The Varsity Christian Federation, an on-campus group at the University of British Columbia many years ago, staged a series of theological discussions entitled, What On Earth Are You Doing For Heaven's Sake? The play on words was delightful and the implications were serious for those who believed in an eternal afterlife. For those more concerned about our continued worldly existence, the discussion today might be adjusted to What On Earth Are We Doing For Earth's Sake? And we could begin with three stunning examples.
Curiously, after China and the United States, the highest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet in 2007 was Indonesia, a country with little industrial output. The source of its carbon dioxide was the decomposing and burning of its peat bogs in tropical Sumatra. In just one year, 2 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide – 8 percent of the world's total – escaped from the 130,000 square kilometres of forest that has now been logged and drained to grow acacia trees for pulpwood and palm oil trees for biodiesel.
To grow these trees, the original forest must be clearcut – itself a huge release of carbon – and then drained to create at least a metre of dry peat. When the peat is exposed to air, however, it decomposes and releases CO2. So every few years, the drainage canals must be dug deeper, exposing more peat and allowing more decomposition. With up to 15 metres of peat, the carbon dioxide released will be from 25 to 36 times the amount saved by the biodiesel produced from the palm oil trees. Sometimes the dry peat is deliberately or accidentally set afire. Another 20,000 square kilometres of these swamp forests are slated to be cut. In total, these southeast Asian bogs store 155 gigatonnes of CO2, the world's total fossil fuel output for 5 years. With rising demand for biodiesel and cheap pulpwood, coupled with corrupt local governments, controls on the conversion of these forests to plantations is unlikely.
For a second example, consider the Pacific Ocean between California and Japan, known as the North Pacific gyre. It is becoming the world's largest garbage dump. Plastics that are dumped in mid-ocean or are washed to sea from anywhere along the perimeter coasts – everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and raw industrial pellets – are held in place by the circulating currents. Since most plastics float, they accumulate and slowly break into ever-smaller pieces that form a sort of "plastic soup". The western and eastern halves of this gyre have now merged into one mass of 100 million tonnes of garbage, covering an area about twice the size of continental America. Scientists describe it as a huge, undulating mass, continually changing shape and location. When it sometimes touches Hawaii, the islands' beaches are inundated with a multi-coloured deposits of plastic "confetti".
The concern is more than cosmetic. "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch" annually kills about one million seabirds and 100,000 mammals. But the plastics, together with the other toxins they readily absorb from the ocean, also accumulate in the food chain and are eventually eaten by us. Unless we learn to manage our plastic waste, the amount of garbage in this floating dump is expected to double in ten years.
For a third example, consider the Alberta tar-sands. The process of extracting oil from this geological deposit of hydrocarbons essentially constitutes the ecological obliteration of an area the size of Florida, the formation of the largest toxic tailing ponds in the world, and the potential contamination of the Athabasca River and its ecology northward toward the Arctic. This manic effort to feed our civilization's addiction to oil now consumes huge amounts of clean natural gas and is exhausting Alberta's dwindling fresh water supplies. With a projected output of 140 million tonnes of CO2 per year, this project will single-handedly prevent Canada from ever hoping to reach its international climate control commitments.
The incredible monetary wealth generated by the tar-sands project masks its catastrophic environmental damage. Aside from the horrendous carbon dioxide emissions and the gluttonous consumption of valuable gas and water – the Syncrude plant alone uses about 10 trillion litres per year from the shrinking Athabasca River – the oil-laced tailing ponds are deemed to be a mess that is virtually beyond rehabilitation. About a dozen of these ponds now cover an area of about 80 square kilometres. When 500 migrating ducks recently made the mistake of landing on one of these "sludge pits", only five were rescued alive. Seepage of crude into the Athabasca has dramatically increased the human cancer rate at Fort Chipewan, 300 km downstream, and the river is now littered with deformed fish and hemorrhaging muskrats. In magnitude, environmental affront and eventual consequences, the tar sands is Canada's equivalent to the Indonesian peat bog debacle and "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch" disaster.
And what do just these three environmental outrages tell us? That we are befouling the planet at an industrial scale, with a destructive enthusiasm and a reckless indifference that resides somewhere between criminality and insanity.
In our urgent journey toward environmental responsibility, we begin with awareness, an ever-increasing consciousness of what our individual and collective actions actually mean. "What on Earth are we doing?" is an uncomfortable but legitimate question that should resonate through each one of us as we live our lives on this planet. Perhaps, as we become more aware, the answers will lead to solutions.