Way Too Much Taken for Granted!

By Park Nahm-Sheik

Too many things are taken for granted all around us. Take forests, for example. We often think nothing of getting rid of densely wooded areas in our surroundings for the sake of logging or farming or homesteading. Lumbering, slash-and-burn farming, as well as putting up a house on vacant land would be an easy, painless way of making a living, wouldn’t it?

Luxuriant forests often hoard varied minerals in gargantuan quantities, which can lure in corporate miners and excavators in droves. And boomtowns are certain to rise in and around such forests. Particularly worrisome here is the greenhouse gas headache, which is bound to follow in the wake of denuded forests. Hillsides bare of trees and other plant species are typically prone to flash floods. And landslides to boot!

However, the powers that be for Amazonia and other resources-rich tropical rainforests do not quite realize how serious the status quo could be. They couldn’t care less what happens to this immense treasure of a forest legacy for the whole planet. Sure enough, they have been turning a blind eye to the carbon emissions situation, still less to the impending climate disaster that most climatologists have long been predicting. Fascinated by and hitched to this windfall from the forests, they just keep busy lining their pockets like crazy. In fact, they are so focused on getting rich quick that they just don’t care what others may say or think.

Our discourse on the exploitation of nature has just barely gotten under way. Offshore oil rigs and wind turbines are a common sight all over the world although not as common a sight perhaps as solar panels. It is to be noted here that hydraulic fracturing is also resorted to for the extraction of (shale) oil from rock formations at locations such as the remote alpine niches of the Americas. By the way, fracking happens to be a highly invasive method of petroleum drilling, which seriously damages the environment. 

This frantic search for fossil fuels like petroleum is motivated, for the most part, by an unquenchable thirst for electric power. Power generation involves harnessing natural resources, be it via fossil fuels or nuclear fission/fusion. Incidentally, sustainability is usually not the name of the game in this kind of electricity generation.

Both deforestation and power generation of the sort we have thus far been discussing entail degradation of nature through contamination and erosion. The problem is that nature subjected to such forcible “downgrading” isn’t able to afford us a calm and peaceful planet anymore. Streams and other waterways are often abused as free-for-all garbage dumps all over the globe. This exemplifies yet another case of nature being taken for granted. Apparently, we don’t seem to care at all whether or not our surroundings are destroyed. What on earth has nature done to earn such extreme disrespect?

Industrial processes are also taken for granted across the globe in the name of enhanced productivity. All over, farmers have long been deploying advanced industrial procedures. Among other things, nitrogen fertilizer has been widely utilized in much of the world. We would do well to shift to organic fertilizers like compost, cattle and swine manures, and poultry droppings, however.

Also, industrial farmers tend to give a wide berth to crop diversification, citing efficiency and economy as justification. They had better wake up to the fact that monocropping runs the risk of incrementally and incorrigibly deteriorating the soil. They need to realize that the longest way around is the shortest way home.

At this point, a warning may also be in order on the negative impact of insecticides on bee colonies. The chemicals implicated here are to blame for colony collapse disorder (CCD) for bees, which wreaks wholesale havoc on honey production. The double whammy here: Gone with honey in the wake of a CCD epidemic is the key role that bees play as cross fertilizers for numerous essential farm crops. No bees, no honey! No crops to boot. This is so much more why we’ve got to double down on our efforts to keep all harmful chemicals out of agriculture, apiculture not excluded. In this and many other ways, industrial farming goes against the grain of soil health and crop productivity.

Now a thing or two on industrial fishing. Deep-sea fishing fleets often resort to trawling to bring in all the fish species they can lay their hands on. No wonder, they pay scant attention to the ever-dwindling seafood resources that are drying up in the process. They often make the glib case that aquaculture can be the alternative to the dilemma. Obviously, however, it can’t possibly manage to replenish the thus depleted stock to everyone’s satisfaction. It would just fall far short of the goal envisioned.

Most industrial processes, by their very nature, call for multi-gigawatts of energy, the overwhelming portion of which is not renewable and thus not sustainable. Consequently, they are insatiable guzzlers of petroleum and natural gas, not to mention coal. By the way, coal is perhaps far and away the most infamous source of air and water pollution. It is most likely the dirtiest energy source on the face of the earth.

The challenge of challenges posed by dirty energy sources like coal is their catastrophic impact on the climate of the planet.

The Author

Park Nahm-sheik has a BA in English from Chonnam National University, an MA in linguistics from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, U.S.A., and a PhD in applied linguistics from Georgetown University. He is now a professor emeritus after a long and illustrious career at Seoul National University as well as president emeritus of the International Graduate School of English.