The Avoidable Inevitable

Clifford Thomas, June 2019.

May I point out that I am in declining health with a disease that has and continues to result in declining cognitive function, but in spite of this I have a story to tell that is built on my life experiences over the past 77 years and it is the conclusions I drew from them that I trust you will find helpful in creating a better society. This relates particularly to the UK, but may well be applicable to all.

The avoidable inevitable. 

When trying to make sense of our place in the world, how it affects us and how we have affected it, then we cannot but realize that we are in trouble in so many ways and if we are going to get out of this, even if we start now, then it will be by the skin of our teeth. So the best way to assess our situation is to start at the very beginning and that is at the birth of the Universe some 13 billion years ago.

Obviously we cannot say for sure how it began and even if it was the beginning, or just the part of a cycle that has gone on forever, but we can assume that at that event time space and energy sprang into existence. There was no big bang, no flash of light, just the creation of pure energy on an unimaginable scale: Amen.

The elements that we see around us were condensed and structured from that event and we can see this process still being played out in the energy being dissipated by the heavenly bodies in our presentday Universe.

It is said that the Universe is expanding, even accelerating and from our perspective this is so for we are deep within this sphere of space and time, the acceleration just being an indication of how very early this is before all the energy is condensed into matter and then the mysterious force of gravity will take charge to complete the cycle, for it is the manipulation of energy and matter, by evolutionary processes, that brought into existence life on planet Earth.
  
 It was the anaerobic life forms that initiated this by their ability to make use of the chemical energy then available, and these are still active as the plants, animals and other anaerobic life-forms that we see around us on the land and in the seas. They use a process to sustain life where they consume carbon dioxide and exude oxygen as a by-product, whereas the aerobic life-forms have evolved to make use of this oxygen and exude carbon dioxide, so these processes are complimentary, largely self regulating and until recently, in balance.

This synergy has proved to be quite robust and has maintained an atmosphere sufficient to sustain both life-forms for literally millions of years. But, over little more than the last two hundred years, man by his actions, has brought this process, so essential to all life forms, into crisis.  

 Life cannot survive without energy.

 This energy is available by the interaction of oxygen with other materials and man has existed in this environment quite happily but has come to realize that he could also manufacture energy to his advantage in many various ways.

The first way was in the comfort of additional heat by burning the vegetation that was around him and this chemical reaction that we call fire is purely a chemical reaction in the same way that you can mix two materials together, induce a reaction and come up with something entirely different.  

There are other elements that are reactive but oxygen is plentiful in our atmosphere. It is present at about 20% and reacts with nearly everything. This is an exothermic reaction in that heat is produced as a by-product and man has found ways of using this to his advantage in fires to keep warm and for cooking.

In recent times we have found various ways of producing energy and this has catapulted us into our age of affluence

We have discovered fossil remains within the earth that are amenable to the production of energy when reacting with atmospheric oxygen and this has become our main energy source. This however has its drawbacks, for when you have a chemical reaction by combustion, then inevitably by-products are produced that have  undesirable consequences and just one of these, carbon dioxide, is having a big effect on the performance and stability of the atmosphere.

  Just as concerning, is the presently little appreciated effect that this is having on the ratio of oxygen in our atmosphere, that has been declining markedly in recent years and this is set to continue due to the acidification and warming of the oceans that, has until recently provided 70% of replacement oxygen. Under these conditions the algae blooms that provide additional oxygen are also under threat, so with the combined effect of the degrading of the oxygen replenishing sources, together with our oxygen consuming societies, this should give us cause for concern. Particularly so when it is appreciated that although our atmosphere consists of 20% oxygen it would only have to fall by just a few percent for all aerobic life to suffer.

We are however masters of our own destiny and stewards of the World, so it is up to us what we do. We can do nothing and wait for the inevitable, but that would be a betrayal of those that have gone before us, or we can change, and change we must for our children demand it, and rightly so.

 

We have to achieve what is virtually impossible, for there is no alternative.