English (Core) · Ch 7 — The Ailing Planet: the Green Movement's Role
Key Arguments, Facts and Examples
Key Arguments, Facts and Examples
Because this is a persuasive essay, Palkhivala builds his case with concrete facts, expert voices and vivid examples rather than a plot. The main strands of his argument are set out below.
The Green Movement and the holistic view
The Green Movement began about twenty-five years ago; the world's first nationwide Green party was founded in New Zealand in 1972. It has shifted human perception from a mechanistic to a holistic and ecological view — a change Palkhivala likens to Copernicus teaching, in the sixteenth century, that the earth revolves round the sun. For the first time we see the earth as a single living organism.
Sustainable development
The idea of sustainable development was popularised in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development, which defined it as "development that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs." This is the standard against which all growth should be judged.
Humanity as the most dangerous animal
In the zoo at Lusaka, Zambia, a cage labelled "the world's most dangerous animal" holds only a mirror — the visitor sees himself. The example dramatises that humans are the chief threat to the planet, even as a new awareness of partnership over domination dawns.
The four principal biological systems
Quoting Lester R. Brown's The Global Economic Prospect, Palkhivala names the earth's four principal biological systems — fisheries, forests, grasslands and croplands — which support the whole global economy and supply almost all raw materials except minerals and petroleum synthetics. Human demands are pushing them past sustainable limits: fisheries collapse from over-fishing, forests are decimated for firewood (so that "what goes under the pot now costs more than what goes inside it"), grasslands turn to wasteland and croplands deteriorate.
Vanishing forests
Scientists have catalogued about 1.4 million living species, while three to a hundred million more "languish unnamed in ignominious darkness." Tropical forest — Dr Myers's "powerhouse of evolution" — is eroding at forty to fifty million acres a year; James Speth of the World Resources Institute puts the loss at "an acre-and-a-half to a second." Despite Article 48A of the Constitution of India ("the State shall endeavour to protect and improve the environment"), laws go unenforced, and India is losing forests at 3.7 million acres a year — with actual loss about eight times the official figure. A UN satellite study found the environment 'critical' in many of the eighty-eight countries investigated.