraction. The extractions carried out on species from one environment may have effects on the fauna of another. The decline in salmon decimates the bear population, causing imbalances in food chains.
The extraction of aquatic species by humans has acquired dramatic volumes. Many can no longer reproduce at the speed with which they are fished. We massively extract snappers, groupers, tuna, anchovies, hake, mullet, sole, trout, salmon, carp, sardines, catfish, dogfish, sharks, cod, snook, shrimp, prawn, lobster, crab, octopus, squid and many others plus. And let's not forget the whales, which have become an icon of our depredations, and more recently dolphins too.
Invasion
We carry out the invasion of airspace by constructing tall buildings and skyscrapers in our mega cities, displacing winged species elsewhere. Likewise, with the construction of high electrical towers and antennas. We also invade the airspace of birds with planes, rockets and missiles. However, the aerial invasion is not comparable with what we do in the soils at the terrestrial level.
The most widespread method of invasion of soils is the displacement of plants and animals from their habitats by humans. We invade lands by building towns and cities that previously belonged to other species. We destroy millions of kilometers of ecosystems to make way for huge mining camps, oil fields and agricultural lands that are lost in infinity to produce food for almost eight billion humans. In the habitats that we ruin, animals die or flee in search of new accommodations or are isolated in ecosystems without a future. Trees and other plants are hopelessly succumbing.
The invasion of aquifer spaces through landfills to expand urbanizations and cities or to build ports, roads, airports and parks, is a common practice that affects the biomes located in seas, oceans and lakes. We also affect the flora and fauna of the rivers that we divert to feed the dams necessary to move large hydroelectric plants.
If we think that at the beginning of the 20th century there were one billion inhabitants on Earth, we can appreciate the burden that this expansion represents on the planet's ecosystems. This violent demographic increase, in which the population has multiplied by eight in little more than a century, is beginning to be seen as a huge problem for the planet and its inhabitants.
So far our park has endured this expansion, but we do not know how long it will be able to continue to do so. However, many humans still believe that the resources of our planet are infinite and act as if they were really in an amusement park. They do not realize that we must protect our habitat from further damage in the future, maintain it and above all learn everything we can about our privileged teal globe. As we said a few lines above: if we do not rectify it, it will be too late and Mother Earth will not come to our calls and everything will have been lost for the human species and many other species.
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