Human Impact

For countless thousands of years, humans were largely nomadic, moving with the seasons, surviving in the eat-or-be-eaten world shared with other top-of-the-food-chain predators. Between 100,000 years ago and 50,000 years ago, large mammals (megafauna like the wooly mammoth) became extinct because of the combination of human hunting and climate change. [source]

Around 11,500 years ago, humans started agriculture, raising wheat, barley, peas, lentils, and flax in the “Fertile Crescent” of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). With the advent of agriculture, settlements emerged, which became towns, connected by roads and commerce. City-states emerged, then empires, followed in history by modern nations.

In the decades before and after 1800, the Industrial Revolution transformed the world, as manual labor was replaced by mechanized industry, with metal machines powered by steam (fuelled primarily by coal), including mass-production factories and steamships. The internal combustion engine and assembly-line factories started producing the first of hundreds of millions of automobiles, trucks, and tractors. Electricity was harnessed, which led to power plants, transmission lines, and electric power for homes and industry, which fast-tracked consumer-based economies with low-cost goods sold through mass media.

The unplanned legacy of the Industrial Revolution includes:

• Poisons pumped and dumped into air, water, and soil.

• Toxic smog over major cities around the world.

• Relentless disappearance of vast areas of forest.

• Once-fertile areas that have become desert.

• Ozone depletion over Antarctica and climate change.

Whether viewed through a microscope or satellite telescope, the curse of human impact becomes a prayer for change.