Save the Earth – a personal view
First of all, to me, what needs saving is the wild biosphere. The lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere are only important insofar as they influence the biosphere, with the single exception of aesthetics. Secondly, in the biosphere only two things are important, maximum biodiversity and improvement of the quality of life for organisms.
The best way to stop killing the biosphere is to stop killing the biosphere. It’s as simple as that. Avoid broad spectrum insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, algaecides, antibiotics, vermicides and replace them with narrow spectrum targeted at only one species. Retaining only those killers firmly bound to solids, such as DDT firmly bound to mosquito nets.
Pollution never led to the extinction of anything, but did strongly affect the quality of life of wildlife so needs to be eliminated for that reason. The worst air pollution is wood smoke. The worst soil pollution is salt. I don’t know what the worst water pollution is. The only deadly water pollution that I’ve observed personally in the last 20 years is drain cleaner, NaOH in creeks. Some 40 years ago the worst water pollution I observed was thermal pollution, the release of hot water from industry. Then there’s noise pollution, light pollution, and other forms of pollution.
Insects have the greatest number of species, and are actively fought against, so are at greatest risk of species extinction. The biggest threats leading to insect extinction include:
- Honey bees – competition for food
- House lights – divert night-fliers away from migratory paths
- Fires – including forest fires, grass fires, and leaf-litter fires
- Aerosol insecticides
- War
My strategy for saving the Earth is.
- An immediate ban on all aerosol broad-spectrum insecticides. These kill not just all insects but also most other land invertebrates, as well as amphibians. From now on, all insecticides must be narrow spectrum, killing at most one subfamily (eg. anopheles) and transitioning to a single species. No use of insecticides in wild forests.
- A scaling down of broad-spectrum herbicides. Transitioning to an effect on a single species only.
- Fewer weapons. These kill wildlife.
- A scaling down of the use of baits.
- More no-fishing zones, more wildlife preserves.
- Blackout curtains on all houses near the flight paths of night-flying insects including the beetles, lacewings and moths.
- Noise control in the entire audible range of animals. Immediate implementation for all river craft. Quietening of sonar and outboard motors. Quietening of truck backing noise. Quietening of ultrasonic noises produced by electrical and electronic equipment. Quietening of foot traffic in forests.
- Scaling back the honey industry, to avoid loss of native pollinators including native bees, wasps, beetles and moths.
- Avoid clear-felling of paddocks containing stock. Retain mature trees at least every 100 metres. Regrow trees in cleared paddocks.
- Scale back the beef cattle industry – rewild large stations.
- Encourage monoculture. This feeds the greatest number of people on the smallest land area.
- No forest wildfires, with special nurseries for native plants that require fires for germination.
- Scale back wild-forest logging.
- Less salt in surfactants and foods – the greatest barrier to recycling of human waste as fertiliser is salt. Recycle human waste.
- Greywater systems in all new houses.
- More desalination.
- High-rise living. Central heating.
- Back up the entire biosphere. Seed banks. Egg banks. Zoos. Botanic gardens. Aquariums.
- Aerial planting of forest trees.
- Fertilise wild forests.
- Change how humans smell. To most wild animals, humans stink.
- Keep the sea level rising as fast as coral reefs grow. Corals turn atmospheric CO2 into rock. All C3 plants are starving for lack of atmospheric CO2.
- Artificial reefs on the sea bed.
- Floating islands out at sea as fish nurseries, to replace the loss of organic matter that used to wash off coastal and river vegetation.
- Remake wetlands in areas away from human population, eg river headwaters. As fish and amphibian nurseries.
- GM in monocultures for disease resistance, this replaces aerosol pesticides.
- Maximum garden biodiversity.
- Feed the birds, fish, wild animals, wild plants. Regularly.
- Human food from mineral oil, coal and gas to reduce the ground area needed for crops.
- Scale back broad spectrum fungicides.
Logging is a two-edged sword, and needs to be considered closely. Is a large area lightly logged better or worse than a much smaller area heavily logged? Beetles, according to Alfred Russell Wallace, love logging, they fly in from tens of km around to feast on the sap of newly felled timber, and beetles, Coleoptera, are the largest order of insects.
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I’ve slowly come to the conclusion that there’s no such thing as a non-renewable resource. I’ve been tracking production and reserves of all of the resources in the Club of Rome’s “The limits to growth” for 45 years and not even one of them is under threat in the foreseeable future. This is because of reductions in use (lead, tin, chromium, uranium etc.), increase in recycling (aluminium, copper, steel, gold, plastic etc.), because resources were initially grossly underestimated (eg. Saudi Arabian oil) and because of improved extraction technology (tar sands, shale oil etc).
Environmentalists would have us do the following to save the Earth.
- Ban all mining.
- Ban all nuclear power, coal-fired power, gas-fired power, dams, wind turbine power.
- Ban fertiliser.
- Ban all logging.
- Promote permaculture, cooperative planting.
- Ban meat and all livestock.
- Ban multinationals.
- No vehicles powered by fossil fuels.
- Ban irrigation.
- No fuel-load-reduction burning.
- Bicycles.
- Ban palm oil.
My approach is different.