The Shell-Economist Writing Prize Do We Need Nature?

Still at Risk, Naturally

By M. A. Moftah Address: 10, Montazah Street, Zamalek Cairo 11211, Egypt e-mail: saxphone@internetegypt.com Tel: (202) 736 31 49 (2012) 312 25 50

Synopsis: The conflict between humanity and nature is eternal. We are dependent on nature for all our needs. We now realise that the resources on our planet are finite but the population explosion forces us to innovate and to continue exploiting the raw materials available. We should not be lulled by the fact that matter is neither created nor destroyed because it can be transformed into matter that is inutile and even destructive. From nature we have learnt some of the basic laws that govern us and we have emulated many of its processes, some beneficial and others life threatening. This has proven to be a double edged sword that should be wielded with great care. It is impossible to reverse much of what humanity has done to nature but hopefully we can alleviate some of the side effects and increase the span of the earths resources through recycling and thoughtful exploitation. The scientific establishment will end up, directly or indirectly, making many fateful decisions. Hopefully, the scientists will be armed with a comprehensive, humanitarian vision so that we may avoid many of the pitfalls that might be of our own making. We, now, have at our disposal tools that are more powerful and sophisticated than anything that our grandfathers dared to dream about. The present century is bound to witness even more spectacular breakthroughs. These technological advances have to be used wisely, if we are to survive as a species and extend our stay on Earth.

Still at Risk, Naturally The relationship between nature and humanity is not symbiotic; it is a one way thoroughfare on which we are speeding along. We need nature for nearly all our needs, while in cosmic terms the destruction of all life on this planet would hardly create a tiny ripple in the universe. Nature is humanitys Ali Babas cave and its nemesis; we have never had a harmonious relationship. Man is not particularly suited to his environment, needing shelter, garments and copious amounts of food and water. He is in direct competition with animals that are stronger, faster and in some cases much larger. He is, also, susceptible to attacks by pests, microbes (ironically, one of his great-ancestors) and viruses. Nature, luckily, provided him with a large brain, granting him an edge in the survival sweepstakes. Early on, we realized that nature was parsimonious and fickle. To avoid extinction, we could not allow it to have an exclusive stranglehold on the means of production. Mimicking nature, we developed agriculture and animal husbandry. With the help of irrigation and by improving strains through selection and inbreeding, it became possible to throw off the yoke of subsistence survival and to start building. Man-made structures abounded to protect us from the vagaries of nature, to serve as a resting place for the dead and to house our gods. We could not cope, rationally, with the chaotic nature of the forces that ruled and destroyed our lives. Our curiosity impelled us towards trying to understand how they functioned. As we tried to unravel the innumerable ciphers, gods were created for nearly every force in nature that either enhanced or wreaked havoc upon our lives. These gods who were deemed to control the sun, rain, rivers volcanoes, the oceans and lightning were created in our image. To placate them they were offered viands, wines, vestal virgins and a great deal of worship. Most of natures more extreme phenomena were considered to be messages from the gods. It is only in the past five hundred years that we have begun to understand some of natures basic laws. Galileo discovered that we were not the centre of the universe or even our own solar system and insisted that the book of nature was written in mathematical equations; Newton uncovered the laws of gravity and motion, to be followed by Darwin connecting the creation of life to nature. Previously, in our nescience, we had conceived a teleological world in which a benign God created man in his image to exploit it. Darwin was so shocked by his theory of creation that he maintained his silence for 20 years before publishing his thesis based on organic evolution, struggle, survival of the fittest and extinction. Suddenly, the span of the history of life, which had been thought to be a handful of millennia, had been extended by many millions of years. When Darwin published On the Origin of the Species, he was so anguished, that he felt as if he had confessed to a murder. Great scientific breakthroughs allowed us, starting in the 19th Century, to exploit what was viewed as natures infinite cornucopia. The invention of machinery, using new forms of non-animal power, allowed us to alter our environment at an exponential pace. Forests

could be cleared in weeks to make way for monoculture plantations of rubber, pineapples and coffee. Oil was found at great depths on land and sea. Innumerable factories, power plants and affordable cars, began to belch enormous amounts of exhaust into the air we breathe. Mega cities began to emerge, cancerous in their growth and appetites. The oceans and the sky were not spared, ships criss-crossed the seas, planes filled the skies and satellites orbited the earth. Nearly all this machinery was powered by fossil fuels, producing great amounts of gaseous by-products. Naval ships and submarines began using nuclear power. Man, even created an element that was much more dangerous than anything nature had produced: Plutonium with its enormous energy, destructive power and its half life of 24,360 years. In our labs we produced heroin, 8 times more powerful than morphine, with hardly any medicinal uses. The new drug created an intractable problem of addiction, destroying the lives of millions, increasing corruption and enriching gangsters. Through emulating and studying nature we have uncovered many advances that have lengthened and improved the lives of millions. The search for knowledge cannot be censored and in pure science, the ultimate goal is, in many cases, an unknown. Of one thing we can be certain, that whatever is discovered will be used and history tells us that it is futile to attempt to outlaw certain topics for research. A number of Frankensteins have been, previously, set free with which we have managed to cope helped by the remarkable resilience and recuperative powers of nature. Technology can unleash, both, enormous good and potential destruction. Governments must ascertain that findings are isolated in labs until we are certain of their side effects. This course of action would be wiser than pushing scientists underground or forcing them to flee to environments that are not technologically capable of assessing the science (there are more than 150 sovereign nations on earth). We are now certain that our sun will run out of fuel in about 5 billion years. It is fair to assume that the resources on our planet will be depleted even earlier. Thus, it is imperative that we should strive to extend the life of these resources, if we are to avoid premature extinction. Presently, many of the billions in the third world aspire to an assured 3 meals a day; this will soon be followed by aspiring to have electricity, own a refrigerator, a car and an air conditioner. We have chosen our path: the forests of the Northern hemisphere have to a large extent been replaced by farmland, the globe has been swamped by the ubiquitous automobile and it is unreasonable to assume that the underdeveloped world will choose a different path. In their turn, they will destroy woodland, produce greenhouse gases and dam rivers. These actions will lessen biodiversity even further and add more strain on the earths resources. We are witnessing a demographic explosion of Malthusian proportions due to the dramatic increase in the average life of man and the fact that sex and procreation, in humanity, are programmed as a basic drive. Without technological breakthroughs, the scale of poverty and famine would be unimaginable. To improve living conditions, humanity has altered the earth and its atmosphere. Without doubt, our world will continue to be altered by mans existence and his machines. The earth is supporting billions of humans and a great number of

domesticated birds and animals that serve as food to man. Getting rid of the by-products has become an Augean task. Recycling and genetic engineering are the only hope in alleviating part of this problem but if the technology is not used carefully it can create other monsters like mad-cow disease (BSE). We have to respect the designs of nature and should be very wary of, for instance, trying to change herbivores into carnivores. Nature is the great experimenter, already 90 percent of the species ever created have become extinct, and it is also remarkably inefficient. A woman is granted 400,000 ova at birth, only 300-400 become mature eggs, of which only a small number are fertilised. The single ejaculation that might fertilise this egg contains enough sperm to impregnate all the women in Western Europe. The pursuit of knowledge, to increase the bountifulness of nature, will continue unabated, this will further improve our efforts at recycling and lead to hopefully cleaner, more sustainable forms of energy. Humans have changed nature but nature itself is no slouch, constantly altering the environment through evolution, earthquakes, typhoons, volcanoes, crude oil that is free flowing into the oceans, land slides, forest fires, meteors and coastal erosion. It is a certainty that scientific progress will continue: leading to artificial intelligence, genetic modifications in plants and animals, greatly enhanced weapons of mass destruction and breakthroughs that are as inconceivable as electricity was to a cave man. We have irrevocably changed the nature of our planet and can not asses whether or not our actions will be a factor in the occurrence of future cataclysmic events similar to those that nature, previously, visited on our planet. Of course, natures reckoning of time is on a scale that dwarfs the existence of life on earth. These new technologies will either increase our span on the planet or hasten our demise. Some very difficult decisions will have to be taken by the politicians, who will have to depend on members of the scientific community to decipher the possible consequences and side effects on the nature that supports our existence. It is crucial that all scientists be schooled in the humanities and basic ethics. The engineers and scientists of this world are the ages philosopher-kings; they have to be equipped with an encompassing world view so they can be liberated from the presbyopia of the microscope. Certain Pandoras boxes should be pried open carefully and in some cases kept shut until we are capable of understanding what we are releasing. Our aim is to exploit nature for as long as possible not to hasten its demise. Nature created humanity as an experiment and hopefully we will answer its call. If we do not, we will revert to stardust from whence we came.