Our species grows unstoppably and the planet is suffering the consequences of our actions. Now we live in a fragile world and condemned to a sixth mass extinction.
Every day, we are changing the world, adapting it to our needs, altering our natural parameters in such a way that even our biology, our animal essence, which, out of some kind of complex we stupidly ignore, is suffering the consequences.
We are the only species which, instead of adapting to its surroundings, is capable of altering them in order to adapt them to our needs. And this, which has permitted growth and expansion never before experienced by any species, has turned us into the greatest threat for our planet. We are changing the world at a speed never before seen since the time it was created. What began as small alterations have turned into drastic changes on a worldwide scale, changes that are altering the landscape, extinguishing species, making entire ecosystems disappear and changing the composition and properties of our atmosphere. And the Earth is starting to show signs that it’s reaching the limit of its capacity to resist.
Human population is constantly growing. There are millions of us all seeking food, shelter and benefits from the land and the water. The majority of human beings are poor and live in undeveloped countries, and so have no time to worry about the environmental problems deriving from their activity; that is a luxury they cannot allow themselves in the daily struggle for the survival of their families.
The loss of the jungles has consequences beyond land biodiversity, affecting the very pillars of life on Earth. Because the jungle is responsible for the equatorial rains and their existence directly affects the water, the climate and the atmosphere of the earth. And, nonetheless, man stupidly and blindly continues to destroy his benefactor.
We have all become dependent on constantly growing energy consumption. The problem arises from an uncompleted process. Because we have learnt to obtain and use energy, but we do not know what to do with the toxic waste generated by energy consumption.
At first, we did not think this contamination was important, but the unstoppable increase in contaminating emissions is poisoning our world so much that its fabulous self-cleaning processes are unable to cope. Now, the contaminating gasses are changing the climate of the planet. And it is in places like Australia that we are starting to see the terrible repercussions this may have worldwide.
The global warming of our atmosphere is a fact. Our climate is gradually heating up, the glaciers are retreating, the poles melting… We are causing a global change of magnitudes similar to those that marked the great extinctions of prehistory. And, paradoxically and sadly, we are in great measure doing so by burning fossil fuels, derived from oil, which are hidden beneath some of the last virgin refuges of unspoilt nature.
We are altering ecosystems, changing landscapes, wiping out species at a speed 10,000 times greater than that required by nature to make new creatures appear. Man is the new vector of change, as meteorites and continental drift were in the past. And in this global process, we are all contributing to the change.