Richard Singh Midterm

Richard Singh

English 1A

October 7, 2014

For The Love of Earth

           “Change in perspective will naturally lead us to begin to control our populations, save our forests, re-create community, and reduce our wasteful consumption”. These are the words of author Thom Hartmann from his book The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. Mr. Hartmann is telling us that the way our world, and the societies within it, are setup is purely corrupted. He talks about how the world is slowly collapsing around us in terms of humans using up all the resources in the world without acknowledging the fact that they’re hurting mother nature through the process. The book illustrates that with the rapid rate of consumption by humans, Earth is slowly losing its natural resources because it has to accommodate for the exponential growth of human populations all around the world. It even talks about certain societies in the world facing problems such as famine and poverty due to the fact they do not have the proper resources to sustain themselves or their communities while other areas do have the resources but they use it themselves greedily. Not only do some societies dominate certain resources, but they also waste it when they could be sharing it with communities in dire need of those resources. In today's world, simply put, we have bit off more than we can chew. We have exhausted all of our resources that we have caused an influx of booming populations around the world. Not only have we created a more populated world, but we have also destroyed it by trying to sustain the great populations of the world.

          In part one of the book, Hartmann uses two metaphors to describe how civilization on Earth is slowly headed for disaster. His first metaphor was a short story about an upcoming software company led by four young techies that had the aspiration to develop a word processing program that would essentially make them rich. They had invested all of their savings into the business assuming that it would take. They bought lavish office spaces, company cars, and even premium furniture for their offices to say the least. The company had eventually attracted a few investors raised up a quarter million purely from the investors. Keep in mind the product was still in development so there was no revenue coming from it. With the massive amount of investment money the young programmers had, they increased their salaries and kept adding a plethora of staff to their business. Unfortunately, the young men had run out of cash trying to sustain their lavish lifestyle causing the company to go out of business. All the money the investors had put into the business was gone with no returns. The second metaphor Mr. Hartmann uses to describe the disastrous future for our civilization is the Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent tactic that scams investors by making them invest into a company through persuasion. Investors are told that by investing into these scam companies they will receive large sums of money. The way it’s setup is that the operator of the scheme makes investors invest into the company and they are paid back with capital gained from new investors instead of the profits made by the operator. If there aren’t any new investors then the scheme falls apart because you will not have money to pay back the previous set of investors. You are basically out of your resources. . I personally believe our civilization is more like the hopeful software company. The hopeful software company shows us that our civilization is exhausting all the resources Earth had supplied us with. Due to our greed, we are burning those resources at an accelerated rate since we are using and wasting those resources more than we should be.

           Currently, Earth is facing the dilemma of overpopulation in many nations around the world. With the discovery of oil, human populations have increased heavily due to the ability to create large quantities of food.  According to Hartmann, “with the massive leap in our food supply…our planet’s population [went] from…one billion humans around the time of the discovery of oil to two billion” (Hartmann, 14). Hartmann also goes on to say that it “had taken us 200,000 years to produce our first billion…and 130 years to produce our second billion, [while] the third billion took just 30 years” (Hartman, 14). Since the discovery of oil, Earth’s population has been increasing rapidly. Hartmann shows us that due to oil, we’ve created more food supplies, which then caused more and more people to reproduce causing a growth in population. With more food being produced, our population has increased abundantly.

        Now with the creation of great amount of foods, there are some problems that accompany it. According to the Deforestation group, in order to produce food, farmers destroy Earth’s forests “to make fields of grass for cattle” and that nearly “60% of the world’s agriculture land is used for beef production” (Deforestation Group, 2014).  With the eradication of forests, Earth and its inhabitants are succumbing to danger. Without forests, all of the greenhouse gases that the trees absorb will be released into our atmosphere causing abnormal temperatures. Forests are also the source for our fresh oxygen supplies and with trees being cut in order to feed humans; we are slowly killing ourselves by slowly eliminating our fresh oxygen supplies.

        Similarly to our deforestation epidemic, due to an overcrowding population, Earth is losing its fresh water supply. Water is becoming so sparse that there have been talks of privatizing water for the rich. According to TLHAS, “the U.N. says that over a billion people lack access to fresh drinking water…since only about one-half of 1 percent of the planet’s water is drinkable and accessible” (Hartmann, 103). It is predicted that the “human need for fresh water will outstrip the…planet’s replenishable supply by 2025” (Hartmann, 103). With the high demand of water to sustain lives around the world, Earth is slowly losing its supply. Without water, Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest comes into fruition where many of the rich nations will be able to retain an ample supply of water while the poorer nations will die off because of the lack of water. According to the Water group, it takes about “2400 Liters of water to create a hamburger” (Water Group, 2014). They also state that the “U.N. suggests that we need 20-50 Liters of water a day for essentials such as cooking, drinking, and cleaning” (Water Group, 2014). We have the ability to save water in this world but it seems like there is a higher demand of creating hamburgers to sustain lives than water. With the pollution of industries and cutting of trees, our fresh water supplies are being contaminated with pollution from acidic rain and sewage waste. Without water, humans will not have the ability to live since water is an essential component to our lives.

        With forests and water sources being cut down for corporate profit, you may be wondering why haven’t you heard about this from your trusted source, the media. The media is ran by the same people who are hurting these environments and who also support the growing populations of the world because it generates more money in their pockets. According to the TV group, the “media is currently controlled by 6 corporations” (TV Group, 2014). These media companies all have the right to air what they want and distort facts or omit parts of the truth in order to keep the world the way it is, corrupted. They tell you to buy their products because it will supposedly benefit you when in reality they do not tell you that you’re buying something that holds no value but it did take a lot of Mother Nature’s limbs in order to create it. Hartmann tells us about how “One of the nation’s largest and most conservative news organizations successfully argued in court that it had the right to force its reporters to lie in the evening news, and one of the world’s largest athletic shoe manufacturers argued before the Supreme Court…that is should have the right to lie in its public relations” (Hartman, 220). This shows us how much distortion there is in the media and how the media really care about the general public. They’d rather lie to you than tell you what’s really happening because they know what they’re doing to our environment is wrong but they do not want to create a uproar from the masses because then they will lose money. It is purely out of greed that these companies are doing what they are doing, such as cutting down the amazon so that McDonald’s can have more paper covers for their burgers.

        With the current way humans are abusing Earth, it wont be long until it collapses like the great civilizations before the modern era. It is odd how history always finds a way to repeat itself but with the current ways of humans abusing Earth and her resources, it wont be long until the future descendants realize how we were just another civilization who bit off more than they could chew. Hartmann talks about two civilizations that collapsed due to similar circumstances. Hartmann first talks about how the “Greeks adopted widespread agricultural practices…[which] increased food supply…[causing the] Greeks to begin clearing …their forests to provide living space, fuel, and cropland for their ever-growing population”…”The decline of their civilization is linked…to their population outstripping their available fuel: wood” (Hartmann, 108). Hartmann shows us how a great civilization met it’s inevitable demise due to the eradication and exhaustion of their natural resources. Not only did the Greek succumb to their own man made misfortunes, but also another great civilization, the great Roman Empire. Hartmann says that, “forests of what we call now were all wiped out to meet the Romans needs” (Hartmann, 108). In addition to wiping out forests to sustain their great civilization, “Roman croplands began to collapse…food shortages threatened the stability of the Roman Empire...Ultimately, Rome’s watershed destruction, deforestation, depleted soil, and booming population led to widespread famines, resulting in the collapse of the Roman Empire” (Hartmann, 109). Similarly to the Greeks the mighty Roman Empire was not so mighty anymore because they couldn’t beat Mother Nature. With the abuse the world has faced from past civilizations, the modern day civilization is no different and will fall just like the great civilizations before it.

        In conclusion, the world is beyond its capacity of housing humans. Not only are we responsible for creating the great populations of the world because of our advancement in technology and newfound resources, but were also the primary cause of destruction for Earth. With the destruction of forests, pollution of air and water, and the allowance of greed to control our society, we humans of the 21st century will face the same fate of those before us. With many being oblivious or ignorant towards the fact that our world is overpopulated, we need to all realize that our "free ride" on Earth may soon be over with the way we are abusing every aspect of "her". We must think and know about the long term effects of our actions because "putting it off" simply won't cut it as we are wasting our resources or using them greedily when we could be sharing with parts of the world that are in dire of need of these particular resources. I for one firmly believe that history in one way, or another, repeats itself. As it did for the powerful Syrian and Roman empires, the United States and many other top nations will soon become nothing but an example of rich nations falling to their inevitable demise.As said in Ozymandias, sonnet about the fall of great empires, "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains...the lone and level sands stretch far away".