Speech by Mr. Carlos Peralta, President of OPP Organization for Peace, in UICN XIX General Assembly of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Bs As Argentina 24.01.94
THESIS: HOUSES WITHOUT CONCRETE, AIR, WATER, ROOF
Ladies and gentlemen, friends of the journalism and colleagues, we are here today for this event that gathered specialists for the Environment coming from all over the world, drawn by the same concern which is the current delicate situation getting worse and worse. I am referring to the situation of our big house, from now on this is how we will call the planet earth where we live, which we could also lose together with everything it is providing us since millions of years allowing us to leave with dignity.
Our work as member of a humanitarian organization composed by reporters, which some years ago founded the Organization for Peace OPP, at the UN headquarters in NY on the 24th October 1991, in a commemorative date as it correspond to the anniversary of the world organization, where we all committed to inform on humanitarian actions carried out by the UN, at the same time as selflessly contributors proposing projects that we or someone else could develop and accomplish the mission of watching over a fair evolution of our habitat and society, working in favor of Peace for everyone, as we know that it could be reached in a short term, joining forces as this is the only way to succeed in reaching peace. We also committed to another thing: every time that the UN will call, we should take action to protect human rights that this world organization keeps on securing and monitoring, as it keeps on doing since the 70s to ensure a suitable climate for human life, while society is dumb and doses not care about those issues that are leading us through a sad path. This alarm comes because we are violently threatening hour big house, which will consequently affects us the global population, as it is now clear that we are sharing the same habitat and what damages one, it damages everyone.
This world summit held here in Buenos Aires, called XIX Assembly of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, is one more call for human conscience as damages are not caused by only one person, we are all consumers, aggressors and in charge of environmental disorder. For this reason it is good to highlight a thesis enhancing with the experience gained during the years in order to accomplish our mission, specially when a signal like this one is alarming communications specialists, so we have to send the signal as we are supposed to do, which means as international reporters and responsible of a humanitarian organization committed to serve society. The planet is in advanced danger for human life and we should remember that some years ago, we were warned about glaciers melting down in arctic and Antarctic and the risk of disappearance of the two poles that regulate human life on earth, that the inclination and the rotation of the planet could change damaging forever this globe that functioned perfectly for millions of years.
Those huge ice blocks as big as a province or as a small country have been floating in the oceans for ages, until they risk to melt and release a big quantity of water that is the world’s biggest reservation of water. These 50 kilometers long ice blocks that we heard when we worked as reporters in Mar del Plata in the Atlantic Coast, where we discovered that they transformed into salted water when mixing with the ocean water. In addition, we have to deal with the lack of attention or unconsciousness of the big industries supported by governments that authorize this disorder, so that they could keep carrying on their activities without control and without complying with rules to protect the environment, threatening human life in a way that in a short term it could be to late to deal with and find solutions to an environmental catastrophe, if we are here today it is because we know we can do something to recover what has been damaged and that tomorrow it would be too late to deal with the damages caused by men to the earth that God gave us, which is our planet providing us with food everyday. We all have not taken care of our planet, specially in the last two centuries characterized by an unprecedented industrial development, which is also affecting ourselves.
This let us see that we benefited from many advantages, in terms of microclimate developed during millenniums that we and the future generations should try to start reconstructing again, as we were the heirs of the human history provided with a suitable climate, which in a short time we have wasted in return for temporary comforts, which made clear that the future always exists, leaving our planet to the point of collapse.
Ladies and gentlemen, please believe that this is the truth, we are staying in our unique house we are provided without concrete, a stable floor, a roof, and we are extracting from the center of the earth everything that was giving us stability, though knowing that the planet is seismic and it keeps in a constant movement, while we are destroying the solid basement sustaining the floor of our house that lasted a long time in solidifying with different layers necessary to become completely adaptable and suitable for human life. In the last centuries we have been wasting the planet without any control, starting with water, without taking care of finding a way to process the ocean water and make it drinkable, following with fuels as gas or petroleum formed by fossil remains which in millions of years deposited creating different layers, today we are extracting it to use it as fuel that pollutes the environment, forgetting that we are able to use other kinds of clean energies such as solar energy that has been opportunely ignored, which could replace all the sources of energy that we have wasted so far and that are part of the basement of our house, leaving a void and a hole under the floor of the house we are all sharing.
We know that all those massive extractions eliminate the layers isolating high temperatures in the center of the earth, which reaches hot temperatures because of the subterranean volcanic lava rivers. This process helps causing global warming in the next decades, causing increased draughts and fires that would be difficult to stop once they reach the surface of the earth as they can multiply simultaneously in different parts of the world and we do not have the necessary tools to control such an unforeseen disaster.
Many guilty innocents will appear, some of them accused of being arsonists while they would just preparing a barbeque in the garden, as people use to think about what is beyond the space forgetting what is close to them. The same effect of high temperatures causing global warming and draughts, will be clear inside the earth, with organic materials that due to a lack of oxygen and an increased acidity will transform into layers of earthy carbon that will surely be the cause of subterranean fires that, with draughts and global warming, crack the earth and appear in the surface causing fires in volcanic regions such as California or in other similar territories.
In addition to this negative balance, we have extracted water and it will take it more and more to complete its cycle and return to the source, which sometimes will be impossible, as fuels used specially for airplanes –for transport, carriage, passengers, militaries – to irrigate fields with a fuel covering the soil blocking water from returning to its origin, as it used to do by cause and effect through evaporation and rain, while now it takes it much time to get back, be filtered and ready to drink as it cannot penetrate the soil, water will find its path through rivers until reaching the sea and being finally wasted as it could not be taken back but causing floods still unknown. Furthermore, what first seemed to be a solution turned out a big damage, as in the case of pesticides used to irrigate the soil, destroying our unique source of nourishment. It is also now common to bury refuse inside the mother earth, as injecting it into its veins, or dispersing refuse in the air when the new recycling plant warm at high temperatures toxic polluting substances that damage irreparably environment and bring about new illnesses, the same thing has happened with nuclear tests in Polynesia and in Mururoa Atoll since 1966 or in the isles of the Caribbean, which became unsuitable for human life, or other secret experimental tests developed in different countries of the world, under the sea, inside the earth, in the surface, where we have forgotten that earth gives us life every day but earth too has its own life…
People working in the army of the different countries in the world every day recharge their nuclear arms and missiles to demonstrate who is the most powerful in the international scenario, and this put humanity at risk, and helpless population support a program of terror that could be simply part of human mistakes, but that could cause a terrible tragedy as those powerful weapons could damage human beings and its habitable territories, and so far we already have some sad example with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with about half million victims, among population that was not participating in the war. In all confrontations, innocent people are the first to be affected and suffer the most.
Drawing a balance we can see a broken planet where we are living, poles are starting to melt down and consequently the water will arrive to inhabited coasts forcing population to displace to higher and more secure areas, which will cause a catastrophe as discussed during the earth Summit held on June 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, titled ECO 92, where in a short time the UN called over 170 governments of the world and millions of environmental organization: nevertheless people are still cutting down huge quantities of trees in the Amazonas without caring about the reforestation of this big lung of the planet, able to produce the oxygen needed. On the contrary, forests that have now disappeared, since 1970 have been creating little tornados and storms which due to north south current direction get to the equator line where they mix with hot and cold currents and creates big hurricanes that get bigger in the hot Caribbean sea and start zigzagging and clashing with Atlantic coasts in North America causing victims, those big hurricanes could cross the ocean without loosing speed and even reach the north of Africa and part of Europe, changing life and territories that have been inhabited for millenniums.
We have been severely damaging our big house which is the planet earth that God gave us, and this house is provided with a roof made of ozone protecting us from the sunbeams, which we have been damaging that is like having a house without a roof.
What is left to say, the place left to live, what is left to supply water for our generations and the future ones is just a consequence of our commitment, the damage done by mankind to basis, soil, water, air, roof…
We should work together joining efforts to start reconstructing our big house, with privatization, reforestation, coloring the planet green, every inhabitant of the planet should commit to plant a tree every year so that this action will help the present and the future of our habitat. The future of the planet will always exist, while the future of the man lies in its hands…
Thank you very much.
Carlos Peralta
President of the OPP Organization for Peace
Ambassador and Delegate of the Trialogo for the three Americas and the Caribbean
President of Cadena Iberoamericana de Radio y TV
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