Our Precarious Earth and its Biosphere

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Our Precarious Earth and its Biosphere

• Milton Saier
• Professor of Molecular Biology
• University of California, San Diego
• msaier_at_ucsd.edu

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Population Reduction and Earth Preservation
(PREP)
honors
EARTH DAY -
EVERY DAY!
One people,
One biosphere,
One Earth,
One future.
Visit http//stuorg.ucsd.edu/prep
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Overpopulation

• The world's population is now about 6.3 billion
  and it is still expanding very rapidly, despite a
  marginal slowing over the last couple of years.
• Every day we share the Earth and its resources
  with 250,000 more people than the day before
  every year, there are about another 90 million
  mouths to feed.
• It is the equivalent of adding a Philadelphia to
  the world population every week
• a Los Angeles every two weeks
• a Mexico every year
• and a US and Canada every three years.

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Pyramid at Chefren
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Mayan Ruins
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Easter Island
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Discovered by the Dutch Explorer Jacob
Roggeveen in 1722

• Barren grassland without a single tree or bush
  over 10 feet high.
• Around 2000 inhabitants speaking language of
  Polynesian origin.
• Only 47 species of plants (mostly grasses,
  sedges, and ferns).
• Native animals included nothing larger than
  insects. Domestic animals, only chickens.

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• Around 300 statues erected along coast.
• Heights of 33 feet.
• Weighing up to 82 tons.

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• Around 700 more in various stages of completion.
• The largest of these unfinished statues was 65
  feet tall and 270 tons.

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• In the 1960s the Swiss writer Erich von
  Däniken claimed they were the work of
  extraterrestrial astronauts with ultramodern
  tools, who became stranded on Easter, and were
  finally rescued.

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Archeology

• Radio Carbon dates estimate first human arrival
  around 400 AD, also supported by linguistic
  research.
• Garbage heaps have shown that early Easter
  Islanders subsisted on fish, seabirds, and a
  large quantity of dolphin.

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One Mystery Solved

• Palm furnished canoes to hunt dolphin.
• Palm also provided rollers to move statues from
  quarries to coast.
• Ropes from the huahua tree enabled islanders to
  erect massive statues.
• Toromiro tree yielded firewood to cook fish,
  seabirds, and dolphin.

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Population

• Densities of archeological sites suggest a large
  population.
• Archeologists put the population at between 7,000
  and 20,000 at Easters height, around 1,400AD.
• Plenty of people to carve, transport and erect
  the statues.

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But where did the trees go?

• Pollen analysis shows palm population declining
  by 800 AD.
• Just after 1400 AD, the last of the palm trees
  had disappeared.
• What happened to the trees?
• Forests were cleared to plant gardens, build
  canoes, and to transport and erect statues.
• Native birds responsible for pollinating trees
  flowers and dispersing their fruit had died out.

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Disastrous Effects on Food Sources

• No more canoes to hunt dolphin or fish.
• Dolphin bones disappeared abruptly from garbage
  heaps around 1500 AD.
• Soil erosion ruined crops and gave no hope for
  the forests return.
• Land birds, large sea snails, and many seabirds
  disappeared.

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Warfare and Cannibalism
Rival clans began to fight for the dwindling
resources. Spear points littered the
landscape. Statues were pulled down by warring
factions. People took to living in caves for
protection against their enemies. As resources
dwindled, people turned to the only sources of
protein left. First rat bones and then human
bones began to make up a larger portion of bones
in the garbage heaps.
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Population Crash

• 1400 AD Population at its height, estimated
  between 7,000 and 20,000 individuals.
• 1700 AD Population crashed to between
  one-quarter to one-tenths of its former numbers.
• 1900 AD Population was 111.

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Chaco Canyons pueblo was the largest structure
ever built in North America until the Nineteenth
Centurys skyscrapers.

• 650 rooms
• 5 stories high
• 670 feet long
• 315 feet wide

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Archeologists have established that construction
of the pueblos began around 900AD and occupation
ended in the Twelfth Century.
Why build a city in the desert? Where did they
get the material, especially the 200,000
16-foot-long beams to support the roofs? Why did
they abandon the city after putting so much work
into building it?
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From Forest to Desert

• The damaged ecosystem was no longer able to
  support a large number of crops.
• While natural climate change in the form of a
  drought was once thought to have been the sole
  reason for the abandonment of Chaco Canyon it is
  now clear that the extreme damage to the resource
  base was also a major contributor.

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Middle East

• Birth place of our civilization.
• Agriculture, animal domestication, and writing
  developed here.
• This area of the world was called the Fertile
  Crescent, implying an area of abundance.
• The Middle East and Mediterranean was once a lush
  mosaic of wooded hills and fertile valleys.

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So what happened to the Fertile Crescent?

• Thousands of years of deforestation, overgrazing,
  and erosion have transformed this Garden of Eden
  into a dry, desolate expanse.
• This theory of environmental destruction is
  supported by contemporary accounts and
  archaeological evidence.

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Petra

• Made famous (in the US) by Indiana Jones and the
  Last Crusade.
• Once a thriving commercial center which
  controlled trade between Europe, Arabia, and the
  Orient.
• Now ruins among the sand.

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The Shift of Power

• After the Mideast had overexploited its
  environment, power moved to Greece, then Rome,
  then to western and northern Europe.
• Today the US, Europe and parts of Asia are the
  top resource-users, but we are not just
  exploiting the resources of our own area.

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World Economy and Globalization

• With the advent of modern international trade and
  shipping we are no longer limited to using just
  those resources we have at hand.
• Our population keeps increasing at a tremendous
  rate and so does our consumption of resources.
• We are now capable of literally creating an
  economic and societal collapse of the entire
  World similar to Easter Island.

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Global Warming
1. We add 6 billion tons of CO2 to the
atmosphere every year.
   2. Only 1 of this CO2 can be recycled by
the entire photosynthetic capacity of the
Earth.
3. Most methane production is due to
man-related activities.
4. Atmospheric temperatures, previously
constant for over a century, are
measurably higher than in 1980.
5. There has been no increase in solar
yield.    
6. Human activities are responsible for
this global warming.
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Our Temperature Buffer
1. Glacier National Park 1900
150 glaciers 2000 35
glaciers 2030 0 glaciers
2. Worldwide, we are losing our ice caps
and glaciers.
3. Their loss is clearly related to human
activities. 
4. When they are gone, atmospheric
temperatures will skyrocket.
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Consequences of Global Warming
1. Elevated atmospheric temperatures
2. Loss of glaciers, ice caps and their
ecosystems
3. Increased ocean levels, decreased
land surface
4. Altered flora and fauna species
extinction
5. Increased drought, evaporation and
humidity
6. Loss of our current agricultural land
7. Facilitation of disease transmission
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Drug Resistant Pathogens
1. Drug resistance in bacteria is
becoming a major human health problem.
2. Some enterococci and staphylococci
are resistant to all known antibiotics.
3. Many human diseases are re-emerging
with increased virulence.
   4. New human diseases are arising,
probably by jumping from other animals.
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HIV A New Human Disease
1. HIV probably hopped to humans
from another primate.
2. Billions of dollars have been spent
on HIV.   
3. HIV is currently the best-understood
virus.
4. We still have no cure.
5. We still have no vaccine.
6.  Treatment is costly with severe side
effects.
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The Oceans
The water is still there! But
1. the level of pollution is
significantly increased.
2. the fish populations are reduced,
often to 3. thousands of species are already extinct.
4. One-third of coral reefs worldwide are
dead, one-third are dying, and only one-third
are still healthy.
5. Few of the causative agents of coral
diseases have been identified, so we have no
cure.
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Marine Statistics
San Diego Sea Life
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Large Fish off the San Diego Coast
1. Before 1920, large sea bass, cow cod
and groupers over 6 feet in length were caught
off the San Diego coast.
2. None has been seen in the area for at
least 20 years.
3. Cow cod are down to 1 of their original
population world wide.
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Cow cod, extremely long-lived fish now perhaps at
1 of their old level
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Long sustained sea bass fishery before gill nets
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Wally Potts and a large black sea
bass, early 1950s
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Fishing intensity inside Point Loma, early 20th
Century
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Green Turtles in San Diego
1. In 1920, San Diego was a canning center
for turtle soup.
2. Huge Green turtles were numerous in
the San Diego Bay and nearby coastal areas.
3. After depleting the supply, the
canneries went out of business.
4. No one has seen a full sized green
turtle in the area for several decades.
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Turtle fishery for turtle soup processing in San
Diego
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Holding ponds for turtle soup processing in San
Diego
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California Lobster
1. Large Californian Lobsters were still
plentiful in San Diego in the early 20th century.
2. They were caught for their tails, which
were canned.
3. The San Diego Historical Society
photographed huge fields of lobster skeletons,
piled up to three feet deep.
4. Today, a lobster is caught on the
average about eight times before it is legally
large enough to keep.
5. The largest specimen found today are
only a quarter of their mature size.
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Size of lobsters in the 1950-60s
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Fields of lobsters to be canned in San Diego
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Abalone in San Diego
1. In the early 1950s, the ocean was
covered with abalone.
2. A competent commercial diver could get
two tons of abalone in a single dive.
3. Five species were prevalent white, red,
pink, green, and black abalone.
4. Today only the reds are left, and their
population has been reduced to about 5 of
its original size.
5. No one has seen a white abalone for
years, and the blacks and greens are in serious
trouble.
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Abalone under a ledge
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pavement of black abalones probably like all
abalones pre exploitation
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Males and females must be close together (a few
feet) to reproduce need to live in aggregations
to reproduce and must have spatial refuge from
fishing such as from reserves
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Patches and large animals gone and very little
recruitment since 1970s
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The Biosphere Observations
1. One species is destroying the
environment for all living species on Earth.
2. That one species causes the extinction
of 50,000 other species every year.
3. The population of that one species is
far in excess of what the Earth can sustain.
4. That one species is bringing about its
own eventual extinction.
5. Yet that one species values and
protects its own members above all others.
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The Biosphere Critical Conclusions and Questions
1. Man is a cancer to planet Earth.
2. The only cure for that cancer involves
population reduction.
3. Irrational thought prevents
implementation of that cure.
The question is not whether there is intelligent
life in outer space, but whether there is
intelligent life on Earth!
1. Can we act rationally?
2. Can we control our population?
3. Can we fit into Nature without
destroying her?
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WHO Every day
1. 100 x 106 human couples have sexual
intercourse
2. 106 of these result in conception
(100)
3. Half of these are unplanned (50)
4. One-quarter of them are unwanted (25)
5. One-tenth result in attempted abortion
(10)
6. One-third of the attempted abortions
are illegal (3.3)
7. 500 women die from these illegal
abortions every day
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Carl Djerassi
In most cultures, social ideology favors
reproduction.
1. Parents of young people want
grandchildren.
2. Young people strive to fit in.
3. Social and religious institutions
promote the one traditional lifestyle.
4. Many industrial enterprises benefit
from an increase in population.
5. Others play on the family theme.
6. Alternative lifestyles are ridiculed.
7. The psychological health of
individuals is not considered.
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We need Reverse Propaganda
We need to counteract
1. parental pressures
2. peer pressures
3. archaic social and religious
institutions
4. commercial propaganda
We need to promote
1. personal freedom
2. individual mental health
3. diverse lifestyles
4. social responsibility
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Population Reduction
The world population must be drastically reduced
in order to
1. prevent human suffering (disease,
starvation, etc.)
2. curtail species extinction
3. minimize global warming
4. minimize environmental pollution
5. prevent eventual human extinction
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Restricting the Birth Rate
The only effective and humane way to reduce the
human population is to restrict birth worldwide.
Possible approaches include
1. education
2. encouragement of alternative lifestyles
3. making birth control methods available
4. making abortion freely available
5. restricting family size
6. requiring qualification testing for
parenthood
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The Slogan Approach
1. Regarding overpopulation Protect
the Earth, dont give birth.
2. Stressing reproductive
choice Maybe no baby?
3. To promote creative
lifestyles Create, dont procreate.
4. To promote leadership
qualities Be a leader, not a breeder.
5. Concerning pollution Be
resolute, dont pollute.
6. Regarding global warming More CO2?
Yike! Lets bike and hike.
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A Potential World Community?
1. All humans belong to one species and
are 99 identical at the genetic level.
2. Yet, we are constantly in conflict (a)
as individuals, (b) as families, (c) as
countries, and (d) as groups of similar
religious faith.
3. The four great social evils that
hinder formation of an effective world
community God, Country, Family and Ego.
4. These are the forces that divide us.
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Priorities
Environmental issues are more important to
mankind and the biosphere than terrorism, war
or individual human life. Many of our
environmental problems can be traced to our
excessive human population. Yet the U.S. spends
hundreds of billions of dollars on home
security and military while spending almost
nothing for human population control and
environmental protection.
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PREP
PREP

• Population Reduction and Earth Preservation
• Visit http//stuorg.ucsd.edu/prep
• email prep_at_ucsd.edu