Deve-se mandar o "Dia da Terra" às urtigas...

Joseph Romm, num artigo na Salon, Earth Day, afirma que deveríamos mandar o "Dia da Terra" às urtigas e focar a atenção naquilo que pode (e deve) ser salvo - terra agrícola e galaciares - e na salvação de nós próprios - a subespécie homo sapiens sapiens. É um artigo oportuno e provocador. Alguns excertos:

"I don't worry about the earth. I'm pretty certain the earth will survive the worst we can do to it. I'm very certain the earth doesn't worry about us. I'm not alone. People got more riled up when scientists removed Pluto from the list of planets than they do when scientists warn that our greenhouse gas emissions are poised to turn the earth into a barely habitable planet.

"All of these phrases create the misleading perception that the cause so many of us are fighting for -- sharp cuts in greenhouse gases -- is based on the desire to preserve something inhuman or abstract or far away. But I have to say that all the environmentalists I know -- and I tend to hang out with the climate crowd -- care about stopping global warming because of its impact on humans, even if they aren't so good at articulating that perspective. I'm with them.

The reason that many environmentalists fight to save the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or the polar bears is not because they are sure that losing those things would cause the universe to become unhinged, but because they realize that humanity isn't smart enough to know which things are linchpins for the entire ecosystem and which are not. What is the straw that breaks the camel's back? The 100th species we wipe out? The 1,000th? For many, the safest and wisest thing to do is to try to avoid the risks entirely.

This is where I part company with many environmentalists. With 6.5 billion people going to 9 billion, much of the environment is unsavable. But if we warm significantly more than 2°C from pre-industrial levels -- and especially if we warm more than 3°C, as would be all but inevitable if we keep on our current emissions path for another decade or so -- then the environment and climate that made modern human civilization possible will be ruined, probably for hundreds of years. And that means misery for many if not most of the next 10 to 20 billion people to walk the planet.

So I think the world should be more into conserving the stuff that we can't live without. In that regard I am a conservative person. Unfortunately, Conservative Day would, I think, draw the wrong crowds. The problem with Earth Day is it asks us to save too much ground. We need to focus. The two parts of the planet worth fighting to preserve are the soils and the glaciers. "