How To Live On Earth

MIYINGO Ivan, MPhil, B. Pharm, MPS

10. Gold, Mercury & Poisoned River

Artisanal gold mining relies on toxic mercury to extract precious ore, creating a global environmental crisis. The liquid chemical is mixed into river sediments, binding to the gold before being burned off over open flames. 

This process releases devastating neurotoxins directly into the water and air. Microorganisms convert it into methylmercury, which bioaccumulates up the food chain—poisoning fish, rivers, and the communities downstream.

Communities near gold mines pay a devastating price. Upstream mercury pollution poisons local water and fish, triggering severe neurological damage and birth defects. Meanwhile, land evictions, inflation, and a lack of clean infrastructure shatter everyday rural life.

Gold mining relying on mercury creates a dire environmental crisis. The toxic chemical escapes into rivers and soil, mutating into methylmercury that accumulates up the food chain. This ruins ecosystems, poisons fish, and leaves a devastating legacy for downstream communities.

The fundamental problem with conventional gold extraction is that mining companies pocket the financial profits while offloading the devastating ecological and human costs onto the public. 

This destructive process relies heavily on toxic chemicals like mercury and cyanide, which poison river systems, wipe out fragile ecosystems, and lead to extensive deforestation and a permanent loss of biodiversity. 

Ultimately, it is the vulnerable downstream communities who pay the true price, suffering severe, long-term health consequences like neurological damage and birth defects while seeing their ancestral lands and clean water sources completely destroyed for corporate gain.

Nature is invisible to the market, which treats living systems as free, infinite resources. Economic metrics ignore the priceless services that sustain life—like clean air, water purification, and biodiversity—assigning them zero value until they are entirely destroyed.

A dead tree has a price, but a living tree often doesn't. While a dead tree's timber sale is visible in the economic system, a living tree provides carbon storage, habitat, soil protection, water regulation, oxygen, microhabitats, and biodiversity, all unpriced. 

The market ignores these living services, treating natural wealth as worthless until it is destroyed.

The same economic blindspot applies to elephants, whales, forests, wetlands, coral reefs, and bees. They are valued only when dead, harvested, or cleared, while their immense living services remain invisible: ecosystem engineering, water treatment, food security, and climate regulation. 

By assigning these vital networks a market price of zero, the modern economy incentivizes their destruction. Elephants and whales function as planetary engineers that reshape landscapes and fertilize oceans to trap carbon, while bees pollinate global crops and coral reefs shield vulnerable coastlines. 

Likewise, forests and wetlands act as natural water filtration systems and flood barriers. Yet, conventional metrics record zero value for their survival, recognizing economic production only at the exact moment an organism is extracted or a habitat is wiped out. This fundamental flaw blinds our financial system to the true cost of destruction.

Ecosystems can be destroyed while their destruction appears economically rational in the current economic system. Because market prices only track immediate extraction profits, businesses are financially rewarded for clear-cutting forests or polluting rivers for short-term gain. 

The immense long-term costs of ecological collapse are offloaded onto the public as unpriced externalities. This creates a flawed framework where destroying life-support systems is incentivized as rational behavior.

9. Even prisoners benefit from nature

Even prisoners benefit deeply from nature, proving its universal necessity. Studies show that access to green spaces, plants, or even natural light within correctional facilities drastically reduces stress, aggression, and anxiety among inmates. 

Interacting with living systems lowers blood pressure and improves self-regulation. Denying this connection compounds the psychological toll of isolation, while embracing it serves as a powerful, humane tool for rehabilitation and mental healing.

Prisoners find profound purpose by raising endangered western pond turtles. Programs like "Sustainability in Prisons" allow inmates to nurture vulnerable hatchlings until they are large enough to survive wild predators. This unique bond heals human minds while saving a species.

Inmates find redemption and healing by caring for animals. Prison programs nationwide involve inmates in training service dogs, rehabilitating wildlife, or raising livestock. This hands-on care fosters deep empathy, reduces violence, and teaches vital emotional regulation skills.

8. Nature and the human mind

Exposure to natural environments radically resets the human brain. 

According to Attention Restoration Theory (ART), urban spaces exhaust our limited "directed attention," causing deep mental fatigue. 

Nature counters this by engaging "soft fascination"—effortless, involuntary focus on organic stimuli like rustling leaves. 

Clinical trials show that just 30 minutes of green immersion actively calms the parasympathetic nervous system, drastically lowering cortisol while sharpening working memory.

Beyond basic survival commodities, nature functions as a critical cognitive medicine. 

Evolutionarily attuned to natural landscapes, the human nervous system goes into an automated state of physiological recovery when exposed to green spaces.

According to Attention Restoration Theory, natural fractals engage our focus effortlessly through "soft fascination." 

This environmental shift systematically unburdens our overstimulated prefrontal cortex, driving down stress hormones, elevating baseline mood, and restoring depleted creative thinking.

Nature systematically alters human emotion by physically calming the brain's threat center. 

Neuroimaging reveals that a one-hour walk in a natural setting significantly decreases activity in the amygdala—the region responsible for fear, anxiety, and social stress. 

Simultaneously, it reduces blood flow in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, effectively halting negative thought loops and rumination, while sparking immediate feelings of tranquility.

We feel human through a deep interplay of self-awareness, emotional vulnerability, and connection. Unlike other species, we actively seek meaning, narrative, and purpose in our existence. 

We experience complex, nuanced emotions like empathy, grief, and shared joy, allowing us to bond deeply with others. This psychological depth is paired with our physical senses—processing touch, pain, and beauty. 

To feel human is to navigate this dual reality of conscious reflection and raw feeling.

Humans evolved inside nature, adapting over millions of years to its rhythms, climates, and ecosystems. Our biology, senses, and brains were sculpted by the wild, wire-framing a deep, undeniable need for natural spaces to achieve optimal mental and physical well-being.

Our brains and bodies are hardwired for nature. From circadian rhythms tied to the sun to sensory systems optimized for open landscapes, our biology thrives outdoors. Disconnecting from this natural environment creates a mismatch that impacts our modern mental and physical health.

Yet billions of people increasingly live in cities, disconnected from the wild. Urban landscapes replace trees with concrete and birdsong with traffic. This rapid shift creates an environmental mismatch, straining our biology and fueling modern stress, anxiety, and fatigue.

The more disconnected we become from living systems, the more urgent it becomes to understand what this alienation does to us. As cities grow, we trade natural habitats for concrete cages. 

This rift disrupts our circadian rhythms, starves our sensory systems, and drives up rates of chronic stress and anxiety. By ignoring our biological roots, we risk fracturing our mental and physical health. 

Understanding this toll is the first step toward building environments where humans can truly thrive.

7. The Klamath River disaster

The term Klamath River disaster primarily refers to the catastrophic 2002 fish kill, when low water levels caused by agricultural diversions and severe drought triggered a mass epidemic. 

Over 34,000 migrating adult salmon died from fatal gill infections in the stagnating, overheated currents. 

The ecological collapse decimated tribal livelihoods, sparking decades of Indigenous activism that ultimately culminated in the historic 2024 removal of four river dams to restore the basin.

When roads, dams, and cities intersect natural landscapes, they trigger habitat fragmentation. 

This linear interference acts as a physical barrier that isolates wildlife, severs critical migration corridors, and limits genetic diversity.

Dams block vital fish spawning routes, while roads permanently alter hydrology, introduce noise pollution, and increase animal mortality. 

By breaking up continuous ecosystems into artificial boundaries, human infrastructure ultimately degrades ecosystem services and destabilizes local biodiversity.

The lower Klamath River was radically transformed by four massive hydroelectric dams constructed between 1918 and 1962: J.C. Boyle, Copco No. 1, Copco No. 2, and Iron Gate.

Built without tribal consent, these structures blocked over 400 miles of vital upstream spawning grounds, driving historic salmon populations down to less than 5% of their original numbers. 

The stagnant reservoirs heated the water and bred toxic algae, causing severe ecological degradation until their historic removal in 2024.

During the devastating 2002 Klamath River drought, a massive run of returning Chinook salmon became tightly bottlenecked in shallow, stagnant waters. 

Upstream agricultural water diversions had drastically depleted river flows, causing temperatures to soar and oxygen levels to plunge. 

These suffocating, overcrowded pools quickly bred lethal pathogens like ich and columnaris. 

Trapped without a deep water cue to migrate, over 34,000 adult salmon suffocated and died before they could spawn.

In late September 2002, the banks of the lower Klamath River were littered with over 65,000 rotting adult salmon. 

The catastrophic die-off occurred when Returning Chinook, bottlenecked by low flows and warm temperatures, suffered a lethal epidemic of gill rot. 

The stench of the massive losses filled the air, devastating tribal communities and cementing the crisis as the worst salmon disaster in the history of the American West.

Following the 2002 disaster, Klamath Basin tribes like the Yurok and Karuk pivoted to the legal and political systems, initiating the "Bring the Salmon Home" campaign. 

They filed relentless lawsuits under the Endangered Species Act, packed corporate utility hearings, and staged multi-city protests. 

This strategic pressure forced PacifiCorp into negotiations, culminating in a historic multi-party settlement that legally cleared the path for the 2024 dam removals.

6. Indigenous knowledge and the salmon

To Coastal First Nations, Pacific salmon are a sacred, cultural keystone species. 

For millennia, Indigenous stewardship relied on Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) to manage fisheries through selective tools like wooden fish weirs and traps, ensuring enough fish escaped upstream to spawn. 

This relationship is driven by strict reciprocity—communities honor the salmon spirit by protecting and keeping rivers clean, validating a multigenerational cycle where human survival and thriving marine-forest networks are completely intertwined.

The Klamath River Basin is the ancestral home to several Indigenous nations, including the Yurok Tribe, Karuk, Hoopa Valley, Shasta, and Klamath Tribes. 

Known as the "People of the Salmon," their culture, diet, and spiritual identities are directly tied to the river's wild fish. 

Following decades of intense tribal activism, the communities successfully spearheaded the largest dam-removal project in U.S. history, liberating over 400 miles of blocked waterways to restore the basin's historic salmon runs.

For Pacific Northwest and West Coast Indigenous tribes like the Yurok, Haida, and Swinomish, wild salmon are revered as sacred relatives and supernatural beings rather than a mere food source. 

Traditional beliefs often view salmon as immortal humans who voluntarily transform to nourish the people. 

In ancestral First Salmon Ceremonies, communities carefully return the fish skeletons back to the water to ensure their souls are reincarnated, sustaining a sacred bond of reciprocal stewardship.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) demands a foundational respect for natural limits. 

Rather than maximizing short-term yields, Indigenous communities utilize selective "terminal harvesting" tools like cedar fish traps and weirs. 

These systems catch only what a community needs, leaving the structural maze completely open during peak migratory windows. 

This structural buffer protects essential salmon escapement, ensuring healthy spawning generations return upstream to sustain the holistic marine-forest network.

Take from nature without destroying nature's ability to replenish itself.

This principle is the cornerstone of Indigenous sustainability, often referred to as the Seventh Generation Principle or Honorable Harvest. 

Rather than maximizing exploitation, it mandates taking only what is needed, never harvesting the first or last of a resource, and leaving a minimal footprint. 

Driven by strict reciprocity, communities actively give back through habitat stewardship. 

This ensures humans function as integrated caretakers, keeping extraction safely within the planet’s natural replenishment boundaries.

5. The forest is not a collection of trees

Ecologist Suzanne Simard proved forests aren’t just collections of trees, but complex societies. 

Through underground mycorrhizal networks (the "Wood Wide Web"), a dominant "Mother Tree" actively shares carbon, water, and warning signals to nurture and protect her saplings.

Forests operate as cooperative societies through underground mycorrhizal networks. 

Research by Suzanne Simard demonstrates that mature "Mother Trees" act as central hubs, routing surplus carbon, water, and vital nutrients to younger, shaded seedlings to boost their survival.

Furthermore, this mutual aid crosses species lines. 

For instance, Douglas firs and paper birches engage in reciprocal relationships, trading carbon back and forth depending on who needs it most during changing seasons.

Salmon function as an essential cross-ecosystem bridge. 

After accumulating vital nutrients in the ocean, they swim back up freshwater rivers to spawn and die.

Predators and scavengers, like bears and eagles, carry the salmon carcasses directly onto land. 

As these remains decompose, they infuse the soil with marine-derived nitrogen and phosphorus. 

This nutrient subsidy permeates the riparian zone, feeding plants and causing streamside trees to grow up to three times faster.

In a snapshot, Forests are vast biological networks tied directly to the open sea. Wild salmon absorb unique marine-derived nitrogen-15 in the ocean. 

When apex predators like grizzly bears drag spawning salmon into the woods, they distribute carcass remains and nutrient-rich droppings across the forest floor. 

Up to 70% of the nitrogen in streamside trees comes directly from these fish. 

This oceanic fertilizer causes trees to grow up to three times faster, weaving the deep sea into the modern forest ecosystem.

4. The elephant isn't just an elephant

Elephants are the largest land mammals, led by tight matriarchal herds. 

These ecosystem engineers possess immense emotional complexity, mourn their dead, and use a trunk of 150,000 muscle units for everything from breathing to picking up blades of grass.

Historically valued extractively, raw ivory fetched up to $2,100/kg at its black-market peak. 

While retail "street value" for carved tusks can reach thousands, a live elephant generates $25M annually in African tourism revenue—proving them 76x more valuable alive than dead.

As ecosystem engineers, live elephants hold immense value. 

An IMF analysis pegs a single live forest elephant's carbon sequestration services at over $1.75 million.

By knocking down vegetation, trampling underbrush, and dispersing seeds, they clear space for larger, high-density hardwood trees to thrive and store more carbon. 

Combined with ecotourism revenue, a live elephant generates millions, making them vastly more valuable alive than dead.

3. Wisdom from ancestors

Modern humans aren't the first people to understand how to live with nature. 

Indigenous communities have accumulated knowledge about their environments over thousands of years.

The Day of the Dead for example is a symbolic entry point event. It isn't merely a celebration of deceased relatives. 

It is also about remembering ancestors and recognizing the relationship between generations, land and community.

Environmental crisis documentaries like H2Omx showcase the severe ecological collapse of Mexico City's wetlands (like Xochimilco). 

Diverting natural springs to supply a booming urban population dried up water systems, driving endemic species like the axolotl to near extinction.

The lesson is: Modern society often treats nature as raw material, whereas traditional cultures frequently understood nature as the foundation of community life.

Ancestral knowledge anchors modern life by offering communal rituals that counter isolation and stress. 

Indigenous systems view wellness holistically, treating mind, body, and spirit as interconnected rather than fragmented. 

Practices like somatic grounding, lineage journaling, and maintaining small reflective altars help individuals process transgenerational trauma outside traditional Western medicine. 

Reclaiming these roots fosters emotional resilience, repairs family dynamics, and empowers authentic leadership.

2. Bees

Nature's free services have started to disappear. Take China's enormous pear-growing region for example. 

Instead of bees naturally pollinating flowers, human workers are forced to pollinate the pear trees manually. 

They collect flowers, extract pollen and then use feather dusters to distribute that pollen among the trees.

The reason?

The widespread use of pesticides has contributed to the loss of natural pollinators. And now humans are attempting to replace the bees.

There are also experiments with drones as artificial pollinators.

And the irony is obvious: Human beings have developed sophisticated technology to replace something that nature was already doing for free.

And bees don't simply pollinate pears. Pollinators are involved in the production of a huge proportion of cultivated crops. 

This shows how we can be extremely clever while simultaneously making extremely unwise decisions. 

Are we really the most intelligent species on Earth ?

1. We don't need Mars

We don't need Mars as a safety net. Relying on a hypothetical escape planet encourages an unsustainable "throwaway" mindset. 

Critics argue that the massive, multi-billion-dollar investments needed to fund deep-space colonization should instead be actively deployed on Earth. 

Our immediate, ethical focus must prioritize cleaning up global oceans, lowering atmospheric pollution, and eradicating systemic terrestrial crises like poverty and famine. 

Mars is a dead, toxic desert; saving our living home is the ultimate priority.

If human beings are supposedly the most intelligent species on Earth, why are we making the planet increasingly difficult for ourselves and other species to live on?

Lately, I've been listening to Shacky Rhymes. I had no idea we still had such talent on the planet. I could listen to her for the next 15 years. Ahem!

Humanity doesn't necessarily need some miraculous new technology or another planet to escape to. We already possess many of the tools needed to create a prosperous future.

The problem is that we have become extremely good at extracting from nature, but not nearly as good at understanding, valuing and cooperating with nature.

The proposed solution is a change in the human role: from consumer and exploiter of nature to steward, partner and "global gardener."

Whenever people discuss humanity's future, someone inevitably suggests that perhaps we should move to Mars. 

We don't need Mars. Maybe Mars needs us for that matter. How does building rockets to Mars fill empty bellies in Karamoja? 

Why would one think about going to Mars yet we haven't figured out how the Pyramids in Egypt were built?

Earth is an extraordinarily sophisticated life-support system that humanity has inherited but didn't create.

We depend on countless processes we rarely notice: pollination, healthy soils, forests, rivers, oceans, insects, fungi, microorganisms, biodiversity, carbon storage, clean water, and functioning ecosystems. 

We tend to think of these things as separate environmental issues. But these are actually one interconnected system.