Thulsa, it fails to be pretty but it is the natural order of things. I've said this before, but it bears repeating. We can possibly make the planet unsuitable for human life (unlikely in my view, but I'll admit the possibility) but how arrogant do we have to be to think we can "destroy" the planet or make it uninhabitable for all life? Species die out and new ones take their place. Arrogant again to think it can't (or won't) happen to us.[/QUOTE]
man didnt you see my big speech up there about how the earth aint goin anywhere? I certainly hope you arent confusing me with some rabid greenpeace looney toon. They are almost as bad as the 'the earth is mine to fuck up!' conservatives. im quite aware we are part of the ecological puzzle. we are earthlings after all. but my only point is that we CAN have a direct effect on nature in a number of detrimental ways. we ARE most resistant to the natural temporing effect of nature to keep everything more or less in line to where it needs to be (lemmings, locusts, buffalo, etc.) because of our brains we can buck that tendency pretty extermelly unlike any other species on earth and therefore our effect on our environment can be just as extreme as well.
as i asked above does it really matter if we kill off animals or polute rivers? maybe. maybe not. sure wont matter once the sun goes nova. but it might matter to our grandchildren. i think thats fair to say. no need to counter that with oh nature has its ways of coming back. well more acurately nature happens but nature is never the same.
would it be wrong for a nation to decide it was going to hunt down every whale in the ocean (to use a classic "knee jerk" ecologist example) simply because it can? is that wrong? or is that just survival of the fitist? since we have the power to be the fitist in comparison to whales. after all whales dont serve any real purpose to us do they? their loss doesnt directly effect us. although the question of the indirect effect of their loss is an interesting one. would plankton populations explode and alter the growth of nitrogen fixing bacteria that would cause huge dead zones in all the oceans of world. thus killing off fish by the billions and causing millions to starve all over the globe. Now we dont know that would happen but chain reactions in nature are funny like that Ive noticed...
But anyway the question still stands would it be wrong? Or would it just be nature? somehow it would feel artificial to me. knowingly killing something off when we could preserve it if we tried.
I have no real problem with the concept of us being part of the process. but is there ever a line that gets drawn? is there ever a reason for making reasonable choices in how we live? Is there ever a reason to worry about our effect on our world? and the repurcusions of our actions? shouldnt the simple fact that we have the ability to live very comfortably [i]without[/i] marauding through our environment with rampant and naked abondon destroying and killing as we wish obligate us to attempt to be at least reasonable in the way we interact with our enviornment? conscious and aware of our [i]potential[/i] effects? or is it simply good enough that we can say hey we are part of the equation! we are the agent of change! and then just pretty much do what we want. because after all its all part of the prophecy. its all within natures plan. well there used to be plush jungles in the frozen tundra of antartica and there used to be rich ecalyptus fields for hundreds of miles where there is now the sahara desert. man had nothing to do with either. but can we say its ok to bring about wastelands because its part of nature? and it will eventually become something different someday whether thats 40 years or 400 years or 4 million? Does that make it all ok?
yeah i know too many questions...
