Checkup for the Planet

Examining Environmental Health at the Turn of the Century

As we prepare to embark on the next millennium, people all over the planet are busily taking stock – reviewing the past, assessing the present and predicting the future. But how many are paying sufficient attention to the health of the planet itself?

It’s time to pause and assess the planet’s condition. Like her human inhabitants, Mother Earth needs regular check-ups, and now is the ideal moment in history for a thorough exam. What follows is an overview of the Earth’s environmental health record, focusing on Greenpeace’s longstanding areas of greatest concern. Of course, all of these issues are interrelated, and all are vital to the well being of the planet and its complex ecosystems.

Forests
Condition:
Rapidly Deteriorating
Symptoms:
Loss of habitat, recreational opportunities, clean air and water; decline in species populations.
Diagnosis:
Half of the world’s total forest cover has been destroyed, developed or converted for agricultural use. Only one-fifth of the world’s ancient forests remain in areas large enough to support their full range of native wildlife and ecological processes.

Industrial logging poses the greatest threat to the Earth’s remaining ancient forests. Once cut down, trees are converted into lumber as well as pulp and paper products, including toilet paper, newspapers, phone books and food additives. The United States alone accounts for nearly one-third of the world’s wood consumption.
Side Effects:
The livelihoods and cultures of millions of indigenous people are being destroyed.
The destruction of ancient forests further exacerbates global warming and changing weather patterns by releasing carbon into the atmosphere.
Prognosis:
The remaining ancient forests are threatened by logging, development, mining, grazing and conversion to agriculture. An area of ancient forest approximately the size of one football field is lost every two seconds.
Treatment:
Greenpeace is active on every continent where ancient forests still remain, as well as in the nations that are the largest consumers of ancient forest products — the United States, Japan and many European countries. Greenpeace has prioritized shifting corporate purchasing policies away from ancient forest destruction, setting aside large blocks of ancient forests as reserves, and halting the international trade of illegally logged wood products.

Climate
Condition:
Critical
Symptoms:
Rising temperatures, increased droughts, floods and wildfires, displacement of communities and ecosystems.
Diagnosis:
The burning of fossil fuels — oil, coal and gas — continues to accelerate global warming at alarming rates. Today, the symptoms are most noticeable in the Arctic, which is warming at three to five times the rate of the Earth as a whole. As pack ice melts or stays frozen for less of the year, the fragile Arctic wilderness is disrupted.

Globally, the devastation wrought by extreme weather has increased significantly. In 1998, the warmest year ever recorded, natural disasters such as ice storms, floods, wildfires, heat waves and droughts caused over $92 billion in damage, more than in the entire 1980s. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warns, “The explosive combination of human-driven climate change and rapidly changing socio-economic conditions will set off chain reactions of devastation leading to super-disasters.”
Side Effects:
Coral reefs are the rainforests of the oceans, homes to rich and diverse ecosystems, and have an economic value in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Coral reefs are extremely temperature sensitive and the recent warming has put enormous stress on coral reefs around the world. In 1998, there was a worldwide outbreak of “coral bleaching,” a sometimes deadly response of coral to these temperature changes. Reefs in many parts of the world suffered the death of more than 90 percent of live coral. If tropical waters continue to warm, scientists predict that bleaching event will increase until — by 2030 to 2070 — mass coral death on the scale of the coral bleaching in 1998 occurs every year.
Prognosis:
Greenpeace analysis of global warming science concludes that burning more than one-fourth of the oil, coal and gas currently in the world’s economic reserves would greatly increase the risk of a disastrous climate shift. At the present rate of consumption, we will burn this amount within the next 40 years.
Treatment:
“Fixing this problem is going to require a massive change in our systems of production, which are almost entirely based on burning fossil fuels,” said Dr. Barry Commoner. “It would mean converting our entire electric and power energy industry into alternative sources.”

Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar offer the best opportunity to replace fossil fuels without generating new problems. In fact, wind power is now the world’s fastest growing energy source and is already cost competitive with fossil fuels. Solar panels can bring electricity almost anywhere, without the waste, pollution and complexity of conventional power plants. A simple commitment to build a large-scale solar factory could lower the price of solar panels to competitive levels.

Despite the benefits of wind and solar power, governments continue to encourage new fossil fuel development and open new frontiers to oil, gas and coal. While the major federal incentive for renewable energy lapsed this summer, both Congress and the Clinton Administration have expanded support for the oil industry, which already receives $5 to $11 billion in subsidies a year.