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- Threaths That Impact The Earth. -
A global catastrophic risk
is a hypothetical future event that could damage human well-being on a global scale, even endangering or destroying modern civilization.
Nuclear war. Disruptive Technologies. Bycatch. Deforestation and Forest Degradation. Effects of Climate Change. Severe weather. Wildfires.
Illegal Fishing. Illegal Wildlife Trade. Infrastructure. Oil and Gas Development.Overfishing. Artificial intelligence. Biotechnology.Global epidemic crisis. Weapons of mass destruction,
Population growth. Extreme poverty. Politically motivated violence. Tsunamis. Astronomical waste. Supervulcanic eruptions - Volcanic winter. Comet or asteroid impact event - Impact winter. Harmful solar flares.
Since the formation of Earth and the beginning of life, many catastrophes have occured that have destroyed life forms and impacted on the progress of life.
As part of the Earth and the ecosystem, humans strive to survive by learning from past events, and prevent, diminish or at least prepare for expected or unexpexted catastrophic events.
A stressor is any event, experience, or environmental stimulus that causes stress in an individual.
Stressors are more likely to affect the health of an individual when they are "chronic, highly disruptive, or perceived as uncontrollable".
The book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable focuses on
the extreme impact of rare and unpredictable outlier events - and the human tendency to find simplistic explanations for these events, retrospectively.
The theory What You See Is All There Is (WYSIATI)
states that when the mind makes decisions, it deals primarily with Known Knowns, phenomena it has observed already.
- And What Can Be Done. -
Support organizations!
Although the planet looks small on a photograph taken from space, it is quite a wide world. Many problems are far too big and complex to solve for the common man, even with "act now!"
echoing in your head. Wide and specialized knowledge, networks, money and power are needed. In addition, there is also a risk of creating new problems. Environmental goals are diversive;
for example beautiful nature and landscapes for humans, nature as home for other species, plants as deposites for carbon dioxid, plants as food, the importance of clean water and air, clean energy and
stopping the rapid climate change. Also, the human need for energy and consumption cannot be removed, only habits renewed. In these cases, join an organization,
or support important organizations of your choice with money and knowledge to help them do the job.
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Make better choices!
The efforts of common man are sometimes regarded as unimportant, as something keeping people buzy and easing their conscience.
But, as there today are over 8 billion of us humans on the planet,
it should make a difference that many of us are aiming at better choices available to us. Some tasks can with time become effortless habits, others can become interesting challenges.
- Don't panic
- As a consumer, make an effort to learn about products and their life cycles to make a better choice - if not always, as often as possible.
- Recycle, reuse, recreate, give your old outdated things to someone who likes them now.
It is not more environmentally sustainable to own less things if it means that you often throw away the ones you already have to buy new ones.
- Buy less but good quality, and pay more for the work, design and environmental care, use less resources.
- In BASTA's database you find articles are registered
by suppliers and manufacturers of building and construction products. BASTA is a system for anyone who wants to make conscious product selections
with the aim of phasing out substances of concern.
- EU ecolabel
- When possible: walk, bike, use public transport instead or your own car. Share a car, or pay for a daily lift. Work from your home. Think before travelling.
- Use less energy and water. Set a lower room temperature to use less energy for heating, live in a smaller space and/or use
eco friendly heatingand care for your house. Turn off unnecessary electronic devices.
- Plant trees, locally or with the help of an organization. Learn about foresting.
Learn about gardening, about finding the right combination of sunlight, fertile soil, and water to make your plants thrive.
- Become a climate-smart farmer. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an integrated approach to managing landscapes - cropland, livestock, forests and fisheries - that address the interlinked challenges of food security and climate change.
- Eat less meat, more plant-based protein. Cattle are the No. 1 agricultural source of greenhouse gases worldwide.
On the other hand, from a human point of view a cow has the superpower to be able to turn grass into milk and meat those times when unexpected weather makes crops fail.
- Start an environmentally focused project or business
- Become a homo universalis
- Add some environmental awareness to your current job or task
- Oppose disastrous projects
- Be sensible, don't throw the garbage on roads, parks and public places. Or, of course, in nature.
Always use the dustbins when available, otherwise carry it with you from wilderness to civilization.
Recycle bottles, cans, paper, plastic and cardboard when possible.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Marine debris is litter that ends up in oceans, seas, and other large bodies of water.
- Volunteer locally, in Finland or The Bahamas or where you are now.
- Prevent the spreading of pandemic diseases. Follow given instructions when sensibly possible.
- Reproduce yourself modestly. Human overpopulation (or human population overshoot) is the hypothetical state
in which human populations can become too large to be sustained by their environment or resources in the long term. The topic is usually discussed in the context of world population,
though it may concern individual nations, regions, and cities.
- Study or learn a subject of your interest.
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Stop Multitasking on Your Phone. Make a to-do-list and prioritise the most challenging tasks..
Increase your knowledge!
- Characteristic of the Carboniferous period
(from about 360 million to 300 million years ago) were its dense and swampy forests, which gave rise to large deposits of peat.
Over the eons the peat transformed into rich coal stores in Western Europe and North America.
The formation of coal, oil and gas deposits takes tens to hundreds of millions of years.
Currently, anthropogenic fossil fuel burning releases CO2 from millions-of-years-old geologic reservoirs within a few decades and centuries, and the CO2 rise is further aggravated by deforestation,
agricultural practices and concrete production. Save something for later?
- Geothermal Basics.
It is estimated that the earth's geothermal resources are theoretically more than adequate to supply humanity's energy needs, although only a very small fraction is currently being profitably exploited, often in areas near tectonic plate boundaries.
As a result of government assisted research and industry experience, the cost of generating geothermal power decreased by 25% over the 1980s and 1990s.
Customers would be willing to pay a little more for a renewable energy source like geothermal.
Geothermal power is electrical power generated from geothermal energy.
Iceland's energy answer comes naturally:
With active volcanoes, bubbling geysers, and hot springs and pools, Iceland sits upon a
geothermal world that continues to shape the country's landscape
- Learn about the relationship between
poverty and the environment.
Why is it that poverty among people puts stress on the environment whereas environmental problems cause severe suffering to the poor?
Also rich and famous lifestyles are damaging the environment in untold ways.
- The religious profile of the world is rapidly changing, driven primarly by differences in fertility
rates and the size of youth populations among the world's major religions. For example, people with higher income tend to have fewer children than people with lower income.
- The longest verified lifespan for any human is 122 years, 164 days. In the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, human LEB (life expectancy at birth) was 26 years; in 2010, world LEB was 67.2 years. In recent years, LEB in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) is 49, while LEB in Japan is 83.
- In developed nations the average familial generation length is in the high 20s and has even reached 30 years in some nations.
Factors such as greater industrialisation and demand for cheap labour, urbanisation, delayed first pregnancy and a greater uncertainty
in both employment income and relationship stability have all contributed to the increase of the generation length from the late 18th century to the present.
- "Breaking boundaries: The Science Of Our Planet". David Attenborough and scientist Johan Rockstrom examine
Earth's biodiversity collapse and how this crisis can still be averted. Documentary on Netflix.
- "Revontulien armoilla". Finnish research on
northern lights (aurora borealis), solar flares and magnetic fields.
- Into The Ice. The film travels with three pioneering glaciologist on their expeditions into the inland ice of Greenland and descends into a 200 meter deep moulin hole to find out about the bottom of the ice sheet.
(Lars Henrik Ostenfeld, Denmark 2022)
- "Klimatnyckeln". A book on
climate change and sustainable energy production
by Staffan Qvist & Joshua Goldstein, 2019.
- "Ilmastomuutos ilmatieteilijän silmin". A book on
climate change and what can be done
by
Petteri Taalas, 2021.
- Protection of cold environments as wilderness areas
- Climate change. "Global nedkylning. Klimatet och människan under 10 000 år",
a book by Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist on climate variability during the last 10 000 years.
How climate variability and change have affected different aspects of human history in medieval and early modern Europe (c. 700–1815 CE).
It focuses on the identification and interpretation of causal links between changes in climate and in human societies.
Global cooling?
During the Cretaceous period (began 145 million years ago and ended 66 million years ago) sea levels
fluctuated but were in the most part high. In fact, at times sea levels were 170 metres higher than today. A drop in carbon dioxide around 34 million years ago caused Earth to enter a
period of global cooling, called an icehouse state.
- Signs of climate change in Nordic nature.
Global warming is making Arctic plants release compounds that might help cool the planet. But don’t expect it to outpace global warming.
- "The Spinning Magnet", a book by science journalist Alanna Mitchell. Did you know our planet is a big spinning magnet?
The story of a fundamental force of nature: heroic discoveries, lone geniuses and the frightening vulnerability of our world.
- "Die Kunst des stilvollen Verarmens" ("The Art of Growing Poor Stylishly")("Tyylikkään köyhäilyn taito"), a book by journalist and writer Alexander von Schönburg.
- Develop receptive media capability to critically analyze messages. Media literacy education is sometimes conceptualized as a way to address the negative dimensions of media,
including media manipulation, misinformation, gender and racial stereotypes and violence, the sexualization of children, and concerns about loss of privacy, cyberbullying and Internet predators.
By building knowledge and competencies in using media and technology, media literacy education may provide a type of protection to children and young people
by helping them make good choices in their media consumption habits, and patterns of usage.
- Source criticism (or information evaluation) is the process of evaluating an information source, anything used in order to obtain knowledge.
In relation to a given purpose, a given information source may be more or less valid, reliable or relevant. The tendency of a source is its motivation for providing some kind of
bias.
Tendencies should be minimized or supplemented with opposite motivations.
- "Astrobiologia", a book (in Finnish) by Kirsi Lehto.
Regarding habitable environments, astrobiology investigates potential locations beyond Earth
that could support life, such as Mars, Europa, and exoplanets, through research into the extremophiles populating austere environments on Earth,
like volcanic and deep sea environments.
- Facing difficult truths (Climate Psychology Alliance)
- Watch other documentaries to learn more, and search the library and internet for more useful tips and information!
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This page was updated 01.05.2023
by
Minna Grönstrand
CV,
Y 178
3550-6
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