TIME TRAVELLERS COULD NOT SURVIVE IN A YOUNG EARTH

In Canada where the Tar Sands development in northern Alberta represents ONLY TWO PERCENT of the country's domestic product - while doing immense damage to the environment - what is the real value of nature?

 

The value of nature is tough is to pin down, writes David Suzuki, Canadian scientist and environmentalist. 

 

Imagine a group of time travellers on a time machine setting their time destination billions of years back, before life appeared on Earth.

 

Once outside the capsule they would not be able to survive.

 

There would be no oxygen, for starters. 

 

Only after life evolved a way to exploit the sun’s energy through photosynthesis was carbon dioxide removed and oxygen released as a byproduct. Over millions of years, photosynthesis liberated oxygen, which built up to become 20 per cent of the atmosphere. To this day, all green things on land and in oceans maintain the balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide.

 

There would be no water to drink.

 

Life is part of the hydrologic cycle that circulates water around the world in rivers, lakes, oceans and air. Soil organisms such as fungi and bacteria, as well as plant roots, filter molecules from water to render it drinkable.

 

There would be no food, no animals, no plants. 

 

Suppose the time travellers brought seeds to grow food.

 

There would be no soil.

 

There would be dust, sand, clay and gravel, but no soil because it’s formed by the accumulation of molecules from the remains of plants and animals.

 

They are feeling cold and want to build a fire. 

 

There would be no fuel.

 

Wood, peat, dung, coal, oil and gas all store the sun’s energy as photosynthetic products that we burn to liberate fire. Before life, there was no fuel. Again, in anticipation we brought wood, kindling and paper and set them up for a fire. But fire requires oxygen, so nothing happens when we strike the match.

 

The point of this exercise, writes David Suzuki, is to illustrate that the very foundations of our lives – air, water, photosynthesis, soil and food – are made possible by the web of life that evolved on a once-sterile planet.

 

Living organisms on land and in oceans, including us, create, cleanse and regenerate those vital elements.  Who needs nature? We do. Without nature, we would not be here. How do we put an economic value on that?

 

Read more http://www.davidsuzuki.org/blogs/science-matters/2013/07/whats-the-value-of-something-we-cant-live-without/  

 

More on the Tar Sands (a crime against nature) on this blog - http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2013/06/environment-news-two-disasters-in.html

 

Link to this post - http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2013/07/time-travellers-could-not-survive-in.html

 

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