Our world, the Earth, is a relatively recent creation in terms of age of the universe. This planet of ours was formed many, many millions of years ago, but life has been present on the Earth for about 4,600 million years. The human species, ‘Homo Habilis’, is a fairly recent phenomenon having only inhabited the Earth for a mere 3 million years! If we put those 3 million years into the well-known context of a 24-hour clock, then ancient man slowly developed and evolved along with dinosaurs and pterodactyls and the like, for most of the day and evening, the dinosaurs became extinct at ten to twelve midnight, the civilizations of ancient Greece and Egypt emerged at just three minutes to twelve, Christ was born at one minute to midnight, and the last hundred years have passed by in the dying three seconds of our 24-hour day of human existence on our tiny Earth.

And yet, in those last dying three seconds of our day, we have managed to damage our environment to a greater extent than in all the previous 23 hours, 59 minutes and 57 seconds, of our existence.

During most of our time on Earth we have kept it fairly clean and did not begin to damage the environment until very recently. Indeed until the middle of the nineteenth century there was relatively little pollution. But, as you will find out in this book, there are many more of us today. There are more people alive now than the sum total of all those who have lived, and died, since people first appeared!

There are so many of us, and we want so much, our cars, our buses, our comfortable and convenient ways of life, that the Earth – our world – is beginning to become dirty, soiled and polluted.