The ever worsening environmental contamination in the XXI century has become the number one world problem, affecting everyone’s body and social existence – this is the way the book ‘Homo Sapiens & the Technogenic Environment’ starts, enticing the reader with all the power of a breathtaking science fiction novel, although the work is in actual fact deep, scientific research into the precarious issue facing our global ecology. The authors of the edition, Prof. Giorgi Kvesitadze (in the very recent past, the longtime president of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences) and Dr. Alexander Potemkin (Hamburg, Germany), pose a question that is central to the field: What happens to the highly hazardous and huge amount of toxic compounds that we dump into nature, nature being the still predominant power for decontaminating the planet from this increasing toxicity? The professional, complicated and humanely thoughtful answer to this scary question is provided within the 200 pages of this big-format, album-size, thick-cover book, meaningfully titled ‘Homo Sapiens & the Technogenic Environment’, recently presented to the world for serious meditation on one of the most bothersome of global problems by the famous Piko Valanda Publishing House.
Our technogenic environment does not recognize the zealously protected national borders and the misgivings of international politics. The ecological contaminants cover the entire planet. In the past, the picture was radically different, but today, as the authors emphasize, the ecological situation has dramatically changed. Based on certain available calculations, they argue that, on a global scale, up to one billion tons of chemicals are produced annually for our various needs, among them pesticides, mineral and organic fertilizers, paints and varnishes, solvents and emulsifiers, saying nothing of petroleum, pharmaceutical products and explosives – and the amount is on the rise! Science warns us that all these products are toxic, and yet it seems a plain heads-up doesn’t have the effect it should, because Mankind continues on with its accelerated urbanization, unpredictable industrial growth, speedy transportation development still heavily dependent on internal combustion, and with its arms race and egregious warmongering.
Another question that is becoming a global problem, and the authors are acutely concerned about it, is: What can be done to minimize pollution and prolong humankind’s existence by providing at least the minimum of drinkable water, edible food and breathable air? The only imaginable viable answer to the question posed by Kvesitadze and Potemkin is that global society has to make a deliberately organized effort to turn its undivided attention to nature, and seek to copy and intensify all-natural biological processes. They insist this process be based on selectively chosen active microorganisms and plants which increase the ecological power to eliminate the deadly chemical toxicity from our air, water and soil. The book is an indispensable environmental guide, one which should be a desk reference for anybody in the world who thinks that it is high time for all of this planet’s dwellers to pull together their act and start seriously thinking about the need for a more reasonable treatment of nature. And unless we do it without any further irrational delay, we will find ourselves in trouble, equal to catastrophe.
This valuable book might have escaped our attention had it not been authored by our famous countryman Giorgi Kvesitadze, whose contribution to the world’s chemical and biological science is immense, and it is a book that is highly appreciated by global scientific circles, his word being one of the significant scientific factors that determines contemporary technogenic developments.
I will once again borrow an excerpt from this vital book to use as the most logical conclusion to this emotional piece: “Friendly-to-nature biological technologies, based on natural transformations, are more efficient than all known modern chemical, physical, and ecological technologies, but so far, no-one has even tried to change the modern human logic and philosophy of life so as to direct it to milder forms of environmental management, never forgetting the famous universal motto: Everything for Man.” The caring-about-humanity authors are sincerely worried that humanity has chosen the wrong track in its treatment of the planet’s natural assets. I hate to think that ‘Everything against Man’ might be truer, unless we pick up courage and patience, and start thinking and acting as Mother Nature expects us to.
Op-Ed Nugzar B. Ruhadze
