Man made manipulations to solving Ecological problems (More woes in the pipeline)

                                                 

Man, as often deemed, the most advanced and sophisticated biological entity on Planet Earth has overtime enjoyed a rather broad dominance on this realm of existence, manipulating the tide of life to conform to his desires and needs. What stops man from wanting more, no reason in sight , so much he could think, and work his way from his sketchy thoughts to reality. For long it’s been noted that man’s desire and aspirations could bring even the highest mountain down as nothing intimidates when his mind is made up.

The rather generous preamble is quite necessary to paint out what could be considered the pride of humanity, a necessary brief into the history of our kind though current haps way betray the immense gratification we have overtime accumulated and in many ways, we have assumed the trigger point of a doomsday time bomb on Earth.

In 1972, a book titled “limits to growth” predicted a supposedly collapse of our civilization sometime around the close of this century and this rather brought significant criticisms from the public. This is rather an expectation at that time as the changes we witness now were not profoundly calling for attention as the situation seems today. The average mindset was the Earth has its way to make up for the rate of every level of exploitation and more so, we are developing and soon could even colonize the neighboring planets in the Milky Way galaxy.

Alas, the writers, as can be assumed now were way on point from their matched up research in their projections on economic factors, population growth, and ecological status.  Obviously, though we do not believe our systems could collapse but all pointer of consideration all paint a not so good scenario for the future of our planet.

There are of course some essential factor of consideration which isn’t so strange to a lot of people; climate change has assumed prominence on the scale of danger portraying situations, this alone would cause a lot of catastrophic occurrences some of which we have been experiencing and which could also be linked to be precursors to indirect ecological occurrences such as drought, flooding, weather related catastrophes, habitat loss, wildlife extinction , ecological shifting , infectious diseases occurrences, crop loss , an quite a lot more on the list which might not be exhausted in this write up.

Now, with all of these, and probably more that are yet to become visible, man has seen reasons to start taking a lot of responsibility in setting the course of the future on the path of continuity. In all way, we have been seeking interventions and way out though the moves have not seen a total acceptance as still some have held back on what seem like the only way.

But then, a new turn of thoughts which seem well wrapped up in the false beauty of timely manipulation has been the issues of adopting Geo-engineering in the process of proffering solutions to the changing climate caused by manmade emitted greenhouse gases. 

Geo-engineering schemes are actually projects designed to tackle the effects of climate change directly, usually removing CO₂ from air or limiting the amount of sunlight reaching the planet’s surface. Some of the schemes include machines (artificial trees) that tend to pull out CO₂ from the atmosphere using plastic polymers; another of the scheme is the firing of sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight back to space; another of this supposedly feat is the pouring of iron into oceans to increase phytoplankton growth and another one is the placing reflecting surfaces like a mirrors into space.

 

While all of these may sound so promising, the consideration of the cost, long run effect and the possibility of being efficient as theoretically envisaged all lead to the weighing of the option of actually embarking on such as uncertain reality.

But then, we already have an option which to a great deal of extent affords the most logical and responsible solution to the ecological changes we are currently witnessing today, This option have been on the table of deliberations for such a long time and still haven’t come to stay as been totally accepted.

In a lot of ways, geo-engineering seems like a short-cut and a probably lazy means to shying away from being reasonably responsible and to an extent it’s like a mirage of a fantasy that might never see the light of reality.

The question is, which sounds more feasible and cheaper, the option of erecting artificial trees, spending so much to put mirrors in space, filling up our oceans with more metals or rather making a speedy commitment towards domestic and natural means of reducing the global emissions of green house gases most essentially reduce to zero our reliance on fossil fuel?

One last question to ponder upon is why we would choose to mount up more woes of uncertainty while an option of solution lies within the reach of our grasp?