Mankind has lost its grip on the forces of nature

by Trevor Jayetileke

The gluttonous level of current global consumption could result in large scale ecosystem collapse by the middle of this century. If demand continues at the current rate, will two planets with 21% oxygen would be needed by 2050 to meet global demand for living space? It is a timely reminder for those attending COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, that there is a rapid and ongoing loss of biodiversity worldwide as a result of our avaricious greed; and populations of species of terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems have declined as a result, specially in the tropics as natural resources are being intensively exploited for human use.

Our Planet Earth has a long history spanning a long 4.5 billion years, and to understand this long period have created their own timescale, sub-dividing time into eons, eras, periods and epochs with each boundary based on a globally significant event. The processes now shaping our planet and life on it are different from the past that they are creating a geologically distinct record. We are the agent responsible for that.

From the start of the Industrial Revolution it has been recognized that the collective scale of human activity is now rivalling the forces of nature and solely responsible for shaping the earth’s landscape. Through agriculture and land use activity we have increased the “sediment load” carried by our rivers probably threefold from about 10 billon to about 30 billion tonnes; and we mine in total about 10 bn. tonnes of iron ore and coal a year and in the process move more than three times as much rock. With construction and other excavations processes we extract more rock from the earth’s crust than nature does causing loss of biodiversity. We have increased the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere by 40% and as a consequence the acidity of our oceans have increased changing the geological processes operating on the seabed.

This is not surprising when we compare our energy use against that of our planet. The rate of energy released by the earth in the process we call “plate tectonics” of huge sections of plates making the earth’s crust (oceans’ crust of about eight km of basalt and continental crust, about 70 km thick comprising igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks) number about 15. These span the crust of the earth made of the outer crust and upper mantle, totalling about 15 in number, moving freely because of convection currents in the mantle caused by heat. These can cause earthquakes and volcanoes and occasionally movements of tectonic plates under the ocean trigger tsunamis.

With our energy use doubling every 34 years we are on course to surpass plate tectonics by about 2055; then be using energy at a rate faster than what the earth releases in making all the planet’s mountains, earthquakes and volcanoes will upset the balance of nature. In producing energy we now add more than 30 bn. tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere each year and the consequences are staggering to say the least. The warming of the planet could be caused by the ‘greenhouse effect’ pumping heat into the oceans and crust at a phenomenal rate. We see almost as much heat now flowing into the shallow crust from above as what is trying to get out. This increases the surface temperature which is commonly called global warming caused by humans living on this wonderful planet earth. We are all in the midst of a geologically significant event of mass extinction or a global geo-chemical anomaly of our own making – an epoch we could refer to as Anthropocene. But all this is in the hands of its creator (nature) which may have other plans not known to humans to mitigate this situation of a man made catastrophe with only ‘computer models’ to guide them.

(Trevor Jayetileke, B.Sc. (Ceylon), is an Energy Consultant and former Adviser to the Ministry of Petroleum Resources Development of Sri Lanka and Chairman of the Australia Sri Lanka Council Inc.Melbourne-estb. 1994).