by: DAN CLOER
The Earth is a habitable place, a place that allows a very small physical window within which the biochemistry of metabolism, reproduction and adaptation can operate. Our neighbor Mars may have had such an open window once, but our robotic explorations of its surface reveal that it was shut long ago. Its dry, cold landscapes appear analogous to our arctic tundra in some ways, but not in ways that really matter. There are no lemmings, or mosses, or even microbes on the Martian plains.
But Earth’s uniqueness stretches even beyond the biochemistry of cells to human life and human consciousness. Something very unusual has happened here on Earth. Not only is there life—a still unmeasured and probably forever incalculable cornucopia of living creatures from bacteria to whales—there is also life that knows it’s alive. This one planet is home to a conscious being with the audacity to call itself “wise,” Homo sapiens.
Through our clever abilities to manipulate the environment, our population has grown to dominate the planet in number and influence. While some may cheer and others lament this fact, our species has become the global player. Considering this reality, chemist and Nobel Laureate, Paul Crutzen, writes that “To develop a world-wide accepted strategy leading to sustainability of ecosystems against human-induced stresses will be one of the great future tasks of mankind.” This realization has led to some interesting characterizations.
Some call us a cancer on the planetary body, eating away at the resources and systems that sustain all life. Others refer to our impact as that of an asteroid, convulsive and shattering, an extinction-generating event.
Incomprehensibly, many of a religious persuasion believe we are admirably following the Creator’s instruction to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion” (Genesis 1:28 ESV).
The consequences of misinterpreting these marching orders have been profound. While the context indicates that to be fruitful simply means to have children, like the parents, made in the image of God, it begs the question of what that image might be. Is this merely about physical form or does it extend to the responsibilities and obligations that are part and parcel of having a creative mind?
The other actions, multiply, fill, subdue and have dominion are even more problematic. To many, these convey that human beings have carte blanche to utilize the Earth as we will; to basically “take over” our environment. Large and in charge, are we then free to exploit the planet’s resources while amassing the largest human population possible? A few decades ago such a question would have been pure fiction. When life spans were short and child mortality was high, to have dominance over nature seemed impossible.
Before this century we would not have imagined a world of multiple billions. Neither would we have imagined the age of industry, medicine, commerce, agriculture, sanitation and affluence that support those numbers. Billions may exist in the depths of poverty, but the ecological pressures the minority exert and the remainder seek to exert are also growing exponentially. As our numbers have increased and the stresses we place on planetary systems have apparently become more malignant, the concept of “stewardship” must be blended into the equation. In other words, can we becaringly dominant over the earth if we can’t subdue and have dominion over ourselves?
“Think of it,” said R. Buckminster Fuller in 1980, “We are blessed with technology that would be indescribable to our forefathers. We have the wherewithal, the know-it-all to feed everybody, clothe everybody, and give every human on Earth a chance. We know now what we could never have known before—that we now have the option for all humanity to ‘make it’ successfully on this planet in this lifetime. Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment.”
If we really do have such power, it is certainly time to harness it for the good of Spaceship Earth. For no matter where or how we look for an alternate planet on which to live, there really appears to be no place like home.
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