This is how desperate the matter has become!
A prominent New York lawyer immolated himself at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park in April, 2018 to protest against the use
of fossil fuel. According to a suicide note found near his body, the lawyer
said he had immolated himself using fossil fuel to symbolically tell humans how
they are destroying planet Earth through fossil fuel use. So at age sixty
Lawyer David Buckel killed himself with fossil fuel (set himself ablaze) to
drive home his message.
In an email to New York Times David
Buckel stated: “Pollution ravages our planet, oozing inhabitability through
air, soil, water and weather”.
Again David Buckel stated: “Most
humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy by fossil fuels, and many
die early deaths as a result- my early death by fossil fuel reflects what we
doing to ourselves”.
The long and short of it is that David
Buckel is saying anthropogenically we are committing suicide by the use of fossil
fuels. David Buckel used fossil fuel to burn himself to death to tell you, an
earthling, that you are burning yourself to death too. People breathe in
compromised air due to the use of fossil fuels, and die premature death. As an
example take one working in a coal (a fossil fuel) plant for example. By taking
in air contaminated by the processing of coal regularly, the one working in the
coal plant is filling their lungs with air that is not supposed to enter their
lungs in the first place. The contaminated air enters their lungs thereby
destroying their lungs leading to early death. Thus, as humans, we are
committing suicide too. The reason I am saying we are committing suicide is
that David Buckel has immolated himself or committed suicide as some people
like to put it, to raise the alarm! Is that going to stop us from continuing to
burn coal? The alarm has been sounded over and over again in many a different
way.
My thinking is that the three key
terms in David Buckel’s statements are fossil fuel, pollution and death or
suicide, since we are the cause of our own death. Anyway, the natural
environment (of which fossil fuel is a part) is for our use for the sustenance
of our material lives. The matter is that we are putting it to wrong use for
various selfish interests, not taking the interest of the natural environment
itself into consideration, thus placing it in a path of collapse, and the
collapse of the natural environment should bring to an end human life!
As I was saying the three key terms
are fossil fuel, pollution and death. I am going to take the first two terms
analyze them to show how as a sequence it leads to death or early death, as
David Buckel demonstrated it in his own way.
FOSSIL FUEL
The Union of Concerned Scientists say what fossil fuel is in the
following way: “Fossil fuels are rock-like, gas, or liquid resources that are
burned to generate power. They include coal, natural gas and oil, and are used
as energy source in the electricity and transportation sectors. They’re also a
leading source of the world’s global warming pollution”.
Fossil fuels are hydrocarbons because of their chemical
composition of hydrogen and carbon. Fossil fuels are formed from the
accumulation of dead plants and animals over millions of years in soil. Fossil
fuels take form through natural processes like anaerobic decomposition-
microorganisms act on the dead plants and animals under oxygen-less conditions.
Fossil fuels have driven our civilizations since the industrial
revolution- at least in terms of global warming as side effect.
Examples of fossil fuel or fossil fuel products are:
- Oil
- Natural gas
- Coal
- Petrol (gasoline)
- Kerosene (paraffin)
- Liquefy petroleum gas
- Vaseline
- Mosquito repellent
POLLUTION
The beef of David Buckel, for that matter environmentalists, is
that in burning fossil fuel pollution occurs, pollution that is cutting short
the lives of people, for example. That pollution occurs when fossil fuel is
burned is confirmed by the Union of Concerned Scientists in their definition of
fossil fuel, in that fossil fuels are the leading source of global warming
pollution. When talking of pollution, in its broadest sense, it occurs from its
extraction through processing to end usage. At the extraction stage, oil for
example, spills into seas upsetting marine life. I have already given coal
processing example where workers get lung diseases. At the end user level,
burning of petrol or gasoline in an automobile releases carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere.
The pollutants are not supposed to be where they are in the first
place, not in the quantities in which they are present. Whatever gets into our
bodies from the natural environment must be lodged in our bodies to nourish us,
not to compromise our health. If by mistake a toxin gets into our bodies, all
things being equal, the bodies must have the defense mechanisms to deal with it
without creating imbalances. Our bodies cannot withstand the deliberate and
unbridled toxification of the natural environment as a healthy body can only be
sustained by a clean and balanced natural environment. David Buckel offered
himself a sacrifice to protest the pollution of the natural environment, in
toxifying the natural environment in a deliberate and an unbridled manner, we
are committing suicide. That is why
David Buckel is saying that pollution is cutting short the lives of earthlings.
In the following I am going to list some of the pollutants, for
the sake of clarity, that are cutting short the lives of earthlings:
- Methane
- Carbon dioxide
- Soot (particulate matter)
- Sulfur dioxide (SO₂)
- Nitrogen oxides (NOx)
- Mercury
- Carbon monoxide
CUTTING LIVES SHORT
Having listed some of the pollutants fossil fuels release into the
natural environment when burned, I should, in this section, show how the
pollutants cut short human lives. Let me take some of the pollutants one by one
to do so, as follows:
SULFUR
DIOXIDE
Sulfur dioxide is an emission that occurs as a result of the burning
of coal. The sulfur dioxide that enters the atmosphere plays a part in the
formation of acid rain. Acid rain is formed when sulfur dioxide and nitrogen
oxide mix with water, oxygen and other chemicals in the atmosphere. Acidic
precipitation therefrom ups the acidity of rivers etc., which endangers aquatic
life.
Sulfur dioxide emissions, that is sulfur dioxide present in the
atmosphere, can worsen breathing problems like asthma, nasal congestion etc.
According to a Union of Concerned Scientists’ paper, in 2014, fossil
fuel combustion at power plants accounted for 64% of US sulfur dioxide
emissions.
SOOT
(PARTICULATE MATTER)
Soot released into the atmosphere results in haze and can cause
bronchitis, asthma and increased incidence of premature death. What follows is
a relevant quote from the Union of Concerned Scientists paper: “In 2010, it is estimated that fine particle pollution from US coal plants
resulted in 13,200 deaths, 9,700 hospitalizations, and 20,000 heart attacks.
The impacts are particularly severe among the young, the elderly, and those who
suffer from respiratory disease”.
PARTING SHOT
In order to satisfy our unbridled desire for selfish sensual
needs, we as earthlings, without restraint, are going all out to use fossil
fuel, giving little care to the side effects of how we handle it, from
extraction to end usage. The result, among others, is the imbalance the natural
environment is experiencing. David Buckel by his death is saying that by the rate
at which we are burning fossil fuel we (mankind) are going to die a premature
death, indeed it is already happening. I have given facts and figures to
support that position. It is not only human life that is being cut short, it is
the whole natural environment that is coming apart. Please note that if the
natural environment comes apart terminally, human life too should come apart
terminally, because there should be nothing to support human life, for that
matter any other life form!
Let us heed the positive significance of David Buckel’s
self-immolation, sad as it is, for a better natural environment!
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