Mother Earth Monday – Breathing Earth

breathing earth

So you have a few friends who have a hard time wrapping their minds around just how rapidly the earth population is growing or just how much carbon is getting tossed into the air every minute of every day. Well, as it turns out, there is a website that shows every birth, death and emission in real time. Go ahead and follow this link to the Breathing Earth website. It is very odd to sit and watch how the little blinking birth light in India never stops or how often places like the US and China flash red for CO2. Worse is how rarely it indicates a decrease in the emissions from years past.

I think what I found most unsettling is just how many flashes there are for birth compared to death. I am not particularly happy about the death of others, but at the same time realizing that the lowest I have rarely seen the ratio go has been 3 births for every 1 death, it is a bit disturbing. For many people, watching it play out in real time is somehow able to cement the reality of things more clearly in their minds. The site offers no answers, no suggestions. There is nothing there telling you how it should be or what you should do. It only offers the facts as they are playing out over the course of your visit.

As I write this, I have it playing in the browser. At the five minute mark, these are the numbers. 250,000 tonnes of CO2 have been measurably put into the air. 513 people have died and 1270 were born. Roughly twice the births to deaths. Half of the map is gray from their contribution to the CO2 and four countries don’t seem to have ever stopped flashing red. Russia, China, India and the US. It is a real eye opener. I highly suggest you give it a look and perhaps allow others to see it as well. If nothing else, it is sobering. The act of quoting what the final numbers were at the end of this article would change the numbers, so I can’t include a final tally. As of this sentence, the totals seem to have roughly doubled. Scary thought.

What are your thoughts?

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