Will the Earth expire by 2050?

The World Wildlife Fund claims that the Earth will become uninhabitable by 2050. Our planet has been badly abused, and it has been dying a slow death. The Earth will face extinction in roughly forty years, which is sooner than a child born today enters midlife crisis.
So, the news is bleak for those who are working hard to build the future of their children, and for all those ambitious people who have grandiose plans for their future. Why bother about interior decoration if the house is burning? There may not be any future left in the future. The Earth is dying.
Signs are there in escalating global warming. There has been drastic reduction in rainfall. Rivers are shrinking. Satellite photos show Greenland ice sheets in full-fledged meltdown. A large portion of Bangladesh is likely to go under water. In US much of Manhattan and eastern shore of Maryland could be washed into the Atlantic Ocean. Pacific island nations will be blotted out. Hurricanes will ravage the Earth. Rising sea levels and severe droughts will destroy crops. Widespread famine will wreak havoc with starvation and death.
Anticlimax: We are killing the Earth in our lust for living. The rain forest habitats are the hardest hit, having lost 93% of their area. The latest update from International Union for the Conservation of Nature shows that nearly one-third of the existing species are under the threat of perishing. Species are becoming extinct at as much as 1,000 times the natural rate.
What are the symptoms of an ailing Earth? The Worldwatch institute released a report, Vital Signs 2006-2007, revealing major indications. In 2005, the average atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration increased 0.6% over the high in 2004, representing the largest annual increase ever recorded. The average global temperature reached 14.6 degrees Celsius, making 2005 the warmest year ever recorded on the Earth's surface.
Some 40% of the world's coral reefs have been either damaged or destroyed. Water withdrawals from rivers and lakes have doubled since 1960. New Orleans in Louisiana was at sea level when the first settlers arrived in the 18th century. It had sunk as much as a meter below that level when the hurricane season began in 2005.
Weather-related catastrophes have jumped from an average of 97 million a year in the early 1980s to 260 million a year since 2001. Three of the 10 strongest hurricanes ever recorded occurred in 2005 alone, and the average intensity of hurricanes is increasing. The concentration of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas that is driving climate change, has reached its highest level in 600,000 years. It continues to rise at an accelerated rate.
Measures are being taken to deal with this crisis. Renewable energy industries have seen rapid growth in 2005, increasing ethanol production by 19%, wind power capacity by 24% and solar cell production by 45%. Hybrid car sales doubled in US in the same year. The Chinese government responded to rising fuel prices by increasing tax on large vehicles and mandating higher levels of efficiency.
But too little has been done too late. If we take the US example as a yardstick, aggregate greenhouse gas emission level remained unchanged in eight years since George Bush promoted voluntary action against global warming. As of today, only 10% of American household light bulbs are compact fluorescents. Hybrids account for only 2.5% of US auto sales. The carbon-cap bill still remains underachieved. The carbon pollution level has to be limited to 350 parts per million of CO2 in the air by 2020 to avoid the imminent risk.
And what is the extent of that risk? In 2006 James Hansen, the head of Nasa's climate research team, warned that more than 10C above what the level was in 2000 would constitute alarming effects on sea level and extermination of species. The Earth is reeling on the razor's edge.
Sixty-five million years ago, dinosaurs walked on Earth until they abruptly ceased to exist. Many reasons are ascribed to what happened, such as food shortage, extreme weather, etc. But the most accepted theory is that when a meteor hit the earth, it drastically changed the climate. Failing to cope with the change, the dinosaurs went extinct.
Between December 7 and 18, Copenhagen turns into "Hopenhagen" to host the Climate Conference. This could be humanity's last hope to achieve a turning point to cope with climate change. Scientists argue if man and dinosaur ever existed together. But we know why they didn't perish together. The dinosaurs couldn't cope with the Earth. The Earth couldn't cope with us.
Breaking news: Hackers broke into the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Britain as evidence that scientific data have been rigged to show that humans are causing climate change.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a columnist for The Daily Star.
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