Download JL_Paper1_CurrentlyTheGreatestThreatsToHumanSurvival

Duke University Trinity College of Arts & Sciences
CURRENTLY
THE GREATEST THREATS TO HUMAN
SURVIVAL ON EARTH
JJ Liao
Math 89s: Mathematics of the Universe
Professor Hubert Bray
2-15-2016
1
In the 2015 movie Kingsman: The Secret Service, the main antagonist reasons that human
beings will bring an early end to the homo sapien race by overpopulating the earth to a point of
unsustainability. Popular culture and the media has been tackling the question of what will
ultimately cause extinction of the human race for decades now. There are fantastical
interpretations involving alien invasions and zombie apocalypses like that in the TV show, The
Walking Dead, as well as the more likely global climate change endemic or by bacterial strain.
With so many possible threats to life on earth, what are the most pressing matters humans need
to be fearful of, and how should we be allocating funds to prevent such?
Global Warming, Climate Change, Loss of Biodiversity, Natural Disasters
Global warming, climate change, and the loss are biodiversity are likely the most gradual
threats on this list. It is also possible to diminish this risk enormously simply by acting now.
According to Duke Lecturing Fellow Professor Tara Kelly and climate change expert and author
Naomi Klein, the world currently possesses the technology to reduce carbon emissions to
sustainable levels, but there lacks the willpower to properly enforce a switch to renewable energy
in order to save the planet.
Climate change is becoming an increasingly large problem as the population continues to
grow at such exponential levels. All this is combined with an ever larger carbon footprint as
more and more countries industrialize and begin to increase their own emissions, while already
developed nations find it challenging to reduce their levels of production to more sustainable
levels. This is heighted by the “farting cows emitting methane” and the “giant well of methane
lurking under the Arctic ice” releasing into the atmosphere as a result of the melting of the poles
and the rising temperatures all over the globe (Schwartz, 2014).
2
Holli Reibeek of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) explains
the problems global warming will cause (2010). “[P]eople…will suffer from increased heat
waves, coastal erosion, rising sea level, more erratic rainfall, and droughts.” But global warming
always affects humans in a more drastic way. “[C]rops, natural vegetation, and domesticated
wild animals (including seafood) that sustain people in a given area may be unable to adapt to
local or regional changes in climate,” causing decreases in biodiversity. Famines may be more
frequent, leading to a decrease in food security. Eventually, this could get so bad that life on
earth may not even be possible anymore, if human beings are able to get the nutrition they need
to bring them throughout their lives.
Additionally, global warming and human impact can also increase the occurrences of
natural disaster and their intensity. The act of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas has already
induced earthquakes in parts of Oklahoma and Texas, and the intensity of weather patterns like
storms can be heightened.
The severity of global warming and climate change is already recognized. At the 2015
Paris Climate Change Conference, world leaders agreeing that climate change has to be curbed
reached the Paris Climate Deal. This deal involves a global commitment to hold the “global
average temperature to well below 2-degrees C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts
to limit the temperature increase to 1.5-degrees C above preindustrial levels” (Davenport, 2015).
However, the clauses contained in this deal might never be fulfilled. The United States
Supreme Court voted to “halt President Obama’s plan for restricting emissions from coal-fired
power plants” (Davenport and Yourish, 2016). This follows Obama’s “assurance that the United
States would carry out strong policies to significantly cut carbon emissions” when the deal was
reached. In the United States, a greater proportion of states supported this Supreme Court
3
decision than opposed it, showing that there are many players who don’t view climate change
and reducing emissions as vital as it is, often viewing the economic costs of cutting production
too great to put these reduction measures into play. Figure 1 shows how with regulation, carbon
dioxide emissions can be drastically decreased.
Figure 1
Author Naomi Klein argues in her 2015 book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs.
the Climate, that although the initial loses in production with definitely be detrimental to
economies and producers seeking profit, there are many benefits to changing the world’s
economic systems to properly adapt to the climate change epidemic. She argues for more
localized economies, to reduce the environmental harms from the transportation of resources far
distances.
Pandemics & Infectious Disease
4
Globalization of the late 1900s has connect so many countries and so many economies.
Nations rely on each other for the trade of resources. As a result of this trade, diseases have the
ability to spread rapidly and cause significant damage. The potential for an infectious disease to
spread and transform into epidemics or even pandemics is very real and should be a major source
of concern for human life on Earth. Via the news outlet Vertical News Health & Science (2016),
an independent Commission on a Global Health Risk Framework for the Future states that
“pandemics can kill millions of people and cause trillions of dollars of damage to economic
activity…. Few other risks pose such a threat to human lives, and few other events can damage
the economy so much.”
This Commission “estimated the global expected economic loss from potential
pandemics could average more than $60 billion per year” and recommended an “investment of
approximately $4.5 billion per year…to enhance prevention, detection, and preparedness.” In the
past 15 years alone, the world has already faced scares by “Ebola, Middle East Respiratory
Syndrome (MERS), severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)…the influenza virus known as
H1N1,” avian flu, and currently, the Zika virus raging in South America. Currently, nations are
only devoting fractions of their budgets and resources to preparing to ward off diseases in crisis,
but the Commission estimates that “at least one pandemic will emerge over the next 100 years,
with a 20% chance of seeing four or more.” Because of the nature of disease, it is much easier to
prevent an epidemic before it occurs than to deal with it after the fact and clean up after one
should one ever occur. The chairperson of this commission argues that people should all have a
common interest in preventing the spread of disease, as “pandemics don’t respect national
boundaries,” although there are certain factors that might increase the risk for disease in certain
areas of the world.
5
Recommendations by the Commission include for governments to prioritize investments
on health systems “as part of their fundamental duty to protect their people,” and calls upon
communities to remain vigilant in their duty to detect, respond, and report outbreaks. It also
recommends accelerating research and the development of medical products such as vaccines,
personal protective equipment, and instruments.
Infectious disease is unlike global warming in that there are very little human beings can
do to stop diseases from break out. Different strains of bacteria continue to mutate and adapt to
the defenses we currently have against them, and our continued reliance of antibiotics has only
accelerated this process. There might be one day where we don’t have the medical resources or
the manpower to cure, treat, or contain outbreak. With more measures in place and increased
awareness, it is possible to prevent the spread of disease before it reaches a global level and
threatens massive scores of people. With a very immediate threat of pandemic, likely that one
would break out within ours or our children’s’ lifetimes, it is pertinent to allocation proper
resources to prevent the spread of disease and to improve reaction to such outbreaks.
When analyzing the weight of possible disease pandemics, its also important to
remember that pandemics likely won’t wipe out the entire human race. Although the
Commission is careful to point this out, it also notes that disease can cause such high death rates
and damages that they should not be ignored. Even so, in history, disease has never wiped out the
entire human race. On Heathline’s list of the “Worst Disease Outbreaks in History” (2013), only
one on the list, HIV/AIDS, occurred in the days of modern medicine. This shows that tragic
though it may be, humans can carry on and rebuild following a massive disease outbreak.
Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear Terrorism
6
Chemical and biological terrorism seem to be a much greater threat in the past. Back in
1999, John Diamond via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that “the CIA sees the threat of
biological warfare and terrorism…rising,” but there have been few updates on this fear since the
early 2000s. This might be related to the CIA’s assertion that “experts may be exaggerating the
ease of developing effective weapons.”
Biological war agents are “living organisms, whatever their nature, or infected material
derived from them, which are used for hostile purposes and intended to cause disease or death in
man, animals, and plants, and which depend for their efforts on the ability to multiply in the
person, animal, or plant attack,” (Beeching, 2002). In 1980, the threat of smallpox being used as
an agent was declared over, yet Russia and the United States still hold viral stock in their
laboratories.
Biological warfare is dangerous as it involves artificially releasing a pathogen into the
environment to create an epidemic or pandemic. It is even more dangerous because “genetic
engineering…can alter their pathogenicity, incubation periods, or even the clinical syndromes
they cause,” so there is always the possibility of creating a super virus.
However, as science progresses and technology continues to improve, the threat of
nuclear terrorism is ever growing. The greatest threat of nuclear war currently is with North
Korea. As its technology begins to catch up with the rest of the developed world, North Korea
has been testing nuclear weapons since October 2006 (BBC, 2016). Most recently, on January
6th, 2016, North Korea “announced that a successful test of a hydrogen bomb had taken place.”
Although “[l]ittle data has been collected so far from this test” and “experts are sceptical about
this claim” [sic], the world is nonetheless on high alert as result of this.
7
At the same time however, chemical, biological, or nuclear warfare and terrorism to such
an enormous extent that it would end the human race is not likely.
Asteroid Impact
Scientists agree that the treat of an asteroid striking Earth some time in the near future is
nothing to joke around about. The last time this happened to such a large extent was 65 million
years ago when a “5-mile-wide asteroid, now known as the K-T Impactor, blasted a crater about
a hundred miles across and sent out shock waves that killed everything within a thousand miles”
(Parker, 1994, p.1). Even worse, this asteroid, which was responsible for the great extinction of
the dinosaurs, “produced an enormous ball of red hot, glowing rock that flew back into the
atmosphere…[which] disintegrated, raining down sparks and molten materials that ignited forest
fires on the planet’s surface. The resulting soot blanketed the Earth and blocked sunlight, killing
plants all over the world” (Parker).
According to Parker, “the technology already exists to protect the Earth from errant
asteroids and comets, but the decision still must be made whether the risks justify the cost [of]
about $50 million to $100 million per year.” The United Nations (UN) has also recognized this
threat when in 2007 it called upon the works of a UN-based treaty with a goal “to reach
international agreement on how humanity would respond should an asteroid or comet threaten
life on the planet” (Ahlstrom, 2007, p.1).
Although UN leaders do agree that an asteroid will almost inevitably wipe out the human
race if it were to hit the Earth, the tens of millions of dollars needed each year to be spent in
order to protect the planet don’t seem to justify the risk, especially when scientists continue to
rule out the possibility of asteroids hitting the Earth within the next 40 years. In 2002, the Ottawa
8
Citizen reported that professional and amateur scientists alike have ruled out the threat of an
asteroid striking Earth in 2017, and it seems very likely that they will rule out the potential for an
asteroid to strike Earth in 2060 as well.
Executive Summary
The threats we have to human survival break down into four categories: global warming
and climate change, disease, terrorism by means of biological, chemical, or nuclear agents, and
asteroid attack. The events discussed here only pertain to events that have probability of
eliminating a large proportion of the population.
Although there is currently no way to quantify the risk of each of these events, and
experts in these fields all believe their own field to be the most life-threatening, each category
has its own characteristics. Global warming is a gradual effect that will change Earth over time.
Global warming knows no national boundaries, and will affect human beings alike. However,
since global warming is also more gradual, it is not as immediate as the threat of an asteroid
attack. But an asteroid attack has already been deemed very unlikely by most scientists, at least
within the next 50 years, though an asteroid attack will almost undoubtedly end life on earth as
we know it. Disease is another source for concern, but even pandemics don’t have the same
killing power as an asteroid. And finally, terrorism through chemical, biological, and nuclear is a
very real threat that will be costly to human life, but the threat of these attacks has been
diminishing with the turn of the century.
Ultimately, humans face threats from aspects of all walks of life, and although it is nearly
impossible to measure these threats against each other, it seems more efficient to deal with the
more immediate threats, such as that of climate change and global warming, first.
9
Works Cited
Ahlstrom, D. (2007, Feb 19). Efforts begin to agree UN treaty on asteroid threat.Irish
Times Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/308921132?accountid=10598
Beeching, N. J., Dance, D. A. B., Miller, A. R. O., & Spencer, R. C. (2002). Biological warfare
and bioterrorism. British Medical Journal, 324(7333), 336-9. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/204035438?accountid=10598
Davenport, C., & Yournish, K. (2016, February 10). Did the Supreme Court Just Kill the Paris
Climate Deal? Maybe. We Explain. In The New York Times. Retrieved from
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/02/10/us/what-supreme-court-decision-tohalt-climate-regulation-means.html
Davenport, C., Gillis, J., Chan, S., & Eddy, M. (2015, December 12). Inside the Paris Climate
Deal. In The New York Times. Retrieved February 22, 2016, from
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/12/world/paris-climate-change-dealexplainer.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2Fun-climate-changeconference&action=click&contentCollection=earth&r
Diamond, J. (1999, Mar 07). Panel assesses threat of biological warfare danger exists but ease of
making weapons may be exaggerated, experts say.Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Retrieved
from http://search.proquest.com/docview/260854463?accountid=10598
Infectious diseases; new report: Future pandemics pose massive risks to human lives, global
economic security. (2016). NewsRx Health & Science, , 667. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1758465927?accountid=10598
Klein, N. (2014). This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate. New York: Simon &
Schuster.
Krucik, G. T. (2013, January 20). 10 Worst Disease Outbreaks in History. In Heathline.
Retrieved February 22, 2016, from http://www.healthline.com/health/worst-diseaseoutbreaks-history#Overview1
North Korea's nuclear tests. (2016, January 6). In BBC News. Retrieved February 22, 2016, from
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-17823706
Parker, K. (1994, Mar 06). PHYSICIST: THREAT OF ASTEROID IS REAL. The Santa Fe
New Mexican Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/331388755?accountid=10598
Relax, asteroid won't be threat until 2060: 2017 impact ruled out by professional, amateur
astronomers. (2002, Jul 30). The Ottawa Citizen Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/240571759?accountid=10598
10
Riebeek, H. (2010, July 6). Why is global warming a problem?. In NASA Earth Observatory.
Retrieved February 22, 2016, from
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/climateqa/why-is-global-warming-a-problem/
Schwartz, L. (2014, July 28). 10 Biggest Threats to Human Existence. In EcoWatch. Retrieved
February 22, 2016, from http://ecowatch.com/2014/07/28/10-biggest-threats-to-humanexistence/
11