Malikov wrote:
I realize what you are saying, however, many animals are able to live, correction, only able to live in an environment with high Co2 levels. Did you know that when Dinosaurs roamed the Earth the Co2 levels were so high, that current projections of human based activities recreating that environment would take so long, we would adapt to breathing Co2 before the level was reached? Humans can't control when, or how the Earth changes. The force of nature works its hand in ways that we can never control. We can't even accurately predict the weather. Forcasts are guess's, at best. Yes, it's true that having a larger percentage of trees covering Earth will result in more oxygen within the atmosphere, but that's not the only thing humans breathe. The atmosphere is made up of 72-78 percent nitrogen. Oxygen is also a poison, believe it or not. To much oxygen will knock out a human. So, I do see where your coming from, I really do, but it seems that your impression is that humans have a control over the environment that we will never have. This is why I feel that your proposal's goal is an unfortunate congregation of propganda and fearmongering, which is why i will never support this.
I am not really "fear mongering" anything. At least, that is not my intention.
I also happen to know the specific mixture of gases we do breathe. I just say oxygen for simplicity sake. It is readily recognizable by most people. So let's try to put semantics aside, and get to the heart of the matter, shall we?
While I agree that we do not have
complete control over our environment, it is also true that we are the only species that have been able to, and have, in fact, changed our environment (unaturalle, of course.) That alone, is significant. Since that is, indeed, a fact, then it is also a fact that we can, to some degree, affect the direction our environment is headed in. Currently, it is headed in the wrong direction from what our species happens to have adapted to flourish in.
btw, yes, it may have been possible for us to adapt to Co2, but it would not have been practical at all. In fact, the very reason why we have attained our sentience to begin with, and the very reason why modern animals are many, many times more intelligent than animals in the past is due to the fact that we use "oxygen" as our medium for breathing.
You see, you can do a simple experiment. Light a candle, and put it into an enclosed area (say a bell jar or something) and fill it with Co2. What happens is that the flame will die out. Take another bell jar (your control) and fill it with the air that we breathe. The candle will continue to burn.
Now, to make things more interesting, take a third bell jar and will it with....say....methane gas. The thing will flare up quite heartily indeed.
The point? Methane (being another gaseous alternative that we could have developed on) is extremely volitile (spelling?). It wouldn't really be safe for us to breath, because we could very easily spontaneously combust if we get too warm. Co2 does not carry enough energy for a flame to survive, and so, a more intelligent brain wouldn't have any real means to develop in such an environment. (The larger, more intelligent a brain, the more energy an animal needs. Dinosaurs has peanut-sized brains, so they didn't need anything more than Co2.) But oxygen is the perfect medium for truly complex lifeforms to develop sentience, or semi-sentience. It isn't too volitile, but is volitile enough for our purposes. One could even say it is the "perfect" gas (mixture of several different gases, as you already pointed out lol.)
So yes, trying to protect this
invaluable gas would truly be in everyone's best interests. That is why I fail to see why any nation wouldn't support helping the environment, if a proposal could be built that wouldn't hurt any nation economically.