Planet in Metamorphosis

Other light than the Sun’s attracted curious eyes from those being near the White Sands Missile Test Field in New Mexico (USA). The boom heard on that Monday, July 16, 1945 announced a change of path to humankind: the first test with the atomic bomb had been held there. Soon after, on August 9, the same plutonium used in White Sands would kill over 60 thousand people in the Japanese city of Nagasaki.

This same plutonium will take at least one hundred thousand years to decay until becoming lead. Paleo-biologist Jan Zalasiewicz and other scientists affirm that this human action footprint could be one of the indicators that we are entering a new geological age, the Anthropocene – or “the age of humans”. But this is not the only marker by far: traces of concrete, plastic and aluminum, nicknamed “techno-fossils” would also be signs of that. Extensive farming that uses fertilizers in large scale causing imbalance of nitrogen and phosphorous cycles of the soil would also be a trace of this new age – which would succeed the Holocene, a geological period started some 11.5 thousand years with the end of the effects of the last glacial period.

The burning of fossil fuels pours carbon dioxide and other greenhouse effect gases in the planet. Their amount in the atmosphere is so high that we have already changed their composition: there are 400 molecules of carbon dioxide for each million molecules of air. It seems little, but the last time the Earth had the same concentration of gas in the atmosphere was between 15 and 20 million years ago – when the planet was quite different and human species had not yet existed. Scientists attest that 350 parts per million would be a safe limit of carbon dioxide concentration so that the average rise of global temperature would not exceed 2°C until the end of the century. By exceeding such limit we are contributing to increase the warming of the planet, since carbon dioxide is a gas that prevents sun rays from returning to space retaining heat in our atmosphere beyond our biological needs.

Used in refrigerators and aerosols CFCs hade their industrial use banned in 1987 with the Montreal Protocol – and the world managed to zero in the use of the substance in 1996. A recent study by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) showed that in the last years the depletion of the ozone layer over the Antarctic decreased and shows signs of recovery. However we would have to cope with other issues requiring complex actions: the emissions of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, for instance, continue increasing at an alarming speed.

Water pollution is also a huge problem to the oceans: besides reducing the water quality it causes diseases and deeply affects the marine biome, damaging the biodiversity of all continents. Additionally pollution generates a series of imbalances in the natural cycles and on the animal behavior as well. A study from Uppsala University in Sweden showed that fish larvae when exposed to micro-plastics – minute pieces of the material with less than one millimeter of diameter – prefer to eat them instead of zooplankton. Consequently they die faster and have their growth deeply affected. Due to their small size, these plastics, present in exfoliants and other cosmetic products, are very hard to be filtered in the treatment of wastes and end up in lakes, rivers and oceans.

We are also impacting the operation of “flying rivers” especially through deforestation in the Amazonia. Flying rivers are air currents which, evaporated from the Atlantic Ocean, are attracted by the humidity of the Amazon Region – mainly by trees. Such humidity becomes rain and part of it is carried to the southernmost parts of Brazil also causing rain; the increase in deforestation generates an imbalance in this cycle.

Besides causing alterations in biodiversity and the planet biomes we also consume and extract resources much faster than the Earth is capable of replacing them. In 2009 researchers from the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) proposed nine planetary limits under which it would be safe for mankind to develop before causing irreversible damages to the planet. The list shows loss of biodiversity – species of plants and animals, acidification of oceans, changes in phosphorous and nitrogen cycles, destruction of ozone layer, changes in land uses, changes in water uses, charging of aerosols in the atmosphere, chemical pollution of ecosystems and climate changes.

There are negotiations to address the passing of these limits within the global political scope. In December 2015, world leaders met in Paris, France to negotiate policies to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere and help more vulnerable countries to adapt to climate changes. Together with other gases such as methane, carbon dioxide contributes to the acceleration of the greenhouse effect – which is a natural process of the planet. With such accelerated process in a very short time we may reach an average increase of global warming that may be detrimental to life, including human life, on the Earth.

While the action to contain climate changes plods along its effects are felt by people all over the world – but not in the same way. Different social groups feel them in different ways: generally the most vulnerable groups are affected first – socially, economically or environmentally. These are the economically and socially less favored people who have to live in sites prone to environmental accidents or effects of pollution of rivers and creeks. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes – IPCC the poorest countries will be the most affected by climate changes; they will be the ones most suffering with hotter days and nights, rise of the sea level, more unpredicted rain and heat waves in higher quantity and duration.