Earth Day is celebrated because there is intelligent life on it. That easy. On planets devoid of thinking beings there is no possibility of celebrating anything since there is no one who can. On the other hand, in this small blue point lost in the confines of the universe, which from distances of millions of light years is seen as a microscopic particle, a cosmic dust that is slipping in the silent blackness of immensity, there is much to celebrate., as is the privilege of life, which is as tied to the Earth as the Earth to life itself. Because on our planet there are colors, sounds, rhythms, aromas, textures, airs, temperatures, seasons, water, waves, waterfalls, oxygen, a sun and a moon that have facilitated a varied and flourishing plant and animated life in its three natural environments., homo sapiens included.
Yes, homo sapiens, for better or for worse we have landed in this small spaceship, which in addition to being a vehicle is our house, our roof and the home of our parents, brothers and children. Earth is 4.6 billion years old and has spawned life almost since its inception, as evidenced by tiny encrypted fossils in rocks southwest of Greenland that lived no less than 3.8 billion years ago. 590 million years ago a vital explosion began, an unprecedented biological Big Bang, from which the grandparents of almost all the species known today emerged. Three million years ago, the first homo appeared, the homo habilis, named for having the ability to sit on a log and manufacture rustic stone utensils for the first time. Without intuiting it,with his clumsy hands he began the Palaeolithic and the most dizzying and spectacular evolution ever to take place in the long history of the Earth.
But how to understand this dance of millions and billions of years, from the perspective of our life scale or short vital vision, through conventional almanacs and clocks? How to locate ourselves within it? Almost impossible. In the framework of the celebration of Earth Day we present an instrument to improve the understanding of this mega chronometry, in which we locate the main species and ourselves. To begin with, we are going to imagine an almanac like those of today, with its twelve months and its distribution by weeks, but with the difference that each day is equivalent to a million years. That is, one month of April is equivalent to 30 million years and from January 1 to December 31 to 365 million years, which we will call "geoyears",since they are located on the scale of the Earth and not that of humans. With this "geo almanac" at hand we have that the universe, whose age has been calculated to be about 13,700 million years, has about 37 geoyears, the Earth about 13 and the aforementioned microorganisms slightly more than ten, which tells us that there was already life on our planet since its early three geo-years.
With the data in hand, we can calculate that the first amphibians emerged on January 6 of geo-year 13, the first mosquitoes and flies were present between June 5 and July 1 and the extinction of the last dinosaur occurred on June 27. October. As for the great apes, they appeared between December 8 and 27, as did Homo habilis. And where do we locate modern man, the one who arrived in Europe 40 thousand years ago? Well, no less than December 31, at 11:03 pm, with just 57 geominutes left for the new 14 geoyear. With the help of this instrument we can imagine the universe as a young adult, the Earth as a teenager and homo sapiens a newborn barely an hour old. Now if we are on the human scale, easier to swallow than billions of years.
From this it can be inferred that humans were the last to arrive on Earth, we did so late and yet in a few minutes we took control of the planet, we set ourselves up as masters and lords of valleys and mountains, deserts and frozen areas. With our skills we learned to make the right clothes for any climate, height or latitude, and with this we displaced many species from their natural habitats, built long before our arrival. So we dominate airs, seas and lands and we defeat almost all our predators, from the largest to the microscopic. We excelled in arts, technologies and sciences, we did wonders in architecture and painting, important advances in medicine and astronomy, remarkable musical and literary works. We were so skilled that in the 20th century, despite two world wars,we had a population growth that is dizzying. In just one hundred years the population went from 1,500 million beings to 6,000 million, a growth never seen before that has accelerated the consequences for the planet and its other inhabitants. By now Borneo's rainforest has been depleted and its local climate change nearly complete, three-quarters of its trees have been cut down and its fireproof rainforests replaced by vegetation that catches fire easily and frequently. We have polluted airs, soils and seas and we have eaten species to their near extinction.By now Borneo's rainforest has been depleted and its local climate change nearly complete, three-quarters of its trees have been cut down and its fireproof rainforests replaced by vegetation that catches fire easily and frequently. We have polluted airs, soils and seas and we have eaten species to their near extinction.By now Borneo's rainforest has been depleted and its local climate change nearly complete, three-quarters of its trees have been cut down and its fireproof rainforests replaced by vegetation that catches fire easily and frequently. We have polluted airs, soils and seas and we have eaten species to their near extinction.
Since 1970, every April 22, International Earth Day has been celebrated, designed with the aim of generating participation and environmental awareness among people. It is time for homo sapiens to place ourselves within the space and time we occupy and reflect on our abrupt arrival on the planet and the duty to fix what we have messed up, leave a sustainable world and a balance with nature for the next generations. If we do not straighten the course we are taking, it can happen to us like foxes and rabbits, a paradox that demonstrates the importance of biological balance and the consequences when it is broken.
