Daryl's Journal

What Happened Today? Feather Sound walk with Kay. Drove to the Largo Library. Met Kay at Hop’s for lunch. Went to the races. Rained out. Watched a Beautiful Mind with Kay.

GAIA- Planetary Management:

151. Not surprisingly, this overtaxing of the Earth’s ecosystem leads to breakdown of other sorts.

152. As more people seek greater amounts of declining resources, conflicts erupt: more people have been killed through military conflagrations since World War II than all the soldiers in that war. 

153. In fact, it is a breakdown in our social systems, our economic structures, and our political m3chanisms that generate the greatest threat of all.

154. The shadow over planet Earth will never be deeper and darker than when it is lengthened by a mushroom cloud.

155. The Final Test: Humanity, this sudden new evolutionary development which has had impact upon the planet, now threatens not only its own survival but that of many parts of the biosphere itself.

What Happened Today? Feather Sound walk with Kay. Drove to the Tampa office. Back home by 1:15 PM. Writing call reports regarding trip to Miami. I love my spacious home office. Kay and I went to the Holiday Inn for food, beer and video games. Baseball strike averted. Tampa Bay Buccaneers won their final exhibition game.

GAIA- Planetary Management:

146. In the ocean, we ravage one fishery after another.

147. We cause dolphins, seals, and other marine animals to follow the sad track of the great whales.

148. We pollute the seas, just as we poison lakes and rivers in virtually every part of the world.

149. We use the skies as a dustbin, and we desecrate our landscapes with growing piles of refuse, some of it toxic.

150. In the atmosphere, we disrupt the carbon dioxide balance, triggering climatic dislocations that will upset agriculture worldwide.

What Happened Today? Mark and I called on Associated Paint, Pintex and Union Chemical. Rough flight from fort Lauderdale to Tampa. Kay, Yvonne and Jen expanded my office. Looks great!

GAIA- Planetary Management:

141. Soil, one of the most precious of all resources, is washed or blown away in billions of tons every year.

142. To compound this tragedy, large tracts of productive cropland are paved over each year, or “developed”.

143. Deserts expand, or rather degraded lands are tacked on to them, at a rate threatening a third of all arable land in the next 75 years.

144. Forests in the tropics are chopped down with a zest that will leave a little by the middle of the next century.

145.  As the forests fall, species in their millions lose their habitats, many of them disappearing for ever.

What Happened Today? Flew to Fort Lauderdale. Mark picked me up. Heavy traffic. We called on Somay and Highlander. Dinner at a Cuban restaurant.

GAIA- Planetary Management:

136. One billion over affluent people enjoy lifestyles that impose a grossly disproportionate pressure on our planetary ecosystem.

137. This consumerism is powered in turn  by a sudden expansion in technological knowhow, enabling us to use and misuse ever-greater stocks of natural resources– even to use them up.

138. In fact, rather than a “population crisis” or a “resource crisis”, we should speak of a single over-arching crisis: the crisis of humankind.

139. The shadow stems from all of us, and it will darken all our lives.

140. On land, we plough up virgin areas, even though most of them are marginal at best.

What Happened Today? Stormy, rainy morning. No walk. Meeting at Coronado Paint with Alberdingk-Boley. Good session. Received bid sheet for epoxies. Kay switched living room around. Lost my sleeping spot.

GAIA- Planetary Management:

131. Today, the rise of human numbers casts a shadow over planet Earth.

132. We have reached a total of five and a half billion people, and we are plainly failing to feed, house, educate and employ many of these in basically acceptable fashion.

133. Worse, the human community is projected to reach at least 10 billion before the population explosion fizzles out into zero growth early in the 22nd century.

134. The problem does not lie only in a sheer outburst of human numbers.

135. It lies also in an outburst of human consumerism.

What Happened Today? Feather Sound walk with Kay. All Day training session with Alberdingk-Boley. Dinner with Mike O’Shaughnessy.

GAIA- Planetary Management:

126. Exponential growth is one of the most important concepts we shall encounter in this book.

127. It is growth that is not simply additive (two plus two equals four and another two makes six); rather it is a self-compounding (two multiplied by two equals four, multiplied by two equals 8).

128. Very few people realize its implications for our future existence on Earth.

129. If Africa, for example, maintain its present three percent growth rate until this time next century, its current 630 million people will increase to 9.5 billion.

130. Evolution: Revolution- We stand at a unique point in evolution, when planet-wide changes are proceeding faster than ever before.

What Happened Today? Wrote an article for Prudy who is having a hip replaced. Drove to the Largo Library. Watched a tape of the race at Bristol, won by Jeff Gordon. Kay and I went to Antonio’s for dinner.

GAIA- Planetary Management:

121. Now, however, we at eon the verge of widespread exploitation of the sun’s energy through solar cells– potentially as marked an advance for Earth’s course as that of photosynthesis itself. 

122. Similar breakthroughs include domestication of wild species and genetic engineering: quantum leaps to match the evolution of sexual reproduction.

123. Among the greatest advances of all our ability to control disease, and thus to increase our numbers.

124. Within the last 150 years, the human population has grown from around one billion in 1830s, to two billion in the 1930s, to four billion in 1975, and to five billion in 1987, with a further increase to 6.25 billion projected by the end of the century.

125. Herein we witness the phenomenon of exponential growth, a process that marks not only our increasing numbers, but also our consumption of energy and resources, our accumulating knowledge, and our expanding communications network.

What Happened Today? Reading day. Set record for CD’s. Listened to radio and computer. Read 1120 pages which is not a record. Set record for daily total.. 166. Fun process. Tampa Bay Devil Rays lose again. Stock market above 9000.

GAIA- Planetary Management:

106. After The Dinosaurs: the dinosaurs ruled the planet for some 160 million years, as land life flourished and diversified. 

107. Their decline opened the way for primitive animals.

108. The last 45 million years, on hundredth of our planet’s history, have seen the emergence of most of the flora and fauna we know.

109. Enter Homo Sapiens: Only in the last 0.01% of Earth time did our own species emerge.

110. With the taming of fire and early humans attempt to shape our Earth.