Bob Hughes
Mother Earth and Aotearoa have a limited, fixed quantity of finite resources which don’t regenerate once they are used.
Minerals and fossil fuels — coal, oil and gas — are finite resources that people of the future won’t have. They will become more scarce and eventually run out.
Coal is formed from the remains of ancient organisms and took many millions of years to develop. It is limited and non-renewable.
Oil and gas are also finite resources formed over millions of years from the remains of ancient marine life. New oil reserves are still being discovered and tapped, but less than our present rate of consumption.
Iron was formed on Earth 3.5-2.5 billion years ago, when huge deposits of iron ores were laid down beneath the seas. The iron ores mined worldwide today are also finite; global production in 2022 amounted to 1.6 billion metric tons.
The Earth supplies us with all our fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal), plus ore deposits of many kinds — including uranium — as well as water.
Since the first coal-fired steam engines of the 1700s, we have continued to increase the rate at which we extract and transport resources for use across the globe.
Uranium mining is detrimental, contaminating the environment with radioactive dust, radon gas, water-borne toxins, and increased levels of background radiation.
When the first drilled oil gusher covered the surrounding landscape with crude, did anyone consider the catastrophic damage to the environment or wildlife? What about mining by mountaintop removal, coalmine tailings, the Manhattan Project Trinity tests, the effects on marine life from undersea oil spills from giant rigs or seabed ironsand harvesting?
I remind younger readers, the way we live now is not normal. We do not have to destroy our planet to have a life. But how can we convince the people and governments of this?
The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report stressed that if the world’s temperature increases by just 1.5 degrees from pre-industrial levels, the effect on humankind will be devastating.
This is the hottest time in the history of human beings on this planet. Climate refugees fleeing their native land due to a sudden change in their environment are on the rise.
In your January 12 editorial referring to breaching the recommended 1.5-degree level, you quoted an article “Some progress, must do better” and wrote “global warming will exceed 1.5C, so the focus has to be . . . to hold the average temperature rise to ‘well below 2C’ . . .” Policies in place today were estimated to have the world headed to 2.5-2.9C of warming by 2100; “still so high as to be disastrous for billions”.
On January 2,1989 Time magazine issued a front-page “Endangered Earth” warning, urging that nations of the world take immediate action . . . “homo sapiens’ success as an organism — could doom the Earth as a human habitat”.
“Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, smokestacks disgorged noxious gases into the atmosphere, factories have dumped toxic wastes into rivers and streams, automobiles have guzzled irreplaceable fossil fuels.”
Also, regarding ecosystem failure and climate calamity: immediate action is needed as we depend on an intact web of life.
The world needs leaders to inspire their fellow citizens with a fiery sense of mission, to avoid the whimper of slow extinction. The “Problem Man” is recklessly wiping out life on Earth.
Despite the 35-year-old warning, around the world we continue choosing governments that deny climate change is a priority. Worst of all, the United States might re-elect climate hoaxist Donald Trump as its next president later this year.