Does the Earth need saving? – The Hawk News

On April 22, we celebrated the 55th national Earth Day. This holiday calls for the appreciation of the planet we inhabit and for awareness of the problems we face as humans when interacting with the environment. 

In Earth Day social media posts, protest posters and conversations, it’s common to hear that we need to “save our planet.” But, does the planet need to be saved, and is our Earth actually dying? 

For as long as we can archaeologically and geologically detect, Earth’s climate has shifted naturally over the eons due to factors like changes in the sun’s energy and volcanic eruptions, shifting between glacials (ice ages) and interglacials (warmer climate temperatures). What makes contemporary climate change so different and dangerous, however, is the cause: a swift, unprecedented, human-caused global industrialization. Despite these intense changes, life prevails, even in biologically unfathomable areas of Earth — some bacteria and fungi thrive in hot, dry and barren deserts, and lichens have managed to dwell in Antarctica. 

The Earth is not dying; we are just making it harder for us humans to effectively sustain ourselves by mismanaging land and resources like water, soil and air. Instead of viewing environmental protection and climate action as mere damage control, we must realize that we are not special. 

We are not something outside of nature, despite globalization and widespread mechanization making it seem that way. At the same time, we are not so extremely inferior that we should reject our relevance or importance. We are not going to “save” the Earth, and it would do just fine without us. What we need to do as humans is fundamentally change how we view and interact with nature.

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