HEALING THE BLUE PLANET

Book excerpt: What ails Mother Earth? The answer can be found in the propensities of Man, her most gifted, but alas, also her most prodigal son. The world today may look to be the oyster to modern Man, with his faculties of creativity, inventiveness and enterprise. But looks are deceptive. Man has harnessed science and technology and also the new science of economics to bring about unprecedented prosperity, growth and amenities of life. All this, however, has come at a grievous cost to nature Ð in the anthropogenic maladies that we, in our reckless quest for ÔprogressÕ and comfort, have inflicted on the mother planet. Climate change and global warming; rampant exploitation of non-renewable fossil fuels belching out greenhouse gases; retreating glaciers; growing water, air and noise pollution; ocean acidification; ozone depletion; dwindling forests; imperilled biodiversity; and the growing menace of e-waste Ð all are stark symptoms of the seemingly inexorable degradation that human activities have wrought on the once-pristine environment of this living planet. We do not seem to learn from the fearsome records of myriad disasters and the five great extinctions that had stricken the earth in the past; what is worse, we seem to be heading mindlessly toward our collective doom of a sixth extinction, this time threatening to be caused by human-induced climate change. Time is running out, but all is still not lost. Initiatives have already been launched by conscientious world bodies, conferences and protocols to fight the hydra-headed monster of environmental pollution. What is needed is a broad-based general will Ð an Ôinformed consentÕ by us the conscious earthlings Ð to heal our beloved blue planet. The symptoms, the diagnostics and the line of cure, are all presented in this volume of highly readable and comprehensive analysis by an ecologist who has embraced ÔSave the EarthÕ as his mission in life.