I have used the free computer program Google Earth Pro for a variety of useful situations in my life. I've targeted unique natural areas to explore and film for my Hidden Corners nature documentaries, and I've overlaid historic images to discover where old growth forests are hiding.
The program has helped me optimize travel routes and scope out potential obstacles and wonders alike. Aside from all of that, my embarrassingly huge amount of hours on this program have showcased some bizarre and blunt realities of our human impact on the natural world — and one another. Scrolling around the virtual world, a theme that always surfaces for me is the brazen disrespect for the Earth. If the Earth could shake, it would flick us off like fleas on an unwelcome plague, because what we are doing to the planet is simply unsustainable. You can see it from space. You know this already, but allow me to provide some seriously descriptive visuals.
In the metropolis of Lagos, Nigeria, I found an entire urban shoreline where garbage was being disposed into the lagoon in unfathomable amounts. We're not talking about the litter you see on our Ontario highway off-ramps in the ditch. We're talking about layers several feet high descending into the water. The historic shoreline would have likely been mangroves and palm trees, replete with fish breeding among their submerged roots. This spot is now represented as a stagnant and festering heap of all garbage sorts.
When I zoomed out, my stomach turned in realization of how expansive these dumping zones were in terms of surface area. Further more, families live not only beside the rubbish, but on top of it and seemingly inside of it.
Lagos isn't the only place I have seen like this, but it may have shocked me the most. Sadly, the people you can see in the Google Earth street view images are are good people, trying to grind and survive and feed their families. They like sports and good food as much as you and I do. However, many of them make less than $1 US per day.
Their governments are corrupt, and waste disposal services are an imaginary thing. To say that these people are disrespecting the natural environment intentionally is therefore an unfair statement.
To come full circle, that's what ticks me off when I see garbage in the ditches of Niagara. Paying $7 for a Starbucks coffee and then tossing it out your window before hitting the QEW seems glaringly unacceptable now, doesn't it? It's amazing how a simple find on Google Earth can make your brain whirl and think about how we behave as humans around here, when we have all of the abilities and resources to do better. What is our excuse?
Here is another interesting observation, this time regarding subjective surveillance. What blows my mind is how you can enter the street view function of Google Earth Pro in villages of remote areas in third world countries. What you will find in common across these villages are the brick and mortar, tin roofs, heaps of gravel or soil, and street dogs perusing about.
To me, it is incredible and unnerving at once that Google has tabs on many of these seriously isolated places in a visual-data perspective. I can zoom in to someone's front door of their shack in Vietnam, but I can't see a single street view in the entirety of North Korea. Although this isn't surprising, it demonstrates both corporate interests and boundaries alike.
Similar themes of Google black-outs occur in Gaza. You can still zoom in incredibly close, but there is no street view, compared to just about every road in Israel. Several islands between Philippines and China are severely blurred or distorted as you try to get closer. Intriguing blank spots occur in the most remote mountains of the US, China and the arctic, likely a national security sensitivity.
I've seen factories in India and Indonesia that have shamelessly carved channels from textile factories where waste water ridden with toxic byproduct chemicals enters major river systems without a filter or barrier in sight. Millions of people downstream fish, bathe, and perform important religious ceremonies in these waters. Let alone, let's not forget the vast biodiversity lost due to these actions. It's no wonder that the Indus River dolphin, a freshwater mammal that once thrived, now has fewer than 2,000 remaining.
Aside from the human impact conversation of these observations, there is also so much wonder to stoke curiosity and passion about the natural world. Do you know how many lakes I have found in the tropics and arctic alike that are larger than the entire Niagara Peninsula, and with no name? What swims in them that hasn't been studied or identified to science before. The Amazon, northern Canada, and Russia are absolutely polka-dotted with lakes of this nature. I'd bet if a fisherman threw a line into one of those remote unnamed Amazonian lakes, there would be high odds of hooking a species that is new to science. These places still exist, and you can see and appreciate them on this program.
As an end note, and in no particular order of significance, consider the following that I have learned from this program: Iran has temperate rainforests, one-third of Ohio is covered in forest, Africa has glaciers on the equator, and far northern Saskatchewan has sand dunes that span an area of 30km by 15 km in the middle of nowhere.
As I continue to complete my course to become a certified high school biology and geography teacher, you can bet I will be bringing these sorts of topics up in an inquiry-based teaching method. The study of biological life and the physical layout of modern Earth are tightly intertwined, and if you need proof of that in an exciting and invigorating way, I suggest you download Google Earth Pro.
A pro tip from me? Throw it onto your big TV screen and enjoy the most detailed look at the planet you can from your couch.
