God and Nature Spring 2019
Time and Human Impact on the Environment
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By Sy Garte
As a former professor of Environmental Health Sciences at three universities, I could not refrain from contributing a piece to this issue of God and Nature on the focus topic of the Environment and Creation Care. Luckily, the Editor-in-Chief agreed to let me do it!
If we could watch the history of the earth at a high enough speed, we would see a constantly changing planet. Continents shifting around, mountain ranges forming, new species evolving and going extinct, ice ages coming and going, and deserts expanding would all be part of a planet in turmoil. But if we could watch the same film in real time, we wouldn’t see much happening at all. Our experience of time, measured in days and years, is nothing like the geological time scale of our planet, which we measure in millions of years. The difference between the human and the planetary perspectives of time is a critical factor in our understanding of human impact on the planet.
As a former professor of Environmental Health Sciences at three universities, I could not refrain from contributing a piece to this issue of God and Nature on the focus topic of the Environment and Creation Care. Luckily, the Editor-in-Chief agreed to let me do it!
If we could watch the history of the earth at a high enough speed, we would see a constantly changing planet. Continents shifting around, mountain ranges forming, new species evolving and going extinct, ice ages coming and going, and deserts expanding would all be part of a planet in turmoil. But if we could watch the same film in real time, we wouldn’t see much happening at all. Our experience of time, measured in days and years, is nothing like the geological time scale of our planet, which we measure in millions of years. The difference between the human and the planetary perspectives of time is a critical factor in our understanding of human impact on the planet.
"Humans create change consciously and willfully in a way no other organism has ever done." |
Change is part of nature. Nothing about the earth or its biological inhabitants has stayed the same for very long in planetary time. It is not a coincidence that since the arrival of humans, the rate of such change has increased by many orders of magnitude. The effects of humans on the environment have often been extremely rapid compared to nonhuman-induced planetary change. We know, for example, that there have been many historical examples of climate change brought on by natural events such as the Deccan traps volcanic eruptions. But these changes have required hundreds of thousands to millions of years to occur, and they would not have been even noticed if humans had been around during those periods. In contrast, we have seen a dramatic rise in air, ocean and polar temperatures in the past 100 years due to human activity.
The earth’s biosphere is a complex system that has evolved many ways to recover from damage and change. But this recovery also happens at the same pace as the normal time course of planetary change. It appears that the rate of biological evolution (as determined by the evolution of new species) is quite close to the long-term rate of natural planetary changes. I have termed this phenomenon “Biogeographical Fine Tuning” since the mutation rate seems to be ideally tuned to the rate of geographical change. When sudden and severe perturbations occur as quickly as they have since the dawn of humankind, it can easily become impossible for the self-healing processes of the ecosystem to repair the damage.
Human civilizations and cultures have produced major environmental changes since their initial appearance on the planet. The clearing of forests for agriculture began five to eight thousand years ago in Asia and the Mideast. Goat herding by nomadic tribes caused soil destruction and desertification throughout north Africa and the Middle East. The arrival of humans in North America led to the large-scale extinction of large mammals such as the native North American horses, the ground sloth, and the giant beaver.
Humans create change consciously and willfully in a way no other organism has ever done. Major planetary disruptions generally occur through random, non-conscious events like the crash of an asteroid, or the slow evolution of biological species. But since we are conscious, we tend to make changes happen that we can see in our own lifetime, in a few decades, rather than on the normal planetary time scale of million-year epochs.
We are able to effect such rapid changes in our environment thanks to our technology. Technological innovations could even be seen as the product of an apparent natural human desire to make things happen faster. Automobiles, airplanes, and high-speed trains allow us to travel faster; telephones, cell phones, and computers allow us to communicate faster. Greater speed is generally considered to be an undisputed good thing in most aspects of human life.
The earth still follows the same geological time scale that it always has, allowing time for natural selection to work. It takes a lot of time for biological variation to allow for the selection of fitter individuals and populations. If a forest gradually (over centuries) loses a specific type of tree because of disease or a gradual change in climate, then the animals that depend on that type of tree for food or protection will also slowly decline in population. At the same time, and at roughly the same rate, other individuals within the same species or different species that will adapt to a different local environment (such as a different tree species) will do better. But if all the trees are suddenly and rapidly destroyed by human activity within the space of a few years, there is no time for natural selection to work, and whole species as well as entire ecosystems may be destroyed.
There is very little we can do about our predilection for speed. Our consciousness and our technological culture are the result of who we are and how we were made. Rarely have human endeavors lasted more than a single lifetime. In modern times technology renders most projects complete in months or years.
But this conflict between human and biological time scales does not have to spell the doom of our wild environment. Conservation measures begun in the late 19th century have made a difference in slowing and reversing the destruction of natural habitats all over the globe. Environmental regulations have made a tremendous difference in the reversal of the degradation of our air and water by pollution. Of course, this struggle is far from over and will require even stronger political and social efforts to be extended to areas such as global climate change, preservation of tropical rain forests, and protection of endangered species. Environmental consciousness has spread around the globe in the past five decades, and much of the world now recognizes the importance of following the commandment to care for creation.
As a Christian environmental health scientist, I see hope and promise where many see only despair and doom. We already have proven that we can reverse many of the negative effects of our propensity for speed and rapid change. The ozone hole is being repaired, atmospheric and water pollution have been declining for decades, and bald eagles and many other species have recovered from near extinction. Long ago we tamed the planet. Now is the time to tame ourselves and think about the reality of time in the world in which we live.
Sy Garte Ph.D. Biochemistry, is Editor-in-Chief of God and Nature since Spring 2018. He has been a Professor of Public Health and Environmental Health Sciences at New York University, Rutgers University, and the University of Pittsburgh. He was also Associate Director at the Center for Scientific Review at the NIH. He is the author of five books, over 200 scientific papers, and articles in PSCF, God and Nature and The BioLogos Forum. Sy is Vice President of the Washington DC Chapter of the ASA. His blog is www.thebookofworks.com.
The earth’s biosphere is a complex system that has evolved many ways to recover from damage and change. But this recovery also happens at the same pace as the normal time course of planetary change. It appears that the rate of biological evolution (as determined by the evolution of new species) is quite close to the long-term rate of natural planetary changes. I have termed this phenomenon “Biogeographical Fine Tuning” since the mutation rate seems to be ideally tuned to the rate of geographical change. When sudden and severe perturbations occur as quickly as they have since the dawn of humankind, it can easily become impossible for the self-healing processes of the ecosystem to repair the damage.
Human civilizations and cultures have produced major environmental changes since their initial appearance on the planet. The clearing of forests for agriculture began five to eight thousand years ago in Asia and the Mideast. Goat herding by nomadic tribes caused soil destruction and desertification throughout north Africa and the Middle East. The arrival of humans in North America led to the large-scale extinction of large mammals such as the native North American horses, the ground sloth, and the giant beaver.
Humans create change consciously and willfully in a way no other organism has ever done. Major planetary disruptions generally occur through random, non-conscious events like the crash of an asteroid, or the slow evolution of biological species. But since we are conscious, we tend to make changes happen that we can see in our own lifetime, in a few decades, rather than on the normal planetary time scale of million-year epochs.
We are able to effect such rapid changes in our environment thanks to our technology. Technological innovations could even be seen as the product of an apparent natural human desire to make things happen faster. Automobiles, airplanes, and high-speed trains allow us to travel faster; telephones, cell phones, and computers allow us to communicate faster. Greater speed is generally considered to be an undisputed good thing in most aspects of human life.
The earth still follows the same geological time scale that it always has, allowing time for natural selection to work. It takes a lot of time for biological variation to allow for the selection of fitter individuals and populations. If a forest gradually (over centuries) loses a specific type of tree because of disease or a gradual change in climate, then the animals that depend on that type of tree for food or protection will also slowly decline in population. At the same time, and at roughly the same rate, other individuals within the same species or different species that will adapt to a different local environment (such as a different tree species) will do better. But if all the trees are suddenly and rapidly destroyed by human activity within the space of a few years, there is no time for natural selection to work, and whole species as well as entire ecosystems may be destroyed.
There is very little we can do about our predilection for speed. Our consciousness and our technological culture are the result of who we are and how we were made. Rarely have human endeavors lasted more than a single lifetime. In modern times technology renders most projects complete in months or years.
But this conflict between human and biological time scales does not have to spell the doom of our wild environment. Conservation measures begun in the late 19th century have made a difference in slowing and reversing the destruction of natural habitats all over the globe. Environmental regulations have made a tremendous difference in the reversal of the degradation of our air and water by pollution. Of course, this struggle is far from over and will require even stronger political and social efforts to be extended to areas such as global climate change, preservation of tropical rain forests, and protection of endangered species. Environmental consciousness has spread around the globe in the past five decades, and much of the world now recognizes the importance of following the commandment to care for creation.
As a Christian environmental health scientist, I see hope and promise where many see only despair and doom. We already have proven that we can reverse many of the negative effects of our propensity for speed and rapid change. The ozone hole is being repaired, atmospheric and water pollution have been declining for decades, and bald eagles and many other species have recovered from near extinction. Long ago we tamed the planet. Now is the time to tame ourselves and think about the reality of time in the world in which we live.
Sy Garte Ph.D. Biochemistry, is Editor-in-Chief of God and Nature since Spring 2018. He has been a Professor of Public Health and Environmental Health Sciences at New York University, Rutgers University, and the University of Pittsburgh. He was also Associate Director at the Center for Scientific Review at the NIH. He is the author of five books, over 200 scientific papers, and articles in PSCF, God and Nature and The BioLogos Forum. Sy is Vice President of the Washington DC Chapter of the ASA. His blog is www.thebookofworks.com.