Are we to leave our successors a scorched planet of advancing

Are we to leave our successors a scorched planet of advancing deserts , impoverished landscapes and ailing environment ?
One cannot recall any movement in world history which has gripped the imagination of the entire human race so completely and so rapidly as the Green Movement which started nearly twenty-five years ago . In 1972, the world's first nationwide green party formed in New Zealand. since then , the movement has not looked back.
For the first time , in human history , there is a growing worldwide consciousness that the Earth itself is a living organism - An enormous being of which we are parts . it has its own metabolic needs and vital processes which need to be respected and preserved.

Scientists have catalogued about 1.4 million living species with which mankind shares the Earth. Estimates vary widely to uncatalogued living species. Biologists reckon that about three to a hundred million other living species still unknown.
Mr. Lester R Brown in his book, The Global Economic Prospect , points out that the Earth's principal biological systems are four - fisheries , forests , grasslands and croplands - and they form the foundation of the global economic system. In addition to supplying our foods, these four systems provide virtually all the raw materials for industry except minerals and petroleoum-derived synthetics. In large areas of the world, Human claims on these systems are reaching an unsustainable level, a point where their productivity is being impaired. when this happens , fisheries collapse, forests disappear, croplands are converted into barren wastelands, and croplands deteriorate.
In a protein-conscious and protein-hungry world, over-fishing is comman every day . In poor countries local forests are being decimated inorder to procure firewood for cooking. since the tropical forest is in the words of Dr. Myers '' The powerhouse of Evolution '', several species of life face extinction as a result of its destruction. It has been well said that forests precede mankind ; deserts follow. the world's ancient patrimony of tropical forests is now eroding at the rate of forty to fifty million acres a year, and growing use of dung for burning deprives the soil of an important natural fertiliser.



The Worl Bank estimates that a five-fold increase in the rate of forest planting is needed to cope with the expected fuelwood demand every year. James Speth , The president of the World Resources Institute said '' we were saying that we are losing the forests at an acre a second , but it is much closer to an acre-and-a-half to a second.

A three year study using satellites and aerial photography conducted by the United Nations , warns that the environment has deteriorated so badly that it is critical in many of the eighty-eight countries investigated.

There can be no doubt that the growth of world population is one of the strongest factors distorting the future of human society. It took mankind more than million years to reach the first billion. it was around 1800 A.D. By the 1900 AD, a second billion was added, and the twentieth century has added another 3.7 billion . every four days the world population increases by one million.
The population of India is estimated to be 1.5 billion today - more than the entire populations of Africa and South America put together. no one is familiar with the conditions in India would doubt that the hope of the people would die in their hungry hutments unless population control is given topmost priority.
The rich get richer , and poor beget children which condemns them to remain poor. more children does not mean more workers , merely more people without work. Unfortunately , India embark on this opinion.

The environmental problem does not neccessarily signal our demise, it is our passport for the future.
In the Zoo at Lusaka, Zambia , there is a cage where the notice reads , '' the world's most dangerous animal ; inside the cage there is no animal but a mirror where you see yourself.

Edger S Wooland, chief environmental officer, said five years ago, '' our continued existence as a leading manufacturer requires that we excel in environmental performance.''

Margaret Thatcher said , '' No generation has a freehold on this Earth. all we have is a life tenancy - with a full repairing lease.''