The Last Tree: Challenges and Opportunities

What is human activity doing to our planet?

Is it destruction? Or damage? Or merely an acceptable alteration?

For the sake of our children, and grandchildren, and their children and grandchildren, etc., I think we must ask these questions. I also think that we must reach our own answers.

In reaching your answer, here's some information worth considering:

The planet's climate scientists overwhelmingly agree (97% to 3%) that the climate is warming and human activity is likely the cause (1)

If CO2 emissions were immediately cut back, we would still see some amount of warming over the coming decades. But global CO2 emissions are not cutting back—they are increasing every year, with 2012 setting the record for most CO2 emissions in a year. The record before that was 2011. Before that, it was 2010. (2)

As billions of people in China, India and many other countries continue to adopt the consumption-based lifestyles of North Americans, Europeans and Japanese, it seems highly likely that CO2 emissions will continue to increase throughout the coming decades. (3)

Rising CO2 leads to rising temperatures. Rising temperatures will likely lead to enormous problems by creating a world that will have less predictable weather patterns, more droughts and floods, more frequent and severe disruptions to agriculture, more extreme weather events, more habitat for disease-carrying insects, more loss of biodiversity, more human migration, displacement, and refugees, etc. (4)

But climate change (i.e. global warming) is only one part of the story.

We are already seriously damaging the world's oceans through over-fishing and pollution. (5)(6)(7)

We are polluting and depleting the world's supply of freshwater. (8)

We are cutting down much of the planet's remaining forests. (9)

We are causing habitat to change faster than animals can evolve, and so many species are going extinct that we may be in the midst of a historic mass extinction of our own making. (10)(11)

We are even altering the chemical composition of our own bodies as we absorb increasing amounts of man-made chemicals that we put into the environment. Nobody knows what long-term impact this will have. (12)

When I consider all of this together, it definitely feels like damage, or perhaps even destruction, would be the right words to describe what we are doing to our planet.

I wonder, 'What might all this mean in 10 or 20 or 30 years, when our children or grandchildren will be reaching adulthood, or beginning families of their own? What kind of world might they find waiting for them? How might such a world impact their ability to be happy, fulfilled, joyful, or perhaps even safe, healthy and well fed?'

I think that all adults in the world today have a moral imperative to think deeply about these kinds of questions. The world we leave to our children should be our responsibility and our burden, not theirs. And if we accept that responsibility, then it certainly seems like we have some pretty extraordinary challenges ahead of us.

And yet, I am optimistic. The problems facing the world are significant, but so, too, is human ingenuity and creativity. So, too, is human compassion, kindness and generosity. Facing these problems will bring out the best in us individually and collectively, and it may even have the potential to lead us to the birth of a new era of human history, marked by greater international cooperation, sharing of power, and harmony with nature.

Wouldn't that be an amazing gift to leave for future generations...

So what can we do now? So many things! I want to hear other peoples' ideas. Here are a few of mine:

Consume wisely, i.e try to buy things that are:

Produced by people being paid a fair wage (i.e. Fair Trade)
Free of (or low in) toxic chemicals
Easy on the environment when produced, when used and when thrown away
And, of course, consume less! Have more experiences and fewer things!

Support organizations (w time and/or money) that are doing positive work that you believe in

Spend more time in nature. Connect children with nature.

Educate yourself and others about important issues (human rights, ecology, environmental protection, child welfare, etc.)

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There really seems to be SO MUCH that we can do to help move the world in a better direction.

Let's all listen to our hearts' guidance. Let's allow our actions in the world to be guided by kindness and generosity. If we can do this, I believe our actions will be good. Good for us personally and good for mankind and good for the Earth.