NATURE'S CHECKS AND BALANCES: HAS MAN TIPPED THE SCALES?

With this year's sudden, triple eruptions of Chile's volcano, Calbuco, geologists are predicting a temporary cooling of the Earth's atmosphere, a result of spewed volcanic gases and ash which have risen into the stratosphere. Meanwhile, what's been left behind on terra firma is a blanket of ash that has ruined crops, marine life (including the region's bread-and-butter industry, salmon), damaged or destroyed homes and decimated forests. As seen after the Mt. St. Helen's eruption, however, a natural renewal and resurgence happens, where new forests, even more fertile farmland and wildlife return. It may take decades, but the surrounding environment adapts and often recovers. At least that's what scientists used to think. What has changed hasn't been Earth's resilience to withstand natural disasters; no, it's the inability of our environment to recover from human negligence.

The Mt. Everest avalanche resulting from the 7.9 cataclysm in Nepal possibly swept away years of man-made debris including oxygen bottles, garbage and, more poignant an estimated 200 bodies frozen in the permafrost from fatal sojourns up the mountain. Not far away Nepal's farmland will recover and families will rebuild their lives, but many worry that the country's purported corrupt government and historic lack of jobs, may force the Nepalese to focus solely on tourism at the expense of their surrounding environs.With oversight of foreign aid coming in, the Nepalese can salvage their homeland without solely depending on reckless tourists who disrespect the soaring mountains they climb. Let's hope that the tragic jolt Nepal suffered could be a smack on government officials' heads about their country's future. (BREAKING NEWS, via CBS THIS MORNING, Nepal's officials are considering closing the affected route up Mt. Everest.)

And the remaining garbage on the world's tallest mountain? It is the tip of the human footprint affecting much of our world. Artificial ecological disasters have begun to outnumber natural ones: fracking-induced earthquakes and contaminated water caused by industry, are two examples. Sooner than later if left unchecked, man-made, destructive catalysts will lead to widespread destruction of our crops, homes and populations.

Nature has a way of re-setting the ecological clock, but has man finally outwitted the power of Mother Earth to check and balance the destruction of our ecosystems? Stephen Hawking thinks so: "It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million," Stephen Hawking said. "Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space." (Space.com)

For me, never, in my lifetime did I believe we could be facing Earth's tipping point: the imminent possibility that our world will become a page in an intergalactic history book of barren planets in our galaxy.

MARS