Planetary musings
Life is what happened when the planet was busy making other plans. I’m not sure anybody knows exactly how or why non-living bits of matter became self-replicating bits of living organisms that eventually evolved into us. Whatever it was, we’re grateful.
One thing I’ve figured out since I started spending more time outdoors: we’re just one more species on a planet teeming with them. Earth has no regard for our minor hopes and petty ambitions. It’ll live on long after we’re gone.
A lot of humans fret over the damage we’re inflicting on the planet. I have a hard time getting totally worked up over our trivial contributions — it’s not like we can move continents, create mountain ranges, sprout volcanoes. The planet’s always tearing one part down and building another part up. Most of California was ocean bed a few million years ago. There were no activist organizations to protect aquatic species royally screwed by the collision of tectonic plates that created our lovely coastline and left dry land where the ocean used to be.
There’s only one problem with the “stop worrying, the planet’ll be fine” approach: Greedy short-sighted buck chasers use it as an excuse to do nothing about disappearing forests, rivers, lakes and living things that, frankly, the Earth can adapt to losing. Some kind of life will pretty much always live this planet.
The species that really needs clean water, abundant forests and thriving wild ecosystems is us. Wild places store our best hope for survival. Ruining them ruins us.
Blasting the tops off mountains to protect mining jobs or chopping down ancient redwoods to provide a few logging jobs might be good for one generation, but it’s stealing resources our grandkids and great-great grandkids and they’re great-great grandkids are going to need.
There’s no such thing as saving the environment. There’s only saving ourselves.
March 25th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
George Carlin called “saving the earth” the height of hubris. “To the earth, people are a surface condition — like dandruff.”
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Yes, very good comments. The trash we make is nothing more than a rearrangement of molecules that have been herefor millions of years and will continue to exist after we can no longer survive on this planet. Burning fosile fuels may add carbon to the atmospher, but we have not actually created any carbon. We just put it someplace that’s going to do ourselves and other living things harm. But nature has no preference for us; nature will continue whether we do or not.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:57 am
true, we are not creating new elements. well, maybe just a couple of dangerous ones (temporary and/or otherwise), but not very many. I agree with you that what we are doing, on a cosmological scale, is ultimately really, really trivial because the universe is really, really big and also because it is really, really long.
but somehow we are right smack dab in the middle of this universe and we know it. so, like it or not, inconvenient as it might be, we do not get to be dandruff.
of course I agree with you. it is irrational for us to poison ourselves. what to do? well, since we have long since passed the point of no return-to-the-earth, culturally or otherwise, it seems that we will have to fling ourselves upon the mercy of technology. it is the only apparent way forward and it will kill us if we get it wrong. whoa, dude.
technology. on my way to hike I consider wilderness and the necessity of wild places. when I’m in a wild place I contemplate the benefits of community and street lights. it is a very luxurious lifestyle and it is made possible by technology. obviously there is no lightweight backpack made out of hides. incidentally, my favorite personal backpack has no shelf for carrying gathered wood either. technology, man.
anyway, as a note of encouragement to everybody, I know we will get this right, no matter how long an ice age we manage to arrange.
JT