To locate humanity's place in the world, the late David Brower, father of the modern environmental movement, considered the Earth's four and a half billion years as a six-day week, with each day representing about 750 million years. At midnight on Sunday, when nature as we know it began, the planet was a mass of gasses, water, dust and rock. Electric charge built up, and over a billion years, lightning storms bombarded the Earth. Nucleic and amino acids-- life's building blocks-- first appeared at noon on Tuesday. Early plants made oxygen and paved the way for animals.
Over the next few "days" (over a few more billion years), millions of species emerged-- and millions left. By seven a.m. Saturday (Brower's sixth day), enough chlorophyll had accumulated for fossil fuels to begin forming. That afternoon, around four p.m., great reptiles thrived. Five hours later, they went extinct.
Apes appeared at about three minutes before midnight. Thirty seconds before midnight, homo sapiens arrived. At first, they hunted and gathered for food. Around 12,000 years ago, they began settling communities, domesticating animals and storing some foods. Two to three thousand years ago, our ancestors wrote down directions-- i.e., the Tao de Ching, Hammurabi's Code, The Ten Commandments, Hopi teachings and the Hippocratic Oath-- about how to relate with each other and the Earth.
In 1800 (still Brower's sixth day, one fortieth of a second before midnight), one billion humans lived on this planet. By then, people had cut down forests in Europe and along North America's east coast for agriculture and military ships. Still, our use of natural resources did not threaten the planet's ecological integrity.
Technological advances like 1834's invention of a battery-powered motor, 1859's discovery of oil (one eightieth of a second before midnight), and our ability to generate electricity and transmit it over long distances (1889) lengthened lifespans, increased human population and created a society based on economics.
Our civilization became dependent on technologies that wreak havoc on nature. In the 1880s, the U.S. built an electric power grid. To mass-produce radios, refrigerators, TVs, washing machines, gas-powered vehicles, airplanes, air conditioners, we extracted and smelted ores, we made toxic chemicals, used fossil fuels and water and intercontinental shipping. We generated toxic waste that does not biodegrade.
At accelerated speed, we began taking from the Earth faster than it can replenish, and wasting faster than the Earth can absorb. These toxic wastes keep invisible to most of us-- even though they threaten our planet's ecological integrity.
Unlike traditional guidelines that cautioned "First, do no harm," modern laws do not warn or protect us from manufacturing's hazards. For example, in 1934, thrilled with the possibilities of electronic communications and appliances, the U.S. Congress established the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). FCC's engineers encouraged manufacturers to market all manner of electronics as long as they do not create "harmful interference" with existing radio or TV (and now cellular and Internet) broadcasts. At the FCC, "harmful interference" does not include harm to public health or any ecosystem.
If a corporation whose mining or building will "take" (kill) wildlife, it can submit a conservation plan to the agency in question. If the agency finds that the corporation's harm to endangered species will be "incidental," it will grant the permit to conduct business.
At two-hundredths of a second before midnight, we discovered how to split the atom. In the 1960s, we began mining elements (previously kept in the ground) like cerium, cobalt, coltan, lithium, neodymium and quartz for color TVs, air conditioners, then desktop computers, printers, solar panels, industrial wind turbines and electric vehicles.
Just before midnight
In 2007, we got smartphones-- hand-held luxury portals to the Internet, each requiring about 125 substances to manufacture. Indeed, every smartphone-- and every text, video stream and Google search depends on internationally deployed, energy-intensive, extraction-intensive, water-intensive, toxic waste-emitting factories, data centers and access networks. Every online activity threatens wildlife habitats.
Since the early 1900s, one hundredth of a second before midnight, our species has consumed four times as many resources as in all previous history. In 1902, the USA had 150 miles (241 km) of paved roads. Today, the country has 2,678,000 miles (6,552,000 km) of paved roads. In 1912, when David Brower was born, California had 6,000 miles of salmon streams, and roughly 80% of the original Redwoods still stood. By 1992, 200 salmon streams and less than five percent of the Redwoods remained. In the 21rst century's first two decades, the U.S. lost more than 11 million acres of farmland to development.
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