Man mediated silent revolutions have made Earth a Better world to live in!

GUEST COLUMN: Dr Prabhudeva

Bengaluru, Dec 5: Corona, war and violence and oppression! Anxiety, depression and isolation! I believe – Most people are moral and self-controlled. Evil people” and “evil acts” are common- but much less common than is generally believed.

Humans are causing life on Earth to vanish

The population of the world has reached more than seven billion today. The earth is overcrowded.  The waste that we create is almost unmanageable. We are cutting down trees. We are over consuming fish and meat. We have also increased the carbon emission. There are tons of plastic in the ocean. Sharks, whale, sea turtles and sea animals are dying because of the plastic waste. And oil spills. 

Over the last 50 years, nature’s capacity to support us has plummeted. Air and water quality are reducing, soils are depleting, crops are short of pollinators, and coasts are less protected from storms. The loss of ecosystems is caused mainly by exploitation, climate change and pollution and the introduction of invasive species.

Since the 1970s, Earth’s population has doubled, and consumption has increased by 45% per capita. Humans have directly altered at least 70% of Earth’s land, mainly for growing plants and keeping animals. The deforestation, the degradation of land, loss of biodiversity and pollution, have the biggest impacts on land and freshwater ecosystems.

77% of rivers longer than 1,000 kilometres no longer flow freely from source to sea, despite supporting millions of people. Live coral cover on reefs has nearly halved in the past 150 years.

We have been using more and more natural resources, and this has come at a cost. People have been living on the Earth for thousands of years. Humans have damaged natural environment and almost exhausted earth’s natural resources. Ecological balance is damaged. Concrete jungles have been created where animals and plants used to live. Forests been deforested! The green-house effect- carbon dioxide output has vastly increased and there are not enough plants to absorb it. 

What is Man’s contribution to make this Earth a better place to live!

Ecosystems, the fabric of life on which we all depend, are declining rapidly because of human actions. But there is still time to save them.

The green revolution – Silent and rewarding! Norman Borlaug Known as the “father of the Green Revolution,” pushed the boundaries of agriculture and saved over a billion lives in the process. In 1961, India and Bengal were on the brink of a massive famine. It was sustained, remorseless starving to death of 6-7 million Indians.  

The white revolution- The Operation Flood was launched in 1970. Verghese Kurien was the father of the White Revolution. He founded Amul and launched Billion-liter idea’ the world’s largest dairy-agricultural development program. Operation Flood’ transformed India. The country produces around 20 per cent of total milk production in the world.

Decline in extreme poverty:

More than 100,000 people are coming out of extreme poverty every single day! Eight million people a year used to die because of poverty. The goal is to achieve end of poverty by 2030. Over the last 25 years, more than a billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty. This is one of the greatest human achievements of our time.

Average life expectancy was 37 yrs. in 1947 in India. The current life expectancy in India is 2021 is 73yrs. years. Child mortality: Infant deaths have been halved from 12.6 million in 1990 to 5.4 million in 2017. The aim is to reduce it to as low as 2.5% by 2030 – more than 97.5% of all new-borns would survive the first five years of their life no matter where they are born.

Antibiotics and Antiviral drugs-  Alexander Fleming discovered the most powerful of all antibiotics – penicillin, marks a true turning point in human history of illness. Now doctors can cure deadly infectious diseases – life expectancy jumped by eight years. 

Antiviral drugs – against viruses such as AIDS, HIV-1, the cyto-megalo virus, the influenza virus, the Ebola virus-  Remedesvir- has been used with varying degree of success in corona as well.

The vaccines, the Birth Control Pill and contraception, Use of Surgical Anaesthetics and Antisepsis, Pulse oximetry are a revolution in anaesthesiology. Cancer Treatment & Prevention, Angioplasty and stent implantations, Radiological Imaging of Body Parts, DNA Technology, Neuro surgery are all with in realms of revolutions in medical field to make living better in this world!

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