SURVIVABILITY – LOOKING FORWARD
I asked the editors to let me do an ongoing column about Survivability.
What do I mean by that?
For four billion or more years the earth has stayed steady in its course around the sun. The known history of human beings is little more then a flash in our planets longevity. Yet, in their brief years upon the planet, humans have evolved such astonishing capacities in using their hands and brains that they have become a species that was capable and indeed altered its own environment. The Chimpanzee, Bonobo and Gorilla might build rude nests of greenery in the jungle and occupy them for a few days, but humans learned to pile shaped stones into protective walls and buildings. Grazing animals such as antelopes, deer and horses might range for miles seeking greener pastures; we humans learned to excavate ditches and divert streams full of water to our gardens.
Thus, over time, the unique human species discovered ways to overcome the dangers of predators and famine and disease. And once humans found ways to live together in towns and cities, their collective powers greatly increased their fruitfulness; their populations multiplied. In Asia and the Middle East they built waterways and aqueducts to irrigate vast realms and support elegant imperial courts. The Romans flung their roads, their laws and their armies over an empire stretching for thousands of miles. Many such great centers of civilization arose and flourished and then collapsed – in a majestic cycle almost as imposing as the earth’s own seasonal rhythms.
Through time in these pre-industrial centuries the cultivation of new land gradually produced more food and the impact of starvation and malnutrition lessened; nonetheless, humans continued to live in a rough balance with their fellow earth inhabiting species.
There are few people in our country who believe that the human race or at least our country’s part of it is on the right course. Whether your political leaning is right or left, down the middle or don’t give a damn, the feeling overall, is that something is wrong, terribly wrong.
And as a species our underlying concern should be the continuation of the human race and the health of the planet that houses us for now. But, let’s not be concerned with the human races survival right now; let’s think about the people that will be following closely in your footsteps, your children, your nephews, your grandkids. Probably even your great grandkids. Are we leaving them the planet in survival mode? There is a chance that we aren’t. The opinions vary, and yes that’s all they are, whether predictions, scientific theories or just a gut feeling, it is still just an opinion.
Some of us believe that the world is just fine the way it is. We don’t have to do anything to change things., There are those that think what’s happening to the planet is just a natural occurrence, and the extinction of species, possibly including our own, is just the way it goes. Another group thinks that we have gone over the cliff, pushed the envelope just a little too far, and there is no hope for our species to survive. I myself like to think that although we have used up most of the glue on the envelope there is still time to reverse the trends that are happening to the planet and the human species and head toward survivability.
As most of us have discovered, there are some things that can only make the planet a better place to live, if we would just do them. Therein lies the problem, getting them done. Therein lies my goal with this column.
Revisionist historical accounts in opposition to long kept theoretical dependencies will only enflame those who need to see the world from illogical perspective. You are suggesting that we mere humans do something when the majority of the population is counting on a supernatural intervention to occur. Good Luck with that.
Just knowing that 75% of the population would rather believe than think is a likely indicator of nonfunctioning mirror neurons, a side effect of filling the empty spaces between thought with illogical emotional pacifiers like faith based rational.
What is to give light must endure burning.
The earth knows no devastation… it sees its restoration in the piles of decay.
Oh, by the way, 6000 years ago Adams rib was not an entrée at Paradise Grill, it was a tool used to create the second gender of Homo Erectus, thus making the whole population of our species by products of incest.
And you wonder why we can’t get anything done.
And then there’s this….beyond personal theological dependencies, to economic justifications for doing nothing.
So after thirty years of watching individuals and special interest justify their positions against environmental responsibility I’ve concluded that it will take a major event of cataclysmic proportions to force our species to account for the environmental impact when they estimate the cost of taking care of business.
Why putting climate change on trial is a terrible idea
The US Chamber of Commerce is upset that the EPA has chosen to regulate CO2 emissions as a pollutant, and are calling for a public trial on both the policy decision and the science behind it. It’s hard to imagine a worse way to help clarify the status of climate science. By John Timmer | Last updated August 28, 2009 6:22 AM CT
Back in June, the US Chamber of Commerce, which represents business interests, filed a petition that asked the Environmental Protection Agency to revisit its decision, made in April, to treat greenhouse gasses as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The CoC requested open public hearings that would reexamine all aspects of the decision, from the science of climate change and ocean acidification to the projected impacts on public health and agriculture. Although there was nothing unusual or unexpected about that, the request appears to have been widely ignored. That seems to have ended, as the Chamber’s real desire has become clear: it wants to subject climate science to a show trial.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/08/why-putting-climate-change-on-trial-is-a-terrible-idea.ars
A major event of cataclysmic proportions is what we as humans need to avoid. And I too fear that that’s what it will take.
Apparently people that read and believe in the bible have not taken what god did to the world’s population at the time of Noah to heart.
Genesis 6.5
And God seeing that the wickedness of men was great on the earth, and that all the thought of their heart was bent upon evil at all times, it repented him that he had made man on the earth. And being touched inwardly with sorrow of heart, he said “I will destroy man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth, from man even to beasts, from the creeping thing even to the fowls of the air, for it repenteth me that I have made them”
Mankind might have not have learned this lesson, as he gave Noah a second chance.