Human Error: Manmade Problems, Manmade Solutions

Mulan Yang
06/24/17

Tintagel Castle Ruins. 05/25/2017. Photo by author.

President Trump pulling the United States out of the Paris climate accord on June 1, 2017 was
disheartening to climate scientists and concerned citizens around the world. As the second largest
polluter on the planet, the United States is responsible for a lot of the problems arising because of
climate change. But wait, you ask, shouldnt we first make sure that climate change is really caused
by humans? Otherwise, theres no point in reducing our carbon emissions. Can human activity really
be having such a massive effect on the entire planet?
Short answer: Yes, it can.
Long answer: Yes, it can, and there are plenty of examples that show the havoc even just a few
humans can wreak. In one case, no one thought their actions were a big deal until they (with a small
boost from Mother Nature) collapsed a land bridge to create a new island and nearly brought down
a cliff face at the same time.
Unfortunately, Im not talking about the fictional example of Avatar Kyoshi creating Kyoshi Island
in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Something similar happened at Tintagel Castle in England, the
supposed birthplace of King Arthur. When I visited, I was slowly hobbling up the tall wooden

ENGW3315: P3FD, hyperlinked citations, word count: 1555.

I would like to thank Julianne Ferguson for peer reviewing this article. I would also like to thank Kathleen
Kelly for sharing her information about Tintagel with me.
staircase after rolling my ankle and took a break to look down at the ocean and cliffs around me.
Strangely, I saw some stairs leading to nowhere (not pictured) carved into the stone. I turned to my
teacher and questioned when those had been in use. Turns out, only 20 years ago, she had crossed to
the castle on those very steps. She then pointed out the large swathes of gray on the cliff, which I
had presumed to be natural. My professor informed me that the discoloration wasnt the cliff itself,
but concrete, put there to prevent the cliff from collapsing like the land bridge. Although you cant
see it in the picture below, theres also some netting for the same reason.

Tintagel Cliffs. 05/25/2017. Photo by author.

Alright, big surprise, erosion had run its course and people were trying to prevent it. Isnt that what
happened at Stonehenge too? Theres a rock thats clearly only standing because of its concrete base.
Thats how you know we care about something, when we dont even let nature change itself.
Satisfied with her answer, I turned to continue climbing up to the castle ruins.

Stonehenge, including one rock held up by concrete (middle). 05/28/2017. Photo by author.
Imagine my surprise when my professor started explaining just why the land had eroded away so
quickly. In fact, the odd, boxy shape of the cliff was due to slate quarrying, which began in the late
1400s and only closed in 1937. Around the same time, people realized how fragile the cliffs had
gotten and wanted to prevent further erosion. They brought in the concrete and netting, and the
land around Tintagel has been preserved ever since. The stone steps I got a glimpse of had been cut
in 1852, when the vicar of Tintagel decided to make the area more accessible for visitors.
Unfortunately, they had collapsed and been replaced with this wooden staircase.
This story is only one of many describing how radically humans have managed to change the
landscapes and environments around us. If youve ever visited Boston, you may have heard about
how, in order to expand the city, many of its hills were leveled and the dirt taken to fill in nearby
bodies of water. You may also have heard about a more recent addition to the city: a massive sewage
treatment plant on Deer Island thats meant to prevent the pollution of Boston Harbor, which used
to be where most of the barely treated sewage got dumped. Thanks to this plant, what used to be
one of the dirtiest bodies of water in America has been deemed a Great American Jewel.

Egg digesters at Deer Island. Photo by Boston Water and

Boston Harbor today. 05/11/17. Photo by author.
Sewer Commission.

Many animals have also gone extinct or are endangered due to being hunted by humans. In the
United Kingdom, the Great Bustard had been hunted to extinction by 1832. Luckily, an effort to
bring back the bustard has been succeeding, and at Stonehenge I met quite a beautiful one named
Gertrude. To prevent people from interfering, the location of their nest is kept a secret. After all
these experiences, I began noticing a pattern. Just like at Tintagel, past actions can end up having
severe consequences that others have to go to great lengths to fix.
 Gertrude the Great Bustard. 05/28/17. Photo by author.
I think weve established that humans frequently make messes and wait for it to become a bigger
problem before fixing it. But what does my long tangent have to do with climate change?
Ever since the Industrial Revolution, weve been pumping CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere at alarming rates. Hold on! you argue, regaining your senses after being lulled into
complacency by my silly vacation stories, Are you still trying to tell me that climate change is
human-based? Because youre not gonna convince me.
Wait, dont click off the page! Let me lay out the facts so you can draw your own conclusions.
1. Over 97% of active climate scientists agree that human activity is the main cause of the
Earths changing climate.
2. Fossil fuel emissions since the Industrial Revolution are the main source of added carbon to
the atmosphere.
3. A combination of natural and human factors best explains the global temperature, but
warming is mainly taking place due to greenhouse gases emitted by human activity.
You might have heard that before, and now youre ready to start your side of the argument. Before
you start, just remember that theres been a massive disinformation campaign about the science of
climate change, funded largely by the oil and coal companies worried about losing profits and the
people nervous about losing free market rights. They dont want you to worry about what fossil
fuels can do because you might stop buying them. However, even they dont fully believe what
theyre saying; many of the biggest oil companies are diversifying into greener alternatives.
Does it still seem so unlikely that humans could be causing climate change? If youre still
unconvinced, consider the story of Tintagel again. Think about Gertrude! Do we want to be
remembered as the people who did whatever we pleased, and damn the consequences? The ones
who forced everyone else to deal with the aftermath? Do we really want to take responsibility for the
destruction of something that we could have prevented? I dont.
If thats not motivation enough, heres another way of looking at it: We have a limited supply of
fossil fuels. However, advances in technology are allowing access to more deposits that were
previously too hard to extract. Therefore, the problem is not that fossil fuels will run out, but that
the harmful effects of burning them will overwhelm us before that happens. When these problems
become too dire, well be stuck if we dont have other sources of energy to turn to. The earlier we
start making the switch, the less drastic the changes have to be. Unfortunately, weve reached a point
when even cutting back on carbon emissions may not be enough. People have already started
figuring out ways to remove CO2 from the air.
Farmers could start spreading crushed silica rock over their fields. The roots in the soil would help
break down the rocks, which partially occurs via a chemical reaction that takes the CO2 from the air
and converts it. The silica would help fertilize the crops as well. Unfortunately, just getting and
crushing all these rocks could take so much energy that the whole process wouldnt be worth it.
Another solution: grow trees or plants like switchgrass that will use CO2 as they grow, then burn
them for fuel and store the produced CO2 underground. Sounds great, until you realize this would
require a third of the worlds farmland. Even if we could somehow provide enough food for the
growing population of the Earth with less land, some of the energy made would be needed to keep
capturing the CO2 and putting it underground.
Factories could be made that suck CO2 out of the air and concentrate it for use in carbonated drinks,
plastics, concrete, or fuel. Unfortunately, these currently operate on very small scales in comparison
to what we would need, and they would still require power to run and be expensive to set up.
None of these ideas are fully realistic yet, but we may one day have to resort to similar solutions to
prevent or mitigate the serious consequences of warming the Earth. Not only do we need to support
these efforts, but we still need to switch to using renewables and other green sources of energy.
Otherwise, by the time we finally address this issue, itll already be too late. Unfortunately, over just
my lifetime, Ive realized that New England winters have been getting progressively milder. Were
running out of time to pretend that our actions arent the reason behind it. Even though were
caught in this cycle of needing manmade solutions to manmade problems, the first step to solving
the problem is to admit were causing it.