“My Planet Home—Earth: The Future of Humanity and It” is not an article but one of my daydreams.
When My Son Wakes the World
I see my 13-year-old son waking in the morning—like a baby duck.
He shakes his hands like feathers, strolls here and there, looks up at the soft sky, watches the colored trees—and announces his presence.
Quack, quack—in response to the caw, caw of the crows.
Suddenly, he runs toward the pond, stands at its edge, and examines the greenish-blue water—and the sky above it—with enormous curiosity. Then, he leaps into the warm water.
He swims and plays with the lettuce, hyacinths, and lilies.
Lily calls out and runs away—diving beneath the water to hide.
The pond shakes with delight.
My son, the lettuce, and the hyacinths cradle the waves and run after Lily, trying to catch her.
Fishes leap from their audience galleries and join the chase—rushing toward the hidden Lily.
Hah hah hah hah!—the entire pond bursts into laughter.
They catch Lily.
She surrenders, giggling.
Then the little catfish gives a cry—and runs!
Down, down, it dives to hide beneath the green silk of the water…
Hah hah hah hah hah…
And watching him play, I can’t help but wonder: Will joy like this still echo in the future of Earth and Humanity?
My Earth Wears Stories, Not Elements
I don’t see my Earth as a tank of gases—oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and the like. I see my globe as my home, my sweet home!
The Amazon is our garden, where Tarzan lives, protecting our friends: lions, elephants, and deer. He guards them from the prankish and the cruel.
The oceans are our lakes, where Khizir—the righteous servant of God and possessor of mystic knowledge—rides across the currents on a giant fish. He travels the Earth, helping those in need and guiding the pious, the honest, and the kind-hearted.
The Himalayas are the palace of Himavati. She roams the high passes on her white cow, serene and watchful. When needed, she transforms into Kali—equipped with weapons—marching into battle as Durga to confront the demons.
With a furrowed brow, she calls forth Kali in her terrible magnificence.
Sword in one hand, noose in the other, she leaps into the fight.
One by one, she decapitates the demons—then lays their heads before Durga like trophies of truth.
I clap my big hands with joy.
Because in these stories—these living memories—I still find hope for the future of Earth and Humanity.
The Thermometer and the Tornado
On January 18, 2017, a press release revealed that the planet’s average surface temperature had risen by about 1.1 degrees Celsius since the late 19th century, according to independent analyses by NASA. More importantly, it stated that while record-breaking years might not occur every time, the long-term warming trend remains unmistakable.
NASA identified the primary driver of this change as increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions released into the atmosphere.
For humans, this means more destructive hurricanes, floods, wildfires, droughts, and bone-chilling Arctic blasts—leading to thousands of deaths, billions in property damage, and massive interruptions to life as we know it.
These warnings aren’t just statistics—they are signposts in the unfolding story of the future of Earth and Humanity.
The Caravan of Civilization or Suicide?
But let me understand this!
NASA’s first reason for the rising temperature was the increase in carbon dioxide. Can we, as human beings, say we’re not contributing to it? No way. The release of carbon dioxide is the very backbone of our modern civilization!
How? Just look—at the chimneys of our factories and the endless traffic on our roads! According to Nature (September 2, 2015), we cut down about 15 billion trees every year. NASA’s other reason pointed directly to human-made emissions.
If we don’t face this, we may be marching straight out of the future of Earth and Humanity.
So what are we then—a caravan of suicidal pilgrims?
Species Whisper Their Last Songs
I choose to decide slowly. The Earth Day Network announced its April 22, 2019, theme: Protect Our Species! They identified ten species threatened with extinction due to climate change:
- 🐝 Bumblebees: Climate change has impacted bumblebees in two ways: rising temperatures are forcing populations northward to stay within colder climates, and earlier spring blooms are shortening the window for pollination.
- 🐋 Whales: Whales rely on specific ocean temperatures for migration, feeding, and reproduction. As seas warm, these vital rhythms are disrupted—threatening the conditions whales need to survive.
- 🐘 Asian Elephants: Lower rainfall and rising temperatures have degraded Asian elephant habitats. These combined pressures have reduced the reproductive capacity of an already endangered species.
- 🦒 Giraffes: Giraffe populations have declined by 40% over the past 30 years. Beyond illegal poaching, climate change has led to shrinking habitats and a loss of acacia trees, their primary food source.
- 🐞 Insects: Due to climate change, insects face drastic losses. If global temperatures rise by 2°C, about 18% of insect species could disappear by 2100. At 3.2°C, the loss could reach 49%.
- 🐦 Oceanic Birds: Rising sea levels directly threaten oceanic bird species, as higher waters submerge their coastal habitats and nests with devastating effects.
- 🦈 Sharks: As ocean temperatures and acidity rise, sharks struggle to hunt and suffer higher embryo mortality. Warming waters push them northward by 30 kilometers annually in the Pacific—disrupting ecosystems that rely on their presence.
- 🪸 Coral Reefs: Rising sea temperatures are endangering coral reefs. 72% of UNESCO-protected reefs suffered severe heat stress in just three years. This sustained warming leads to coral bleaching, an often-dead event in which coral starves from a lack of nutrients.
- 🦋 Monarch Butterflies: Monarch butterfly populations in California have declined by up to 95% since the 1980s—driven by habitat loss, pesticide use, and the disappearance of milkweed, all linked to human-driven climate change.
- 🦧 Great Apes: The great apes of Southeast Asia—among the world’s most endangered primates—face extinction as deforestation accelerates under climate change. Nearly 75% of their forest habitat is now at risk.
The Earth Day Network placed the blame squarely on human actions for these changes.
It is a mirror reflecting the precarious future of Earth and Humanity—where each vanishing species erases part of our shared inheritance.
Once again, we find ourselves blaming humanity—for building the very gas chamber that leads other species to extinction.
We are pointing fingers at ourselves—as the force undoing the planet.
But what is this globe, really?
And what is the relationship between it and us?
Boilers and the Benevolence of Fire
Whenever I visit a large textile factory, I’m drawn to the giant sheds where the boilers live—like someone addicted to ghost movies.
But even as I watch, my heart pounds, and my throat goes dry.
A boiler in a big textile mill might produce up to 35 megawatts and reach temperatures as high as 510 degrees Celsius.
But do we ever think about the Earth’s core—burning constantly at around 6000 degrees Celsius?
Iron melts at around 1510 degrees.
If the Earth ever blasted its core outward—good heavens—we wouldn’t even notice how we died.
No pain. Just gone.
And yet, you see—this angry Mother Earth still raises her children gently in her lap.
Considering only temperature, it’s clear—we have no role beneath the Earth’s surface.
But above the surface? Yes—we can do many things.
The choice we make now could shape the very future of Earth and Humanity.
But before we go further, I must ask:
Will we take responsibility for what is ours to do?
Are We Fit to Rule? Twain and White Say No
Mark Twain called the man a Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim.
But he believed that title was open to dispute.
Indeed, through his own experiments, Twain suggested that man is, in truth, the Unreasoning Animal.
In reality, man is incurably foolish.
He struggles to grasp the simple things that other animals learn with ease.
One of his experiments went like this:
Within an hour, he taught a cat and a dog to be friends—and placed them together in a cage.
In the next hour, he introduced a rabbit, and they also made friends.
Over the next two days, he added a fox, a goose, a squirrel, some doves—and finally, a monkey.
They all lived together in peace.
Even affectionately.
Then, in another cage, he confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary.
As soon as the man seemed tame, he added a Scottish Presbyterian from Aberdeen.
Then came a Turk from Constantinople, a Greek Christian from Crete, an Armenian, a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas, a Buddhist from China, and a Brahman from Benares.
Finally, he added a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping.
Twain stayed away for two whole days.
When he returned to observe the results, the cage of higher animals was intact.
But the human cage? A chaos of gory odds and ends—turbans, fezzes, plaids, bones, and flesh.
Not a single specimen was left alive.
The Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a single theological detail—and carried the matter to a Higher Court. So, when Mark Twain stumbled upon human characteristics of argument, should I dare to question the future of Earth and Humanity?
I do not wholly agree with Mark Twain, nor do I ignore his perception. Instead, I’d rather turn to E. B. White, reflecting on Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.
“I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own well-being.
Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission.
We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves on this planet and viewed it appreciatively.
But we are skeptical and dictatorial about it.”
—E. B. White
The Gaia Who Knows More Than We Do
Even when we show compassion to one another, to living and nonliving things—and to Mother Dharitri—she still follows her own rule of law.
I’ve long admired James Lovelock, the mind behind the Gaia Theory, which imagines the planet as self-regulating.
Gaia sees Earth as a whole system—rocks, atmosphere, oceans, and every living thing—interacting to maintain a balance that allows life to continue.
It must.
If the residing part dies, the entire system collapses, leaving behind a lifeless rocky planet, like many others scattered across our solar system.
At 92, in an interview with The Guardian ahead of the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development, Lovelock expressed deep frustration with world leaders’ efforts to tackle environmental change.
He doubted whether international efforts like these could achieve much:
“Whenever the UN puts its finger in, it becomes a mess.
My thoughts are burdened by the fact that the climate situation is more complex than we can manage—perhaps even in the future.
You cannot treat it as a scientific problem alone. You have to involve the whole world.
But then there’s the time constant of human activity.
Look at the Kyoto Treaty—it was fifteen years ago, and damn all has been done.
The human time constant is slow.
You don’t get remarkable changes in under fifty to a hundred years.
And climate does not wait for that.“
—James Lovelock
And yet, I still see him as an optimist.
At 100, in a 2019 interview with Discover magazine, he said—
“Yes, we’re making some prideful mistakes—leading to global heating.
Even so, the Earth is still about balance.
There have been very disruptive phases—think of the Permian Period.
But life survived all of it.
Amazingly—we did.
So whether Humanity survives or not, life may continue—by the very nature of this planet—until the sun begins to warm beyond control. And nothing will stop it. It will burn until it becomes a red giant—and there will be no Earth worth having.
—James Lovelock
But until that far-off sun arrives, the future of Earth and Humanity is still being written—by the choices we make, or refuse to make.
I had completed the article—but my instinct disagreed.
Forget the giant red sun—it’s too far to imagine.
Let me believe in us—Humanity.
Yes, we’ve committed many wrongs against nature.
But still—we love our planet, and we love our humanity.
So, I return to Rachel Carson.
She explained it beautifully in The Obligation to Endure, a chapter in her book Silent Spring—we have to give time.
She wrote:
Carson’s Candle in the Dark
“Only within the moment represented by the present century has one species acquired significant power to alter the nature of its world. During the past quarter-century, this power has not only increased to disturbing magnitude—it has changed in character.
It took hundreds of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the Earth—eons in which developing, evolving, and diversifying forms reached a state of adjustment and balance with their surroundings.
Given time—not in years, but in millennia—life adjusts. Harmony is won.
Time is the essential ingredient. But in the modern world, there is no time.”
—Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
It is good that she not only named the root causes—but also offered a direction forward.
Do We Still Belong Here?
“She wrote that we live in an era of specialists—each focused narrowly on their own problem, unaware and often intolerant of the larger frame in which it belongs.
It is also an era dominated by industry—rarely questioning the right to earn a dollar, no matter the cost.
And when the people protested—faced with undeniable evidence of harm—they were fed little tranquilizing pills of half-truth.
This false assurance—the sugar-coating of unpalatable facts—must end.
The people must decide whether they wish to continue down this path—and they can only do so when given the whole truth.“
—Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
So, when we look at today’s global environmental movements—if people succeed—it’s because they are beginning to respond to their Earth.
But if the Earth still loves us like a mother—
will we ever grow wise enough to deserve her?
Hello, Artista
Afterword—A Lantern Between Two Friends
Artista closed the book and looked out the window. “So… do we still belong here?”
Organum smiled without answering. He watched the wind rustle a fig tree and the clouds pass like drifting thoughts.
“Perhaps Earth hasn’t asked us to prove we belong,” he said. “Only to remember it was never ours to rule—only ours to love.”
✍️ Author’s Reflection
I first wrote this article nearly a decade ago—before some of my own wrinkles, before my son grew taller than my shoulder, and before the world had witnessed so many new signs of ecological grief.
The words were there back then, but the soul was still waiting.
Over the years, I often considered this piece a sleeping friend—silent but never gone. It lived in the background of my days, whispering reminders whenever I saw a tree fall, a coral reef bleach, or a bird change its path.
I knew I would return. And I knew it must return with me—unchanged in spirit but grown in its bones.
This version still holds the joy of watching my son splash through lilies, the rage of reading science that grieves, and the ancient awe I’ve always felt for stories older than reason.
I’ve walked with Carson, bowed before Lovelock, and asked questions that may have no answer.
But most of all, I’ve tried to listen—to the Earth, the laughter of water, and the quiet hum of hope.
This piece is not an end.
It’s a breath.
And if you’ve read this far—thank you.
We belong to this planet not by conquest but by conversation.
—Jamee
🌼 Articles You May Like
From metal minds to stardust thoughts—more journeys await:
- Musk: Trendsetter or Leader? 10 Visionaries Who Define the Line
- Ammonia: The Universal Builder, a Silent Architect Scattered Here and Across Galaxies
- Agricultural Intensification and Ecosystem Services: Zarvan sees
Curated with Stardust by Organum & Artista under a sky full of questions.
📚 Principal Sources
- The History of Tarzan, official site of Edgar Rice Burroughs – tarzan.com
- Tarzan, Encyclopedia Britannica – britannica.com/topic/Tarzan
- The History of al-Tabari, Volume III: The Children of Israel, translated by William M. Brinner – kalamullah.com
- Encyclopedia of Ancient Deities, edited by Charles Russell Coulter and Patricia Turner – Google Books
- NASA Press Release, January 18, 2017 – nasa.gov
- Crowther, T. W. et al. Global Tree Density (Nature, September 2, 2015) – nature.com
- Earth Day Network – Protect Our Species Campaign, 2019 – earthday.org
- Earth’s Core, National Geographic Encyclopedia – nationalgeographic.org
- Twain, Mark. Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings
- Interview with James Lovelock, The Guardian – theguardian.com
- James Lovelock at 100, BBC Science Focus – sciencefocus.com
- Lovelock’s Vision for the Future, Discover Magazine – discovermagazine.com
- Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring, especially Chapter: The Obligation to Endure
Leave a Reply