Excerpt from Dead Mars, Dying Earth by Dr John Brandenburg, Monica Rix Paxson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Oxygen Inventory Depletion (OID), the reduction in the Earth’s planetary inventory or reservoir of oxygen, is probably the most alarming and potentially dangerous of all the global environmental problems we face. The drop of approximately 50-70 parts per million, presently estimated since 1958, when it was last measured, is miniscule compared to the 210,000 parts per million that exist in the atmosphere. But oxygen is so vital to life that any drop must be taken seriously. OID must be stopped while it is still minuscule. The key to stopping OID is to phase out fossil fuels as rapidly as possible, to reforest great stretches of Earth, and protect the oceans. These seem like easy things to do but in fact they involve enormous economic challenges and are bitter medicine in an era that worships free-market economics.

Oxygen is one of the most reactive gases in nature and exists in the biosphere only through photosynthesis. Unlike carbon dioxide, it has no geochemical source, only sinks. It is an extraordinarily sensitive indicator of the health – or lack thereof – of the biosphere. Our oxygen supply is the most vital of the vital signs of life on Earth, and it is beginning to fail. The oxygen inventory is under pressure from two sources: first, the burning of fossil fuels is consuming it, and second, the land-based and oceanic plant life that produces oxygen is being destroyed. Any action that reduces the viability of the algae-plankton complex in the ocean reduces oxygen production, as does any desertification or deforestation.

Today, environmental platitudes, not religion, are the opiate of the people. They tell the people that a few degrees’ rise in the global temperatures will mean resetting your air-conditioner to “high,” that things will become more balmy, that change will be so gradual that we can all move our beach houses as the oceans rise. That is not the face of global warming that we are seeing even now. Global warming is a drought in the Sahel region of central Africa that never ends, forcing millions to move into refugee camps to live. It is killer hurricanes of force and destruction never before seen, destroying not just the economic life of swaths of Central America but of whole regions in the tropics. It is strange tropical diseases and parasites moving north to escape the heat, causing epidemics in populations that have never encountered them before.

Copyright 2000 Dr. John Brandenburg and Monica Rix Paxson. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher - The Crossing Press.