#5 The Resourceful Planet
Over the past few years, national space agencies, private aerospace corporations, and space scientists have shown active interest in exploring the possibility of human settlement on Mars. Unmanned rovers have successfully landed and begun exploring the planet. Human Mars missions are in the plans. There are many challenges though: subfreezing temperatures, radiation exposure, toxic soil, lack of water, lack of food, etc. To compensate for some of the obstacles, the plan is to take as many assets from Earth as possible and build up a mechanism to generate such resources on Mars continually. Unlike Earth, Mars is not a naturally resourceful planet for hosting life. It must import resources from Earth to enable humans to become self-sufficient on the red planet.
Resources for Life
Having a habitable planet that can support life requires several favorable conditions that interact with each other in complex ways to create a viable ecosystem. But just because a planet is habitable does not necessarily mean that it will inevitably end up hosting life. If Earth had all the favorable conditions to host life – as detailed in the previous blog – but nothing more, it may still not qualify as a life-hosting planet. Biological life, it turns out, needs much more to subsist. And if life is to thrive on a planet – as it does on Earth – many more additional resources are required to make that happen.
Planet Earth is not just a habitable planet for life but a highly resourceful one. The abundance of such resources has made it possible for biological life to not only survive but flourish on it. Simple unicellular life requires limited resources for survival. As the complexity of life increases, so do the supplies and assets necessary for their sustenance. Human beings – the most complex biological species on Earth – require much more resources than any other biological species to have an acceptable standard of living. It turns out our planet fulfills all our existential and growing needs.
Let’s look at some of the core resources that our planet provides us.
Habitat
If Earth passed all the requirements of the habitability of life but carried barren land and water only, would it be able to host life? Some highly resilient single-celled microorganisms may survive on water and soil nutrients alone. But organisms more complex than those would likely not have made it. Barren land and water alone cannot provide the nutrients living organisms need for survival.
Every living organism requires nutrition, shelter, and a safe environment to perpetuate life. Such an ecosystem constitutes the habitat for a particular species. Habitats provide a steady supply of nutrition for living organisms, a safe place to live in and procreate life, and protection from hostile enemies. Our planet is host to many rich habitats – rainforest, grassland, savanna, desert, tundra, ocean, sea, etc. – that collectively host millions of biological species. These habitats provide all the resources a living species needs to survive: food and water to nourish living organisms, a protective sanctuary to dwell in, and a safe environment to procreate and nurture life.
Earth’s numerous habitats serve as a rich resource for humans too. No matter which habitat they dwell in – desert, tundra, prairie, or forest – humans find an ample supply of food, nourishment, shelter, clothing, and accessories to enrich their lives from each habitat. Historically, they have found shelter using caves, mud, and wood, food and clothing through plants and animals, and tools and accessories from their living environments. None of these essential survival resources would be available for humans if Earth lacked viable habitable environments for life.
Water
No planet can host life without water. Earth is fortunate to have a large portion of its surface – almost 71% – covered with water at life-friendly temperatures. This huge expanse of water body serves as the habitat for over two million marine species. Moreover, Earth’s water cycle and wind patterns ensure that water from the oceans evaporates and falls on most places on Earth, providing the basic ingredient of life to over six million biological species on land. None of the plants and animals on land would exist without this incessant supply of water. Earth’s endless water supply is the foremost resource for sustaining habitats and life. Any planet wishing to carry life on it must be rich in this resource.
Food
While water is essential for life, it alone is not sufficient. Living organisms need a continuous supply of proper nutrition to subsist. Our planet not only provides basic food of nutritional value to its inhabitants, it showers them with such abundance that over eight million biological species live comfortably on it. Planet Earth is extremely rich in food sources for all kinds of animals and plants – on land and in the sea.
Humans, at the top of the food chain, have access to every kind of nutritional source found on the planet – including the thousands of different kinds of meat, seafood, animal products, dairy products, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and grains. Together, this panoply of edibles supplies diverse sources of nutrition that generously cover all the macronutrients – carbohydrates, fat, protein – that our bodies need. They also carry every kind of micronutrient – vitamins, minerals, water – that we need to function and grow healthily.
It would have been sufficient for our sustenance if we had access to all the necessary food sources. Human beings would have easily survived. Yet our planet provides us with more than the bare minimum. It showers us with hundreds of natural seasonings and spices that add appetizing flavoring and aroma to our food and make it much more palatable. The human experience of life has been exquisitely enriched by the different cuisines they have developed from the variety of food and seasonings on our planet.
Commodities
Planet Earth supplies us with several commodities that alleviate our daily hardships and make life smoother for us. Besides spices that enrich our lives through the food seasonings they provide, our planet is host to thousands of herbs that offer tangible medicinal benefits for our bodies. Many common sicknesses that we endure daily are curable by traditional herbal medicines – obtained through natural herbs – that have proven effective for thousands of years.
Domesticated cattle have assisted humans in drastically reducing their workload, especially in farming. Cattle provide additional benefits for us, such as leather and hides. Beasts of burden – horses, donkeys, camels – have been heavily used to transport cargo over long distances and rough terrain as well as for moving faster individually. Certain plant-based fibers, such as cotton and linen, are an excellent source of very fine fabric worn and used by humans. The list of commodities that our planet provides us is long. Our lives would certainly have been miserable without such precious commodities.
Cultivable Land
Besides seafood, all the food we consume is obtained, directly or indirectly, from land. Humans cultivate land to grow crops (such as rice and wheat) every year as well as for permanent crops (like fruits and nuts) that do not need annual plantation. Together, these harvests account for a major portion of the human diet. Every kind of grain, fruit, vegetables, nuts, and spices are grown on Earth that is cultivated on land.
Not all land on Earth’s surface is cultivable though. The soil must be rich and meet certain criteria for it to be considered cultivable. Currently, only about 11.6% of Earth’s land is cultivated. This seemingly small proportion of land turns out to be sufficient to meet the consumption needs of the ever-growing human population. If the need arises in the future, there is room for more land from the available forests, meadows, and pastures that can be cleared for cultivation.
The survival of the human race is intricately linked to the presence of soil-rich cultivable land on our planet. If Earth had primarily been a rocky, mountainous, dry, barren, salty, marshy, cold, or hot planet with an inhospitable soil composition, or one with very little cultivable land, growing crops at the scale that we do now would have been impossible. Humanity would have faced acute hunger without an adequate and continuous food supply to keep them alive. The human race would not have grown in population. It may not have survived at all.
Energy Sources
The Sun is the primary source of energy for our planet. But it is not the only one. The dominant source of energy that human beings use to power their lifestyles comes not from outside but from within Earth. For millennia, humans have been using wood – widely available on our planet – to ignite fire for cooking, warmth, and other needs. As they progressed, they learned to use other energy sources found on our planet – wind, water, coal, oil – albeit on a small scale.
The Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries became a game-changer for harnessing Earth’s powerful energy resources for our use. Human beings discovered the vast reservoir of our planet’s non-renewable fossil fuels – coal, oil, natural gas – and developed technologies to harness them for energy production. As a result, Earth’s fossil fuels now account for over 80% of energy production and utilization by human beings.
Human beings would have survived on Earth had our planet been resourceful in food sources only. But without our planet’s usable energy resources, our ability to increase food production would have been limited. We would have been struck with world famine. Moreover, we would not have been able to build our economies, businesses, factories, technologies, and conveniences of all kinds that improve our lifestyles. Without Earth’s vast energy resources, we would still be stuck in the stone age. The energy resources on Earth have been an indispensable boon to which we haven’t given due respect, appreciation, and recognition.
Raw Materials
Unlike many planets that are primarily composed of hydrogen and helium, Earth is a rich planet that is host to all the naturally occurring elements found in nature. Such an abundance of natural elements has empowered human beings to build all kinds of materials and objects for everyday use: buildings, roads, ships, airplanes, steel, plastic, ceramic, semiconductors, and so on. Had Earth been deficient in its natural resources, human society would not have developed so far. We would be limited in what we could achieve, produce, and develop for the benefit of humanity.
It should be quite obvious by now that our planet is a special place. It is not just a hospitable planet for life but a highly resourceful one too. It has all the amenities necessary for biological life to flourish and for intelligent life like humans to develop, grow, and advance. A planet needs to possess all the precise prerequisites to host life. Having the ability to survive, proliferate, and grow demands many more favorable conditions. Carrying all the precious resources for intelligent life to innovate, develop, and advance their civilization adds another layer of tough constraints. Our planet gives us all.
We take for granted the things we possess. We may not appreciate, or even recognize, what our planet bestows us with every moment of our lives. But it’s about time we open our eyes, look around us, and appreciate the precious gifts we possess. Planet Earth may not be the only planet in the universe with this unique set of qualities. There could certainly be many more. We don’t know. But it is, very likely, a rare phenomenon. Any planet that exhibits the innumerable qualities that Earth possesses must be a special place. And it must give us pause to think and reflect on this exceptional gift.
Tell us what you think about Earth’s vast resources that we use every day without batting an eyelid. What would happen if any one resource went missing? Oil? Carbon? Cultivable land? Where would we be? How will it affect our daily lives? It’s about time we take really good care of our planet.