[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”2157″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The world is moving on the fast track with regard to technological advancements – The changes in the last 20 years are more than the over-all changes in the last 20 centuries. We think we feel comfortable with the present situation of information explosion and availability of everything we need at our doorstep. But we also begin to realize that we are trapped in a cage of destruction – depletion of ozone layer, acid rain, green-house effect, global warming etc. On the one hand we play God – genetic engineering, gene-modification, cloning etc, but at the same time we are experiencing genetic disorder, increase in killer-diseases such as cancer. We are in a dilemma – At times we wonder whether we are smart or foolish in our modern world of supersonic speed and precision. We are only an email-distance away today but our environment in which we live, move and have our being is becoming an alien to us. Instead of safeguarding our ecology as the steward of creation, we are destroying our environment thinking we are the masters of the universe.
The consequences of the modernization process for the biosphere are so intensely damaging to its perfect and healthy order that the Earth can no more cope with the destructive impact, affecting not only the individual species of living organisms but also the entire system as a whole. The over-exploitation of the Earth’s energy resources by the modern humankind and its undue interference with inter-related and inter-active systems have inevitably negative effects on humans as well as the surrounding habitat.
In his book ‘Ecological World-View for a Just Society’ Dr Pushparajan enumerates the following threats to normal healthy life:
Cultivation system of tribals for 1000s of years has been going on with little damage to the forest ecosystems. But during the last 200 years alone 19% of the forest area had disappeared from the face of the earth. If the current rate of deforestation continues, all the world’s primary rainforests will disappear or be damaged within next 30 years.
The effects of deforestation are already visible: too frequent droughts, floods, landslides, etc occur with drastic changes in the surface of the earth. It can be said that the world will become a much grayer place as the variety of life forms decreases. There are other significant consequences. When the trees are removed, the soil is eroded and blown away or is washed away by rains. The erosion of the soil makes the area useless for farming. Deforestation also leads to floods in the rainy season, because the soil is no longer able to retain the rains in sufficiently large quantities.
The accumulation of the wastes, produced through the use of fossil fuels is another major problem contributing to ecological crisis. The ‘use-and-throw-away’ culture of the present day is creating havoc. The West has been dumping fatally dangerous toxic wastes on earth and the seas to such an extent that the nature is unable to maintain its structural balance of production consumption-decomposition. Even solid goods such as cars, television sets, and refrigerators which people keep for a certain period and eventually discard them have piled up to such heaps that can no more be degraded through rusting and form into the natural pattern.
While the highly industrialized countries were responsible for causing the maximum damage to the global environment, more and more Developing Countries fall victims knowingly or otherwise to the growing menace of “toxic terrorism”, perpetuated by certain advanced or industrial countries. They have begun dumping highly hazardous toxic wastes in some of the African countries to such an extent as to be accused of making ceaseless efforts to turn their continent into “garbage dumps”..
The Problem of waste materials from the modern productive systems is only one of the causes for the ecological crisis. But a more serious problem arises from the very use of fossil fuels. When coal and other fossil fuels are burned or processed a variety of pollutants are emitted into the air. For the hallmark of a high consumption of fuel is not only that it is converted into heat but also that more physical residues are produced because the coal or petroleum molecules during combustion are combined with oxygen. So the more we use fossil fuels the more we will produce compounds of Sulphur and nitrogen as well as trace elements such as cadmium, arsenic, and a variety of hydrocarbons. Emission of these pollutants and their effects on the different systems of Nature has come to a point where we are actually causing measurable changes in the composition of each of its cycles: Soil-system, water-system and air-cycles. An account of the pollution related to each of these systems deserves our attention separately.
Soil pollution is another area of our concern. By soil is meant not just collections of crusted rock, but the whole ecosystem containing micro-organism that are responsible for the conversion of nitrogen, phosphorous and sulphur to be available to plants, and the different species of plants themselves. But in the name of modernization of agriculture, the modern person has done untold misery to the Environment. Soils have been continuously treated with heavy dosages of deadly and persistent poisons in the name of pesticides that more than one third of the amounts applied remained in the soil for fourteen or more years after treatment. Even the ground water has been found to be contaminated by over-use of pesticides.
The artificial application of chemicals to the natural ecosystem in the soil has been so bad that they have penetrated not only the eco-systems of the soil but also those of the oceans. The geo-bio-chemical cycles of nature’s functioning is so universal that pesticide residues began to steadily build up in the bodies of animals thousands of miles from where the material was sprayed. For instance DOT (Dichloro Diphenyl Trichloro ethane) has been recovered from the fat of Antartic seals and penguins, from fish all over the high seas, and from the ice of Alaskan glaciers too.
Fresh water in rivers and lakes will carry everything that people put into their house drains or dispose of on the streets: sewage, fertilizers, insecticides etc. If we over-load the capacity of our natural waste-disposal systems or if we produce wastes much faster than the natural systems can deal with them, then waters in lakes and rivers become very impure. That is what is called water-pollution. The pollution of the sacred River Ganges has been so critical during the past few years that the nation had to launch a “Ganga Action Plan”.
The pollution of rivers in Tamilnadu has been so severe that the important river systems in this state are becoming useless for tapping ground water, because of pollution by industrial effluents. The sad effect of pollution of the rivers and lakes is not merely that the cattle have collapsed after drinking the effluent mixed water but also that it has affected the livelihood of over two million inland fisher folk.
The use of automobiles has contributed to air pollution in all the major cities of India to such an extent that people are suffering from respiratory diseases. Delhi’s air was already 75 percent more polluted than it was a decade ago. According to another study conducted in Delhi in 1989, it has been estimated that more than a million vehicles spew exhaust at a daily rate of about 250 tones of carbon monoxide. This poisonous gas reacts with hemoglobin in blood reducing respiratory capacity. About 400 tones of hydrocarbons are the daily rate of exhaust spewed by automobiles. It can cause lung cancer. The pollution level in the country’s capital has been estimated as more than the human endurance level, specified by the World Health Organization. The incidence of respiratory diseases is 12 times the national average.
Air pollution due to massive industrialization has changed the composition of the atmosphere of the northern hemisphere with grave consequences for the survival of forests and fish. This pollution is caused by burning a lot of coal and oil. For, both fuels contain sulphur. This is released on combustion as sulphur dioxide. Upto 30 percent of it mix with water in the clouds and fall as localized rain, snow or mist. The fall of sulphur dioxide is what is called acid-rain.
The problem of air pollution generated by industries and leading to acid rain is growing in India too. Besides the increasing hazards in the occupational environment of the India’s chemical factories (which number as many as 4,000) the air pollution is increasing steadily. Already in 1985 the quantity of sulphur dioxide released into the air had tripled. Acid rains was reported to be found in industrialized areas in Delhi, Mumbai, Nagpur and Pune. Trees, crops and vegetation killed by sulphur dioxide emissions from industrial plants were seen already in 1985 in along the National Highway leading into Baroda.
Ozone, a variant of oxygen is of utmost importance for the survival of life on earth. If ozone were not there, ultraviolet rays of sun light would have burned up everything. There would not have life at all. Being a good absorber of the ultra violet rays of the sun, it serves as a protective cover for the earth, shielding it from the extreme heat of the sun.
The earth while absorbing the light waves from the sun, emits in turn infra-red radiation. But the carbon dioxide (CO2) present in small quantities in the atmosphere absorbs infrared radiation, sending the heat back to the earth rather than allowing it to escape into space. Thus, CO2 works in the same way as glass-roof in a green house, a glass building which maintains temperature at a desired level for plant nurseries. It allows solar radiation to pass through it, but then holding it back, and not letting it escape into space. In this way, the earth is kept warm. Without some warming of this kind the earth would reflect back the sunlight radiation and thus would cool very rapidly at night. So far, so good.
But, during the past 100 years, consumption of fossil fuels has been so surging that it has increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. The pre-industrial concentration was about 280 parts of carbon dioxide per million parts of air by volume. This concentration reached 340 in 1980 and is expected to double to 560 by 2030. If the present trends continue, the combined concentration of CO2 and other trace gases in the atmosphere by 2030 would be equivalent to a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels. Such a build-up of CO2 in the air implies an increase in temperature around the world. If the emissions of CO2 and other trace gases like chloro-flurocarbons continue to rise at the present rate, and thus, if the additional heat-radiation is prevented from escaping from the earth, then, the global temperature around the year 2030 will on an average have increased by between 1.5°C and 4.5°. The rise in the average world-temperature can have unfortunate consequences for the polar and mountain ice cover, on marine life, climate, coastlines, etc. Thus, for example, the temperature of the oceans would increase leading to some melting of Arctic ice. This would in turn result in a rise in sea levels around the world, causing erosion of coastal areas. Countries like Netherlands, Bangladesh and the coast-line cities can easily be submerged. All this once again confirm the point that the increase of ‘global warming’ with its disastrous consequences, is all our making, a result of his technological enterprises. It remains for us to see how the present day technology is responsible for the disturbance of the Earth, the Mother.
Conclusion:
In the above mentioned backdrop we are invited to study ways and means to safeguard ourselves through taking care of the environment. I am sure that these days would enlighten us and encourage us to do the needful.
I congratulate the LIFE Research Team with Dr Selvanayagam as the Director. LIFE is committed to inter-disciplinary and concerted research focused on energy and environment. Thus LIFE is pursuing people-oriented and people-centred research programmes. It is our hope that we could do something good for the humankind and I am sure you would join us in this noble endeavour. I wish the workshop all success.
Ref.: A. Pushparajan, Ecological World-View for a Just Society (1992).
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