Earth Without Humans - Essay Example

People are growing more dependent on new gadgets, the notion of perpetual growth, chemically fertilized food, and drugs that are synthesized chemically. The letter also warns that the present generations are wrongly informed that using fossil energy without consideration for the future is normal.

            It is shown that the problem with the current use of energy is that more energy is spent to put the technologies in place than is actually produced by the technologies. The realization by governments and politicians that fossil energy is exhaustible is what has led to enmity between high consumers of energy and the supplying nations, often culminating in military aggression and economic depression. Present generations are advised that turning to solar energy is the best way to guarantee continuous, non-exhaustible energy, but also warned that solar energy cannot support the entire requirements of people that are virtually dependent on energy for livelihoods. Then, the cutting down of ancient forests must stop and the anti-biotech, anti-nuclear, conservation, and organic food gardening movements stepped up.   

            On the other hand, Bob Holmes’ Earth without Humans portrays humans as the earth’s most predominant species and imagines what the planet would be like without them. For example, the average eco-footprint, in terms of hectares, is placed at 9.7 for a single US citizen (Holmes 39). Humans have consumed over one-third of the planet’s land surface for pastures, farmland, and cities in slightly over a few thousand years. The results are messy and include chemical pollution, nuclear waste, mass extinctions, invasive species, drained aquifers, razed forests, and, most significantly, the threatening specter of climate change. The document suggests that the earth’s outlook would start getting better once humans are removed from the picture. For instance, 18.7 percent of the earth’s surface would be rescued from the present effects of light pollution as would over 15,000 species threatened with extinction.

            Forests are estimated to recover 80 percent of their original, natural coverage if human presence and activity are eliminated and within 200 years, only five percent of the coverage would not have been recovered. Sadly, some ecosystems are expected never to return to how they were prior to human interference since they are now locked into new and stable states resistant to returning their original forms. Fish populations are also expected to recover in the oceans from radical overfishing because it is overfishing that has led to the drastic decrease of cod and larger predatory fish. Conclusively, the two documents blame human activity for the present state of environmental, economic, and climatic chaos the planet earth is undergoing.