Can we keep our planet habitable?
Can we keep our planet habitable?
For more than 40,000 years, Homo sapiens has applied himself, patiently, laboriously, unremittingly, to the task of conquering his planet, extending his dominion over all other creatures and taming the vast forces of nature.
From this, at the start, foolhardy and unequal contest, he has emerged victorious. Not a single corner of the globe has escaped his scrutiny; no species of animal has held out against him. He has imposed his will on rivers and even the seas. He has swept away forests and replaced them with crops. Today he rockets into space. He seems to have achieved total victory too total to be lasting.
Until a few decades ago the triumphant progress of a technological civilization based on scientific knowledge seemed to confirm man's total victory. Then, all at once, danger signals were observed. In a brief period of his relatively short history, man, a "Johnny-come-lately" on earth, has so effectively conquered nature that he is now in the process of destroying it.
Hasty felling of forests to clear new land for crops; swift and reckless encroachment on the countryside to make place for tentacular cities, factories, highways and aerodromes; destruction and erosion of the soil; pollution of air and water; disappearance of wildlife; accumulation of waste products and mounds of rubbish; defacement of rural scenery; the increasing poisoning of our planet all are the bitter fruit of man's technological skill, of the exponential rate of increase in population and the modern mystique of productivity.
These too are the mortal dangers that threaten the thin layer of the earth known as the biosphere the meeting point of land, air and waters where life can exist, the environment on which man depends inescapably for his survival.
In view of this increasingly critical situation, Unesco, in September 1968, called an intergovernmental conference of specialists to study the ideas of modern science on the rational use and conservation of the resources of the biosphere and to propose measures for national and international action.