The planet is not impressed...

[Guest guest]

The planet is not impressed by fancy speeches.

If, in the thirty Earth Day celebrations we have held since 1970, the

human population and economy have become any more respectful of the

Earth, the Earth hasn't noticed.

The planet is not impressed by fancy speeches. Leonardo DiCaprio

interviewing Bill Clinton about global warming is not an

Earth-shaking event. The Earth has no way of registering good

intentions or future inventions or high hopes. It doesn't even pay

attention to dollars, which are, from a planet's point of view, just

a charming human invention.

Planets measure only physical things -- energy and materials and their

flows into and out of the changing populations of living creatures.

What the Earth sees is that on the first Earth Day in 1970 there were

3.7 billion of those hyperactive critters called humans, and now

there are over 6 billion.

Back in 1970 those humans drew from the Earth's crust 46 million

barrels of oil every day -- now they draw 78 million. Natural gas

extraction has nearly tripled in thirty years, from 34 trillion cubic

feet per year to 95 trillion. We mined 2.2 billion metric tons of coal

in 1970; this year we'll mine about 3.8 billion.

The planet feels this fossil fuel use in many ways, as the fuels are

extracted (and spilled) and shipped (and spilled) and refined

(generating toxics) and burned into numerous pollutants, including

carbon dioxide, which traps outgoing energy and warms things up.

Despite global conferences and brave promises, what the Earth notices

is that human carbon emissions have increased from 3.9 million metric

tons in 1970 to an estimated 6.4 million this year. You would think

that an unimaginably huge thing like a planet would not notice the

one degree (Fahrenheit) warming it has experienced since 1970. But on

the scale of a whole planet, one degree is a big deal, especially

since it is not spread evenly.

The poles have warmed more than the equator, the winters more than the

summers, the nights more than the days. That means that temperature

DIFFERENCES from one place to another have been changing much more

than the average temperature has changed. Temperature differences are

what make winds blow, rains rain, ocean currents flow.

All creatures, including humans, are exquisitely attuned to the

weather. All creatures, including us, are noticing weather weirdness

and trying to adjust, by moving, by fruiting earlier or migrating

later, by building up whatever protections are possible against flood

and drought.

The Earth is reacting to weather changes too, shrinking glaciers,

splitting off nation-sized chunks of Antarctic ice sheet, enhancing

the cycles we call El Nino and La Nina. "Earth Day, Shmearth Day,"

the planet must be thinking as its fever mounts. "Are you folks ever

going to take me seriously?"

Since the first Earth Day our global vehicle population has swelled

from 246 to 730 million. Air traffic has gone up by a factor of six.

The rate at which we grind up trees to make paper has doubled (to 200

million metric tons per year). We coax from the soil, with the help of

strange chemicals, 2.25 times as much wheat, 2.5 times as much corn,

2.2 times as much rice, almost twice as much sugar, almost four times

as many soybeans as we did thirty years ago. We pull from the oceans

almost twice as much fish.

With the fish we can see clearly how the planet behaves, when we push

it too far. It does not feel sorry for us; it just follows its own

rules. Fish become harder and harder to find. If they are caught

before they're old enough to reproduce, if their nursery habitat is

destroyed, if we scoop up not only the cod, but the capelin upon

which the cod feeds, the fish may never come back.

The Earth does not care that we didn't mean it, that we promise not to

do it again, that we make nice gestures every Earth Day. We have among

us die-hard optimists who will berate me for not reporting the good

news since the last Earth Day. There is plenty of it, but it is

mostly measured in human terms, not Earth terms. Average human life

expectancy has risen since 1970 from 58 to 66 years. Gross world

product has more than doubled, from 16 to 39 trillion dollars.

Recycling has increased, but so has trash generation, so the Earth

receives more garbage than ever before. Wind and solar power

generation have soared, but so have coal-fired, gas-fired and nuclear

generation.

In human terms there has been breathtaking progress. In 1970 there

weren't any cell phones or video players. There was no Internet;

there were no dot-coms. Nor was anyone infected with AIDS, of course,

nor did we have to worry about genetic engineering. Global spending on

advertising was only one-third of what it is now (in

inflation-corrected dollars). Third-World debt was one-eighth of what

it is now.

Whether you call any of that progress, it is all beneath the notice of

the Earth. What the Earth sees is that its species are vanishing at a

rate it hasn't seen in 65 million years. That 40 percent of its

agricultural soils have been degraded. That half its forests have

disappeared and half its wetlands have been filled or drained, and

that, despite EarthDay, all these trends are accelerating.

Earth Day is beginning to remind me of Mother's Day, a commercial

occasion upon which you buy flowers for the person who, every other

day of the year, cleans up after you. Guilt-assuaging. Trivializing.

Actually dangerous. All mothers have their breaking points. Mother

Earth does not soften hers with patience or forgiveness or

sentimentality.

--Donella H. Meadows is Adjunct Professor of Environmental Studies at

Dartmouth College. Her column appears each Friday in Tidepool.