On Rachel's show or somewhere similar lately, the subject was brought up about mankind being the dominant species on the planet, and therefore it doesn't matter what we do with it, because it's ours, and everything that was here originally must still be here - "so don't worry, be happy!"
And that, Dear Reader, is a classic example of failing to connect the dots. "And what's wrong with that?" you ask. OK - The reason we call this "civilization" is because we needed a name for our processes of altering our formerly pristine wilderness into something more comfortable, more useful, more practical, and last but not least, more profitable. And all of that made serious and lasting changes to the chemistry, composition, and very nature of that nature. Because we took formerly benign materials, and extracted from them deadly things like poisonous chemicals, and radioactive isotopes, and we made things like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, because we thought somebody was trying to kill us, and it turns out the "somebody" was us! Are we stupid, or what?
No comments:
Post a Comment