OMNI-NATURE: ALL KNOWING, ALL PRESENT, ALL POWERFUL! © Charles Njue 2009 (Approx. Reading Time: 25 mins) Let us first examine for a minute the catastrophe that is global warming; it's the progressive increase in the average global temperatures occasioned by the inability of the atmosphere to block out the harmful effects of the sun because of a buildup of greenhouse gases. The earth is blanketed in a stratum of varying atmospheric zones, one of which is the ozone layer – whose prime purpose is to filter out injurious ultra violet radiation from the sun's energy ensuring that only the good essential emissions from the sun get to the sub-stratum. Destruction of this shielding scabbard leads to more than is necessary sun's radiation seeping through, the primary result of which is an increase in world temperatures. For instance, it has been established that average temperatures in the Sub-Saharan region have risen by 10 in the last ten years alone. Now if you are thinking that this ia a minuscule, insignificant change in temperature consider this; it only takes a 0.50 increase in temparatures in the Pacific Ocean to create the effect known as the Christ Child - Elnino, that then causes world wide devastation. Besides, what's the melting point of a block of ice? Zero degrees. At -10 you have a rock hard solid, at 00 it begins to thaw, at 10 you have a pool of water. can you now begin to visualize the effect such a small change would have on the arctic glaciers.
You might argue that carbon emissions have always been there since time immemorial, and you would be right, but never at the rate being experienced now and besides, nature had its own way of mopping up this carbon by way of natural carbon sinks; plants, trees, forests. what have we done to our green zones? The recommended forest cover is nothing below 10% of total ground cover. At independence, Kenya was 14% forested, now less than 1% of our territory is forests. The carbon sinks, the trees that use up carbon in photosynthesis, are thinning by the day. How grave is this threat? whereas there can be no argument that global warming is actually occurring, and on what its causes are, there has been a lot of hype that its effects are being blown out of proportion, mainly by alarmist environmentalists and doomster forecasters. We cannot prognosticate the future with precise accuracy of course, but it is doubtless that if the current trend persists, we are headed for some harsh times ahead. It has been postulated that entire economies could collapse. For starters a melting of the polar glaciers would lead to an increase in sea level; entire coastal cities could be submerged; the entire California , or New York city , or Sidney could be under water, you can only imagine what that would do to those economies. Did you watch the movie Water World? Then you get the idea. A more pragmatic effect of global warming however is that of changing weather patterns. We have already cited how an increase in sea temperatures can create adverse climatic conditions such as the Elnino and abnormally strong tropical storm systems. These particular effects have become more frequent lately. It is barely a month before we hear of devastating hurricane Katrina, Rita Joyce and so on- its getting hard to keep track of the names. The Elnino was known to recur at intervals of ten years, now it hardly ever goes past three years before there is brutal drought in one part of the world and ruthless mud slides, flash floods and torrential rains in another. As matter of fact, we now have sub-Elnino categories known as baby Elninos due to the frequency with which the phenomenon occurs nowadays. The result is that there is widespread havoc in Agriculture. if we cannot predict climatic conditions, we cannot grow food, and besides, erratic weather is largely un-useful; when it rains it is too heavy and it sweeps away the crops and even livestock, plus our fertile soils into the Ocean, and whatever little is left behind is baked to the dust by the ensuing drought. At least a billion people are in need of some relief assistance from the effects of adverse weather in the world at any one given time. Good weather has now become an economic good; environmental conservation has joined the list of economic activities. Just walk into a supermarket and you will notice the number of products labeled as ecofriendly; Light bulbs are now being marketed as energy saving with a clever tag-on that says 'low energy bulbs means less carbon emissions in generating of electricity'. Manufactures are being rewarded for going green, for polluting less and the race for hydrogen and electricity powered vehicles has never been so intense. Farmers in Africa are now getting cash rewards for practicing Agro-forestry in a bid to replenish carbon sinks, and organic farm produce is fetching premium prices in European and American chain stores. A decade ago, African Countries were going our of their way to woe industrial investors, now multibillion shilling projects are stalling because the government and other stake holders insist on comprehensive and extensive environmental risk assessments that more often than not sees to the miserable failure of the said projects . All over the world, there is a fad about environmental management end sustainability. For the first time ever in the history of the Nobel committee the peace prize was awarded to environmentalists in 2004, kudos to our very own Prof. Wangari Maathai, and to Al-gore in 2007- refer documentary 'an inconvenient truth; It just goes to show how concern the entire world is over the worsening state of affairs, and fairly so. Declining environmental conditions means waning resources; the only known reason for wars and atrocities. In essence, Wanton destruction of our environment will inevitably lead to an escalation of hostilities. Drought will lead to nomadic communities fighting over grazing lands, declining food stocks will have Japanese trawlers hauling their nets off the coasts of poor countries that have derisory territorial patrols on their waters, there would be pandemonium everywhere as people get more desperate, frantic for more food, more land and better living conditions and there is nothing half as dangerous as a desperate human. We can write volumes of tomes on the effects environmental degradation could have on humanity, but ultimately it will be nothing short of an apocalypse – the entire annihilation of the planet. We cannot therefore brush aside the current hype on environmental conservation, and especially not for us who live in the third world; we are the ones who will bear the brunt of natures wrath. we are already living it, it has been said that the Sahara is advancing by close to ten metres every year, and we are the ones that are less cushioned against drought, floods and food shortage. We should be first to lead the concerted international attempt to right the wrongs. We should be the first to reforest our lands, to practice organic farming, to control our industrial effluent, to check our direct carbon emissions, to manage our wastes effectively. But so should the industrialized world, after all, it is them that do the bulk of the damage through their industries and their cars. Americas GDP alone is larger than the next ten countries combined. The state of New York alone has a larger GDP than the second country, all this production comes at a substantial environmental cost that is borne mostly by us. America should feel duty-bound to sign the Kyoto protocol, otherwise no American citizen should ever claim to be a global citizen, they would not be deserving of such an honorary title. And neither should we look up to them in trepidation and admiration, but rather regard them as the scam of the earth, the rotten apple in the basket, the true villains, worse than the terror crusaders. Think about it, do you still think that clean air is a free good? In economic terms a free good is one where the amount available is greater than the amount people want at zero price. Conversely, an economic good is a scarce good; one where the amount available is less than people would want if it were given away at zero price. Clean air, before pollution was an example of a free good. Does that mean that clean air today is not a free good? You might say that people don't pay for the air they breath today as thus it follows that it must be a free good, but then don't people pay more for property that is in less polluted areas, don't people pay for the chance to spend a weekend away from the city in some fresh air environment. To understand that people pay for something even if there is no explicit charge for it is to see the bigger picture , it prevents one from incorrectly thinking that thy are getting something for nothing. Besides, consider the fact that under the Kyoto protocol, industrialized nations are under obligation to purchase carbon credits that give them the right to pollute from the World Bank, and these credits can then be redeemed by the less polluting developing nations for a cash price for their non polluting industrial processes. A geothermal power station in Kenya for example, can receive a cash reward for its ecofriendly production process; you will then have to appreciate just how economic clean environment has become. And those are the irrefutable facts my friends; That the planet is under the weather, ailing from an inflammation called environmental degradation, a sad fact it is, but a more inspiring fact is that the world populace is unanimous on the need to do something about it, and that all, with the exception of the worlds only superpower of course, are stanch on this noble cause, we all have the desired goodwill to do something about it, we all realize the obscurity of the future. There has been talk that people with vested interests are taking advantage of the situation and that there has been concerted efforts to massively manipulate climatic conditions to further their interests, read Algore's "book"; that would perhaps explain why America insists that substantial research and proof needs to be done on the issue; but such concerns are by large phony considering the risk we run by doing nothing about it. The most distressing fact however is that it is also indubitable that we humans are the sole catalysts for this catastrophic trend. What really is the problem? Does it mean that humans are incapable of coexisting with their fellow earthlings? Hasn't the human race lived on this earth for millions and millions of years without any problem? Why is it now that we humans pose the greatest threat to this planet? Do we even stand a chance at reversing, or even halting this damning trend? Something doesn't seem to add up here, there must be something we don't know, or are not being told? The truth of the matter is that we humans are way too many! we are either close to, or are way past the planet's holding capacity threshold. We have multiplied way past what the earth can sustainably support. You have probably witnessed what the Kenya Wildlife Society does to the herd of elephants in the Tsavo every now and then; the elephants grow to a number that the park cannot sustain and there starts to emerge all sorts of problems; there is a human wildlife conflict as the tuskers venture into farmlands. the marauding beasts destroy the entire vegetation pausing more danger to other grazers and herbivores that then begin to dwindle in population, the predators then start encroaching on humans and their livestock. The human situation has also gotten to that same level. We humans are a disease; we are a cancer ailing this planet. We seem to understand zilch about symbiotic coexistence. Put a few humans on an island and what you will witness is a horrible pathogen like trend that will eventually bring the island to its knees. We behave like damned viruses, who rapidly multiply inside their host's body and eventually the host succumbs and so do the viruses too. It does not matter that the virus is so uniquely adopted that it can transform itself into an almost chemical compound; all shrewdness is wasted when the host dies. Likewise it does not even matter whether we have a brain the size of mars, it won't even matter that we can clone ourselves, or that we can start growing genetically modified foods, the fact is that we are killing the earth, and ourselves with it. How intelligent? The problem with us humans is that we multiply thoughtlessly; in a haphazard manner that will eventually endanger not only our very self, but also the rest of the world. Think about it, don't you think that all human behavioral problems, anything you can lay you finger on; crime, war, poverty or disease can be traced back to the single causative phenomenon of population explosion, when we are as many as we are, the first implication is that there will be a scramble for the available natural resources, second it means that these resource will be exploited at a faster rate than they can naturally replenish, and third, there is the issue of waste which builds up at a rate that is more than nature can mop up and thus starts to build up to toxic levels. A growing population needs more food, so we clear up more forests for agriculture and when all the land we can reclaim cannot still provide enough, we start to alter the genetic makeup of plants and animals so that there is more of what we want. We start interfering with what should be Natural processes, with the planets biodiversity. In the end, we are just accelerating the destruction process, by developing plants that are resistant to pests, by killing in mass birds that feed on grain, by developing plants that mature faster than naturally means they take up less and less of the carbon in the atmosphere. And then there is the problem of living space, which leads to increased deforestation for more land, we burn more fossil fuels, we burn more charcoal, poverty levels rise because there is just not enough for everyone, it becomes a self perpetuating process, never letting up, never ending no matter how much we try. Swarming locusts devour one area of greenery then hop on to another; where will we humans hop to next? Our venture into the outer frontiers has not yielded fruit just as yet, and it probably never might, and in the meantime the squeeze is getting tighter down here. In 1980, America had a population of a hundred million, it hit three hundred million twenty six years later, and still growing. the world is now host to six billion plus, just how many more can the world hold. we can go on and on and on about the need for environment conservation, we can sign all the protocols in the world, but the moment we start tackling population growth rates, the moment governments start adopting less people policies, is the day we shall really begin to heal the world of its current ailment. To reverse population growth rates is the only way to dampen and possibly halt our acceleration to self destruction. The millennium summit identified a set of problems ailing the planet; no one said a damn thing about the need to reverse population growth rates which, in my view, would be the fastest way to achieve all the said goals. How would you claim for instance to reduce the world poverty levels by half while at the same time, you are creating just the right conditions for a population explosion by setting out to provide better maternal care, by combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and TB and by aiming to reduce child mortality. By failing to appreciate the danger posed by an out of control population growth rate, the millennium development goals just defeated themselves right from the onset. The so called achievable goals are just but a mirage that keeps on moving further as you approach. They endorse the very problems they set out to alienate in their very context. Top on the list should have been 'To reverse global population growth rate to the negative by 2015. What then will happen? So we have failed or are unwilling to address the pertinent issue of an unsustainable, out of control population growth rate; does that then mean that we should prepare ourselves for the inevitable; the end of the world? Probably, Then Probably Not: Nature Will Destroy Humans Before It Can Let Them Destroy It. Six billion pitiful souls don't stand a chance against formidable Mother Nature. I have mentioned before the perfect cycle of life and the ultimate balance that nature maintains. lets now examine this mystical balance that nature maintains. It's just about a foul proof system. Lets now examine this mystic equilibrium vis-a-vis an ostensibly out of control human population growth rate and its ecological effects. Take a river for instance; clean and fully oxygenated water courses over a rocky bottom and cascades over falls and rapids at its infancy stage, but the rapid flow only supports minimal life, only tiny creatures and planktons that are well adopted to the fast flow. The rivulet joins with other tributaries and slows down considerably in the middle stage; it has since picked up enough nutrients to support higher plant life and with it an increased number of plant eating animal life. It then drains into a fresh water inland lake and its rich nutrients support numerous phytoplankton and phytoplankton eating animal life that in turn provide just the right conditions for deep water preying large fishes such as the Nile perch and a multiple of other life forms. It's all a process in perfect harmony. Then comes in the humans with all sorts of interferences in this system. There is a rapid clearing of the rainforest for Agriculture. Two things immediately happen. One is that more light now gets to the previously hidden rivulet which creates the right conditions for a proliferation of photosynthesizing planktons. Second, all sorts of agricultural residues such as pesticides and fertilizers find their way into the rivulet and more soil washes down into the previously rocky river bed. The once clear water then gets murky. What happens then is that the always adaptive nature quickly moves in to correct the situation the best way it knows how - there is an emergence of new species that move in to conquer the new conditions - all sorts of plant life anchor on the river bed, and algae burgeon giving the water a greenish colour. We might not like it; we can no longer enjoy white water rafting, and we will have to work harder to sanitize the water for drinking, but nature has done whats best for it. Some life forms may have been sacrificed, but more superior life forms with regard to the current conditions now thrive, maintaining the ultimate balance of things. Further down the stream, humans move in with more interferences; Industrial effluent and raw sewage drain into the already murky waters. By implication there is lesser oxygen and more nutrients in the water. The mid stream fishes, trout and the likes, cannot endure and they quickly die off, but in their place there is an increasing number of colliform to break down the raw sewage. For us humans, drinking the water is now out of the question, it will be a certain death by dysentery and cholera. we start to have severe water shortages in our cities and all sorts of inconveniences, water borne diseases are on the rise, we cannot fish in the rivers any more, nature is already heating at the very core of the problem - humans. As the river drains into the inland lake, it is grey in colour and carrying with it tonnes and tonnes of sediment that lodge into the lakebed. Water ways for the large fishing vessels get shallower and the Nile perch population is considerably lowered, our export fishing is under threat, jobs are lost and poverty rises. The whole lake soon becomes unnavigable because there is a proliferation of overhead water weeds that take up the nutrients in the lake and still survive on the diminished oxygen in the water since their leaves are above water. The whole lake is soon blanketed by water hyacinth, a plant that was in the past unknown in Africa , it gets so impenetrable, it's roots and stems tangled up that all human activity in the lake ceases. Again nature hits at the humans hard. But we crafty humans do not read the signs, we device all sorts of technology to try and alter the inevitable. We import beetles to feed on the hyacinth, our trial and error system only aids nature in bringing in more superior life forms. Soon the beetles discover that cabbage tastes better than hyacinth and they invade our farms; we are dealt another blow; we result to trying to mechanically remove the weed, we only succeed at wasting billions, the very money we had tried to make or save in the first place by farming the rain forests. We clear one patch today the previous days patch has already regrown – who is winning? So, is it probable that human activity, occasioned by our need for survival and bearing in mind our untenable numbers might eventually lead to a destruction of human kind? I would say extremely probable, but is it likely that it might lead to a total destruction of the planet? I would say CERTAINLY NOT. Nature can dispense off anything that's afflicting it, with some inevitable collateral damage of course, but the natural balance would still be, and shall be maintained in the end. we shall have wholly lost it all, but Mother Earth will have lost nothing that really matters. It's likely that the expanse may be covered in water, its not unfathomable; there are records of it having happened at some time in the past – science says it was millions of years ago the Bible puts it at about five thousand years ago in the story of Noah and the Ark. It's likely that a multiple other seemingly unconnected natural disasters; such as Tsunamis, diseases, drought would contribute to this definitive correctional mechanism, but a total obliteration of the planet is out of the question. You might be wondering how Tsunamis and diseases would be considered as natural mechanisms, well consider this; Human activity is not only constrained to the surface sub-stratum, we are not just exploiting what's on the surface; we are drilling deep into the core of the planet for minerals, for metals, for water, for oil. The OPEC countries alone extract 20 million barrels of oil from the ground each day. All these extraction must be creating some form of the void down there. Is it then any wonder then that earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions are on the increase? How about the myriad of diseases and plagues that threaten to wipe us out? do those have anything to do with our breeding like mice? Plagues that wipe out large portions of the human population are not strange nor new to the history of the planet. The black plague is recorded to have struck at least three times before, and when it last did in the 16th century, It took with it a third of the entire world population. It has long been thought that some organisms, particularly viruses, can remain dormant, either in the soil or in other medium such as water or air, Sometimes even as chemical compounds for years and years, even centuries waiting just for the right conditions. It is not clearly known what triggers them; it could be a change in average temperatures or average humidity, or atmospheric concentrations, but when they are awakened from their slumber, they wreck havoc. And then, just as abruptly as they emerged, they again subside on their own when conditions resume normal. It is not a strange or abnormal phenomenon; some forms of insects seem to behave the same way too. During Elnino for instance, it is almost certain that small red and black stripped insects that cause skin ulcers when crushed against the skin will appear in Kenya so common are they that they are referred to as the Nairobi fly. Some years back, tiny white larvae devastated Cyprus trees in just one year, no one knows where the bug had come from, or where it later went or even what triggers its coming. Certain insects' larvae and pathogens behave the same way; during extremely cold years, it is widely known that coffee production will decline due to the mildew; the flu virus can remain in the environment for months, and when conditions are right, there is a sudden swift epidemic, and remember there is no known treatment for the virus, just like many other viruses, it deactivates on its own self. Could it be our masses set off just the right trigger for HIV and AIDS, Ebola or SARS, and precedents show that the epidemic will naturally slow down, and completely let up when circumstances permit again. as matter of fact, there is already evidence that HIV/AIDS is slowing down. There has been a noted increase in the number of discordant couples- one spouse remains positive and the other negative for no medical reason at all. Chances are that AIDS will naturally cease when it's ideal conditions cease to exist any longer, may be that will only happen when the world population of humans has been effectively trimmed down. It is almost like a form of intelligent design; enough pointers lead to this conclusion; just think about it, it is no secret that Africa , which incidentally is the most hit by adversities of high population growth rates, is the most ravaged by AIDS. It is no secret that HIV/AIDS seems to discriminate on the lines of economic well being, gender and even race. Some of the strains of the HIV virus are known to infect only the black population, plus you cannot ignore the coincidence that HIV transmission is via a medium that hits at the very core of the problems of rapid population increase- sex. Put it simply, AIDS seems to be best poised, most effective remedy to the population explosion problem for the people that need it most – Africans; Coincidence Or Design? Its no wonder that we can't help speculating that HIV/AIDS is an contrived, biological tool developed to address the tribulations facing Africa . Its long been rumored that HIV/AIDS was developed in the United States ; apparently we shall never really know for sure but what's clear is that HIV/AIDS is really a blessing in disguise. At the end of day, there will be more to be shared among fewer; it could be the answer we have been waiting for, the key to jump-starting African economies, the solution to long-drawn-out ethnic carnage and civil wars, the answer to the problem of food insecurity in Africa . If we were to count our blessings, HIV/AIDS would undoubtedly be on the list. We shall be reaping its benefits years from today. How is gender relevant in this case? Say for instance you have a society of five men and five women and your intention was to keep the population growth rate at its minimum. Would it be wise to get rid of some of the women or some of the men? Say you got rid of one man, what's the maximum possible number of children that could be born in a year? Isn't it still five; isn't it still five even with just one man and five women? What if you got rid of four women? Only one child could be born now. Its no secret that AIDS has higher prevalence rates in women and don't forget that in any given society women tend to be slightly more than the men. Is this particular occurrence just coincidental? It's twice more likely for a woman to contract HIV than it is for a man. HIV/AIDS seems to be on clear cut mission. The question is – is this mission commissioned by man or by Mother Nature? Either way, we can't help but wonder at how ingenious a concept it is. It abruptly seems to me that the current fad about environmental management is nothing short of a selfish and an ill fated attempt by humans to guard their interests. Could be America knows more than its willing to say, may be president Bush is just shy of saying that the only way to tackle the real problems is to castrate humans, or another holocaust, or a one child per family policy. Truth be told - they are all just as beneficial as The Tsunami was or HIV/AIDS. He would probably say it if he wasn't so certain that even the slightest and most restrained intervention, say a one child per family, kudos to China, would be deemed as a curtailment of fundamental human rights, or an incursion into peoples' personal privacy, or maybe he is just aware that even without intervention, mother nature will bring into play its own natural checks to the problem. Probably thats the reason that despite all its military might and intelligence gathering capacity, America has never apprehended Osama Bin Laden; a man without a conscience for mass murders, could he be just what the world needs right now. Consider Einstein's premise in physics that energy is neither created nor destroyed in the context of the natural ultimate balance of nature. Let's take for instance the burning of fossil fuel in the internal combustion engine of a vehicle; Once petrol is ignited, chemical energy is converted into heat and kinetic energy, the cooling system of the vehicle moves further to convert it into another form. What about the kinetic energy that causes the rotation of the wheels, what happens to it ultimately? is it totally used up? lost when the vehicle moves? How about the exhaust that escapes into the atmosphere? does it carry with it some of the energy transformed by burning the fossils fuel? The ultimate truth is that the overall energy amounts remain unchanged at the end, we have neither added nor reduced the total energy and it will keep transforming. some of it is already being used up to transform organic matter into fossil fuels again. At some point there maybe too much energy released into the atmosphere causing a temporarily shift in balance that could be attributed to global warming, but the situation self rectifies since this energy has to be taken up, it will not disappear, energy cannot be lost. How about the energy used up in an industry; say an oils manufacturer that processes sunflower oil into cooking oil; again the whole process neither adds nor subtracts from the overall energy pool. Some of the energy literally goes up in smoke via emissions, some of it down the drain via effluent into rivers and eventually oceans and some of it through other byproducts such as animal feeds, organic waste and a considerable part of it into the end product that is taken up by humans when they cook with the oil. Now go further and try to think what happens to the energy that humans take up; the work we do, bodily growth and cellular replenishments what about when we die? what happens to the energy within us? Where does the Tsunami get its energy from for instance or an avalanche, or a hurricane? Now look at the entire planet as one whole of constant levels of energy that merely keep transforming; nothing lost nothing gained. Can you now begin to envision this balance I talk about? Consider water, would it be true to say that total amount of water in the planet has not changed not even by a droplet in a million years and it will never change? At some point there may be a transitional difference, a short-term situation, like in the case of the melting glaciers leading to an increase in sea level. Wouldn't you be tempted to think that the amount of water has actually increased? But in the true sense, has it really? in the long run, everything is just constant. True, there and leakages in and out of the system; the suns energy seeps in and is converted by photosynthesis but earth also leaks out some form of radiation. Do the two leakages balance? And besides what if we started to look at this balance from a larger scope, a cosmos scope, does it still holds? The bottom line is that as startling and mind boggling as it may seem, there's truly a perfect balance of everything, so perfect that no human action can have any lasting effect, we are powerless when pitted against mother nature, all our actions become negligible. We just can,t beat nature, we can'n t outsmart it, run away or cheat it. the would spends trillions of dollars on extra terrestrial research and inter planetary missions and space exploration; China is soon to join the array of countries that have put man into orbit. Billions more are spent on food security initiatives such as genetic modification, much more on health, defense and weapons development that just exacerbates conflicts and we end up using a lot more in conflict resolution, reconstruction and relief, we expend a lot more on natural disaster preparedness and thier after effects. Now environmental concerns have joined the list of unnecessary spending ; my humble request is that just a portion of what the world spends on such things as NASA, NATO or on intelligence and counter intelligence, be spent on a research to determine just how many people the planet can sustainably accommodate. Such a spending would be miniscule in comparison to what we spend on other less pertinent issues. Researchers should tell us just how much space of this earth an individual or a family unit requires in order to sustain themselves without exerting undue pressure on their niche, just like KWS knows how many elephants can live in Tsavo without destroying their habitat, that would be a good start: that way we would have A clear indication by just how many we need to reduce the 6.5 billion of us in the planet today. Share 
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