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Blog Series: The Science of Stewardship
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The Evolution of
Earth: Intensifying Global Change
The world is always changing and
has been since the very beginning of Earth. While the environment may seem
static, like it’s always been this way and always will, it is anything but. The
Earth looked like a very different place at different points in its history. Over
the past 4.54 billion years the Earth has seen mountains and oceans form,
dinosaurs come and go, entire continents drift apart, and every species that
has ever existed evolve from a single cell.
The world is always changing but it
is easy to forget because most of these processes are incredibly slow and
operate on a scale much longer than human history. Since humans have been
around the environment has been relatively stable but we are beginning to
notice changes in our world such as rising temperatures and ocean levels. The
alarming thing about these changes is just how fast they are happening, at a
pace so rapid there is no precedent in the entire history of the planet.
So
why is everything changing so much faster all of a sudden and is it something
we should be worried about? Scientists all over the world are growing more
and more concerned about these changes and have realized that they are not natural.
Human activities are impacting the planet by altering and speeding up processes
through our pollution and use of resources. The planet has never dealt with
such a threat from any life form and the ramifications of such big changes at
such a rapid pace have the potential to impact all life on Earth.
It’s not all that surprising that
humans can have such an impact when you consider the population and time scale
we’re operating on. The population of humans has exploded from 1 billion people
in the year 1800 to over 7 billion today, which is an incredible increase in
what, on the Earth’s time scale, amounts to the blink of an eye. Human
expansion is happening so fast that our population is doubling about every 50
years. We are living during a time when the human population is rising
exponentially and this poses questions for us and the planet. Changing
populations means changing patterns of resource use and demand so the question
for us is, how we will take care of all these people without destroying our home?
