Nicolo Gligo V.
In 2001, a group of scientists of the highest level who belonged to four major programs of global interest made a statement that reads: “The Earth functions as a unique and self-regulated system, consisting of physical, chemical, biological and human components. Interactions and information flows between the parties are complex and exhibit great variability on their multiple time and spatial scales.”
Since ancient times, since Greek antiquity, through Leonardo Da Vinci’s deduction on earth’s condition as the macrocosm of human beings and down to the microscopic and nanoscopic level where humans are the macrocosm of the life of bacteria and viruses, we have had to accept that Earth acts as a living planet that reacts by self-regulating by the action of the biosphere , base of vital impulses.
And this Earth is sick, very sick. We don’t know the levels of its severity, but every day it passes its aggravating condition. It was us, the humans, who assaulted her. We who, being part of it, have attacked themselves. We, who are part of the life of the planet within earth’s life, have over-exploited the goods of nature, we have polluted their seas to which we have turned them into dumpsters of multiple earthly activities, we have overexploted marine biodiversity, burned and destroyed its forests, drastically reduced the planet’s biodiversity by altering the catastrophic chains , we have eroded their soils, polluted the air, and, acceleratedly, we have entered a tragic lapse of acute climate change. And this change has altered the natural cycles of the climate, with increasingly catastrophic events; more periods and areas with droughts, more concentrations of rains that generate floods, more hurricanes; landslides, dry savannahs and forests, melting ice and blizzards, loss of beaches and alterations of coastal edges, sea level growth with affectation of low areas and wetlands, change in river flows, acidification of marine areas, alterations of sea currents, etc. etc.
Earth is not a planet alive on its surface but a living planet, and so we must understand it. The evolution of the natural environment and the evolution of living organisms are closely linked to the evolution of an indivisible whole in their parts. Western science has guided scientific research and teaching, especially university research, based on the disaggregation of science and even more so, branches of science, studying them as independent, very underinditioned compartments. The separation of nature through a mechanistic vision, despite having enabled extensive scientific knowledge, has not allowed a full understanding of the intricate processes and interrelationships at higher levels or their homeostasis. Much is known about a plant, or a soil; a little less is known about their ecological attributes and behaviors, let alone the interaction of complex ecosystems, and so on. Every day there are more voices to fill the deficit of integration of traditionally separate domains, biology, sociology, geology, ecology, medicine. This deficit has prevented us from analyzing the earth as a living being and not foreseeing the effects of the damage we are inflicting on it arising from the ways and systems of artificializing it.
The Earth since agriculture was created has been altered and transformed by humans. The transformation process has been accelerated over the past 150 years by two fundamental factors, population growth, and the adopted, highly demanding mode of development of inputs and in particular energy. In an unlished way for the history of civilization, on a global scale on Earth the process of cultural, social and economic globalization is being coupled with global environmental change. Two complex gigaprocesses interacting with different logics: economic maximisation and ecological stabilization. As a result of this clash between ecological and anthropic phenomena the Earth has entered an era called Anthropoccene differentiating it from the previous one, the Holocene. This shows the obvious global awareness of the significant global impact that human activities have on ecosystems. Today there are very complex situations at the global, national and local levels, with great environmental, social and economic impacts, where major crises threaten even life itself on the planet. The so-called development of the Earth has led to social complexities of such magnitude as a product of the exclusionary, unbalanced and critical economic order. Today, more than ever, differentiation between food, educational, health, migration countries and regions is perceived.
In this context the coronavirus appears. On a land in crisis, altered, and unbalanced, this apparition is no coincidence. The problem is that we do not have the integrated knowledge to deepen the causes, not so much of the appearance of this virus, but of the characteristics of the moment. Unfortunately our “civilization” has used most of the resources science to create, whether it’s ecosystem harvesting systems that attack The Earth or create unsustainable systems of exploitation, whether all kinds of lethal weapons with such great destruction capability that would eliminate all life on the planet. We have lost the compass by setting aside the main scientific challenges to human well-being.
Coronavirus is just the expression of one facet of Earth’s defense. If we consider this planet to be living, we must conclude that this pandemic, its forms of distribution and its effects, occur at a specific juncture in which multiple factors converge, interrelated, derived from each other, which form complex and multidimensional networks, which could not have arisen if the time had not been the current one. Earth is reacting like any living being that “feels” sick.
This pandemic may be defeated, but if the general conditions of the planet continue to be aggravated, if The Earth continues to be altered by one of its own living components, humans, if the destabilizations we have witnessed these decades are accentuated, there is no doubt that other pandemics, or other forms of defense, will emerge. Perhaps they will be of such magnitude that we will no longer talk about the defense of the Earth but about her revenge.
