Marcia L. Gerencser
We began with a massive area of land. A country of phenomenal beauty. A country that housed mountain ranges, coastal plains, forests, deserts, different soils, a proliferation of water and a variety of climates and scenery. All of this guaranteed the inhabitants of our country a wide assortment of food, vegetation and wildlife. This great generosity was eventually abused by politicians, urbanization, industrialization and the everyday greed and carelessness of everyday man. Our land, our air and our water became the target of pollution. Illness, although not always obvious, was the end result in the young, the middle-aged and the elderly alike.
We must provide our younger population with all the knowledge that we can so that they might be qualified and confident to tackle the ecological problems that they may encounter in the future. It is highly relevant that there exists in man an intellectual understanding of our ecosystem and how the diversity of life is maintained. The world is a collection of relevant parts. To know what it is and how it functions is important. There is a biogeochemical cycle constantly functioning. These parts must be kept in harmony in order to be productive and function to their maximum potential. A clear understanding is necessary in order to create a situation on Mars that can be sustained by humans and other life forms. It is important to look back to the past and realize how and why we have created the world that we now inhabit. A world that is saturated by pollution and environmental problems.
If given the chance, could we start over and learn from our past? Could we, as an intelligent community, take the intent of Earth Day 1970 and let it design a living situation that would sustain life on Mars and also sustain a healthy and naturally balanced ecosystem? Can our youth, that we are leaving our experiences to, do the same? Can there be economic advances without destruction? If we can show our children how such action warrants pride in preservation, then maybe we will have some honest and legitimate hope for the future.
Why not start from scratch? Take a land that is presently uninhabited, such as Mars, and establish a settlement. Hopefully, we would have learned from our past and how we have contaminated our world. We should look toward preservation by conservation. As a precursor to actually settling Mars, one must fully comprehend the relationship between organisms and their environment. One must understand ecological principles in order to understand ecological problems. This will be achieved in a way that young minds will be stimulated. It will include three units that will run concurrently. These units will cover pesticides, ecology and recycling. They will be followed by a unit in gardening and Biosphere 2.
