What does Mother Earth say about our depletion of the planet’s resources? 
A well-run business takes regular inventories, just as a smart human being performs regular medical check-ups. As Earth’s principal custodians, it is our duty to take stock of our planet’s health and the state of its resources. As much as we may try to avoid that task — no doubt realizing that the results of such a survey will be nothing less than alarming — the mounting disruptions we are experiencing with respect to extreme weather, availability of water and energy resources, or even access to essential commodities such as grain, fish stocks or arable land, all point towards our gross mismanagement of the planet’s resources and equilibrium. I want to give a voice to Mother Earth by providing a brief synopsis of what we know about the state of our planet’s resources, in the hope that this will prompt some earnest action.
There is no equal to a mother in the undivided and selfless care and attention given to a child. Our Mother Earth has provided equal care and attention to every one of us, providing us with every essential resource needed to thrive and in quantities far beyond anything necessary for a good life. Unfortunately, we have been the worst children, taking far in excess of our share of what we need, killing off other species in the process, and watching silently also as our fellow human beings suffer from the damage we have done to our planet’s resources and stability. But Mother Earth is in our mind, in our body, in our breath, and we cannot help but realise that we have gone too far, feeling the consequences within us, as Mother Earth chides us. The picture, unfortunately, is bleak.
About 90 percent of all fish stocks are either fully exploited, overexploited or already collapsed as we speak. Some scientists estimate that in less than 40 years there may be no more fish left in the sea. We often forget that the world’s oceans provide twice as much oxygen as all of the Earth’s forests combined, but, once the oceans are dead, they will no longer provide us with any oxygen. For the first time, last year the Amazon basin emitted more CO2 than it absorbed, due to deforestation rates surpassing 10,000 sq. km of Amazon rainforest per year. Entire rivers and seas like the Arab Sea have already run dry, and one-third of once-rich agricultural land have already been degraded due to erosion, salinization, and pollution. By some calculations, we are exceeding the Earth’s biological capacity by 20 percent, but in 2030 we will require 50 percent more energy and 30 percent more water if we are all to survive.
Mother Earth is telling us quite plainly that enough is enough and that we would do good to heed her warnings.
While humans need just 15 to 20 liters of water per day to meet our basic needs, a single American uses 8,300 liters (or 2,200 gallons) of water per day, taking into account the water that goes into daily consumption of food and goods. With agricultural irrigation using up about 70 percent of global freshwater withdrawals, more than 2 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water today, and almost 3 billion people — or about 40 percent of the world’s population — live in water-scarce regions where the slightest disturbance in water supplies can result in the most dire of consequences. Most shamefully, over a billion people in the world go hungry every day. The current rate of global biodiversity loss is estimated to lie between 100 and 1,000 times the naturally occurring background extinction rate that has held throughout most of the history of life on Earth. Today, almost one-third of the 134,400 endangered species currently on the IUCN Red List are threatened with extinction, representing more than twice the number threatened with extinction only 15 years ago.
Faced with this harsh and ominous reality, we have been turning to the soothsayers of technology, principally young computer whizzes who try to sell quick fixes and nebulous theories of how we can overcome all of this through technology. At the same time, we also have many youths, in part inspired by Greta Thunberg, trying to force us all to take responsibility for the damage we have done and trying to encourage new habits through innovation, as the youth of Arabia is doing today. We need to combine such youthful energy with wisdom and the benefits of technology if we are to harness it, rather than leave it to a technological Wall Street marketplace of greed and exploitation.
This is our wake-up call. Mother Earth is telling us quite plainly that enough is enough and that we would do good to heed her warnings. To conclude I would like to quote part of a poem that artificial intelligence wrote for me on the topic, poignantly expressing our feelings about this planet in words chosen by an AI technology:
“Oh, let us wake from this oblivion deep,
And sow the seeds of change before we weep.
For Mother Nature’s voice, a plea so dire,
To mend the wounds, rekindle the fire.
Together we can forge a brighter morn,
A legacy of hope, where love is born.
For Earth, our home, deserves our utmost care,
A masterpiece of life, beyond compare.”
- Hassan bin Youssef Yassin worked with Saudi petroleum ministers Abdullah Tariki and Ahmed Zaki Yamani from 1959 to 1967. He led the Saudi Information Office in Washington from 1972 to 1981 and served with the Arab League observer delegation to the UN from 1981 to 1983.
