Human beings are known as the most intelligent species in the entire living world, but human error and unsuccessful planning drag the world to an irreversible point. The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant explosion that took place on April 26, 1986, is one of the most tragic and major influential examples of human error and bad planning in human history. It is a severe event that causes environmental disaster, but the real disaster is that the decreasing biodiversity in natural areas in the world is dragged human beings into a much bigger disaster than a single event.
David Attenborough is a broadcaster and natural historian since the 1950s. He is a writer, producer, and presenter of worldwide known nature documentaries in history and known for BBC documentaries; Life on Earth, The Living Planet, The Blue Planet. Attenborough traveled more than 256,000 miles with all-natural habits in the world. His latest documentary David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet, is a Netflix documentary to draw attention to the coming disaster. Attenborough claims that this documentary is his witness statement.
The vital issue is understanding the importance of biodiversity in the world. There are millions of living species on earth, and each species has its own role in the diversity to maintain the resources in the world. Each living being lives in a way to sustain each other's life because each living being actually contributes to the energy cycle. Animals and plants use the sun as a primary source in the universe and contribute to water, food, and carbon chain in their own way. These whole cycles are very sensitive, fragile, and perfectly functioning in themselves. Although human beings' existence is not a threat in itself, but their actions are destroying the existing natural balance and order day by day and causing irreversible damage to the system.
David Attenborough mentions that plant and animal life have an outstanding balance and protect their mechanism. However, the world has been unsuitable for human life since it existed. It went through periods of massive volcanic eruptions, ice ages, and splashes that destroyed living species. With the biodiversity that has existed for the last 10 thousand years, it is experiencing the most stable period of life. Each animal and plant diversity contribute not only to their lives but also contribute a suitable earth for people. But the perfect system is broken, and if people do not change anything, there will be no universe for us to living.
As a consumer living in the modern world, I would like to focus on a few severe truths that we are not even aware of because we often do not see them. Humankind activities and industrialization have bee started the destruction of entire forest habitats.
In the 1950s, Borneo in Southeast Asia was covered three-quarters covered with rainforest. Borneo rainforests had been reduced by half at the end of the 20th century. A rainforest includes millions of species, but with human activities’ rainforests have been used for manufacturing oil palm, and it causes the death of the rainforests. When humans benefit from oil palm, they also benefit from the land behind the forest as farmland. With the cutting of trillion trees, the natural habitat of millions of species become extinct. The world loses its half of the rainforests already because all actions that humankind does unsustainable cause the world to collapse.
In fact, the world is a gigantic but connected system; cutting rainforests destroys animals’ extinction, the food chain cannot be completed, the carbon cycle is disrupted, and more carbon particles are emitted into the air. As the weather warms, even a degree of warming at the world's average temperature threatens the oceans' life cycle, along with uncontrolled and unplanned fishing activities. The warming of the oceans opens the door for melting glaciers. Today, the glacier areas that were not accessible in the past can be easily reached by boats.
If there is no stop attempted, what will happen in the next four decades is even more terrifying than any horror movie you have ever seen. But with things that can be done before it is too late for everything, the world can heal itself and continue to be a living space for people.
The sun is the power of all living things and is a great power source like other eternal powers like sunlight, wind, water, geothermal. It should be attempted to change the power sources and work on sustainable and renewable natural energies into practice instead of fossil fuels. For instance, Morocco's energy policies depended on oil and gas at the beginning of the 21st century, but today Morocco produced % 40 of its power from the world's largest solar energy farm. Renewable power plants provide both short-term and long-term benefits. In the short term, the city atmosphere becomes clearer, quieter, more affordable. In the long term, rather than just relying on fossil oil, it could be an exporter of solar energy by 2050. Renewable energies need to be the world's leading source of power, but as Attenborough's statement, it can be the only energy source, and it will never be run out.
The truth is that the world existed before humankind. Even human beings become extinct to live on the earth by destroying the whole system, the world will find its own balance without us, and it is entirely in our hands to make the world more livable. If you want to learn about the dangers and precautions that await us in the coming decades, David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet is a great starting point.