Cyanobacteria and us
The great ecological changes have occurred on many occasions in the history of our planet. Paleontology has given us five massive destructions, and many argue that today we are at the center of the sixth, because of human beings. However, not exactly the same are facts capable of causing massive destructions as living beings capable of transforming the planet itself. This is explained by the paleontologist Xabier Murelaga, in the central theme of this issue. In fact, the list of biological transformers on the planet is very short: there are cyanobacteria and then we.
Cyanobacteria changed the world 2,000 million years ago with the emission of oxygen into the atmosphere. To these photosynthetic bacteria we owe the atmosphere with oxygen and ozone layer. Cyanobacteria modified the composition of the atmosphere, transforming the world forever. Forever, to us, about 150,000 years ago, in Africa. According to Murelaga, until we arrived there has not been a change on Earth similar to that caused by cyanobacteria.
Human beings have acquired the ability to transform the world through technology since we were born. And if the transformative tool of cyanobacteria was oxygen, certainly ours is technology. From agriculture to the pans that land in the comets, technology has allowed us to disperse all over the planet and as we have dispersed, we have been modeling our environment: we have exploited the surface and the subsoil, we live surrounded by compounds that do not exist in nature, and we have even influenced the atmosphere and the oceans.
We are many and effective, so much so that more than one has announced that we will be victims of our ability to transform the world. For this not to happen, there are those who have the hope set in technology, others who argue that we have to face the overpopulation and there are those who demand the need for a degrowth, like economist Alejandro Arizkun. All of them collected in the collection of articles “Transformers of the planet”.
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