Let's start by separating the chaff from the grain: what is really happening on planet earth?
For millennia we entered a new geological era. They call it Anthropocene, according to experts; it began when our species, homo sapiens-sapiens, began the neolithic revolution; which allowed us to advance in the production of our sustenance. Something revolutionary, certainly, because we come from beings that survived by hunting, fishing, gathering vegetables and anything edible or useful that we found.
But; The energy revolutions have been much more important to understand the impact on the environment caused by our humanity. Which is a fact that can be verified - by any of us - just by taking a fleeting look around, wherever we are.
Let me put it more clearly and specifically. I speak of the energy revolution, to imply the changes and progress that we have achieved in the past and in the present each time we learn and develop technologies to be more efficient in modifying the environment and producing resources - in some way always involving the use of energy -
The first great energy revolution occurred, about a million years ago, when an extinct species of our ancestors - semi-humans - discovered how to manage, produce and maintain fire. Home, is a word that comes from bonfire, and that word refers to the stove where our food was cooked.
During the last ten thousand years we have burned large areas around the globe and then planted them. Don't come to tell me someone that has not affected the environment. It is easier to burn than to cut down. Well, today it is cut down and then burned. That happens because today we have chainsaws.
The second great energy revolution was the Irrigation Revolution, I don't know if it happened first in ancient Egypt or in Mesopotamia. Thousands of years later it happened in India, in ancient China and finally in America. This Irrigation Revolution was very important; - was a revolution that required the appearance of the State to manage huge and extensive irrigation systems for large-scale planting.
This made possible the cultivation of thousands of hectares and the appearance of great empires. In those first great empires the first great cities were also built.
In turn, in those first cities, with thousands of people, the first civilizations arose; as were ancient Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Persia, the Hindus, the Chinese, the Incas and the Aztecs. Did you know that the Middle East was a place where lions lived? Even the Holy Bible mentions the lions that lived there... And what did those great beasts eat? Of course, large herbivores. Ah... So, there were big sheets. But what do we have today in those lands? Many deserts and no lions!!!
The third great energy revolution happened with the appearance of the steam engine. It originated, together with the technological inventions that accompanied it, our first great industrial revolution.
Much mineral coal was required to be burned to maintain the enormous boilers of our first industries, railways or steam-powered ships.
This caused a greater environmental depredation, large mining operations arose, which generated a lot of local and atmospheric pollution. The environment continued to change.
At the end of the 19th century, the fourth great energy revolution arose.
I know that perhaps that name that I give it is not the appropriate one; but, what I want to highlight is that these "Energy Revolutions" gave humanity greater power to make transformations, both in our lives and in the nature of planet earth.
The fourth great energy revolution was the appearance of the combustion engine, on the one hand, and on the other; the ability to produce, distribute and use electricity. With it also begins the era of oil, an era of which we are seeing its end.
Large dams appeared, to build them tens of thousands of kilometers of ecosystems were flooded; They made it possible to generate electricity on a large scale. Electricity is also generated with fuels derived from petroleum, and mineral coal, which is still used, especially in Asia - China - for that purpose; electricity production. Coal takes 300 years, oil about 150 years. Both are burned - and have released, and continue to release, billions of tons of polluting waste into our atmosphere - to support our lifestyle...
This does not generate guilt at the individual level, well, what could you or I do in isolation; it is about all humanity and each one of us.
It is the arbor of a new civilization, at least the need for it to happen, we are also at the beginning of a new energy revolution, in the making - hydrogen fuel cells, for starters - but, it is also about our individual consciences ; yours, mine and that of so many others that we need to affirm and defend life.
Human life, animal life, plant life and even microscopic life: Defend and Affirm Life as a Whole!!!
Answering the question with which we have been invited; it is certainly absurd and contradictory to defend a right by violating other rights. Let me repeat: there is no right to violate any rights.
On the other hand, those who deny the impact on the environment and the unstoppable extinction of plant and animal species commit infamy.
The diatribe about whether or not there is climate change is spurious and sterile, about whether it is irreversible or not, about whether its effects are catastrophic or partial.
The real fact is the need to stop the progressive disappearance of the biological diversity of the planet earth, in progress.
More than a cause, climate change is a consequence. We should provide our descendants with a less hostile tomorrow.
