Is Our Planet Dying?

There is, no doubt, a tendency among people to think in fairly apocalyptic terms, and to exaggerate matters in order to get more people to pay more attention. In this respect, how much attention should we pay when people assert that our planet is dying, and we will all be in trouble if we do not make changes? It is hard to say. Certainly, we have finite resources to rely on and, if we do not find a way to live without taking more out of the planet, there is only one way things can go.

The fact of the matter is that the world is highly unlikely to end while any one of us is still on the planet. In that light, it can be hard to get people to pay attention to the threat that faces our planet. It is a very real threat, but our children probably won’t see it happen, and nor will theirs. It is hard to personalize something that will not be experienced by anyone we know, or anyone we are likely to meet.

However, it is fair to imagine how we would feel if the planet were on the brink of a wide-ranging environmental disaster – something which would happen in the next few weeks or years – and the people who lived about five hundred years ago could have done something to stop it happening. We would not be pleased, and we would blame them for not doing more. We are on warning here – the more trees we lose, the harder the world will have to work to make up for their absence. It is not sustainable, and we have to do more to stop things from becoming apocalyptic.