Simple concept, right? It's as natural as anything else in the universe. Things that stay the same don't stick around very long. I recently joined in a discussion about the 2012 nonsense out of humor. What started off as me just having fun with my own comment and reading through other people's comments soon turned into a debate about whether or not humanity is responsible for the destruction of this planet. Personally, I don't think so. While it may be a possibility, it falls into the blog title. There is no denying that humanity has made it's mistakes, but we are not without our positive influences. Civilization has gotten to where it currently is because of our ability to change and adapt. Afterall, change or die.
No, that's not a conclusion. I'm going to get into the discussion that prompted this entry. It started with someone writing that even though they don't believe in the 2012 myth, that humanity is slowly deteriorating the planet to extinction. We've syphoned too many resources and now it's too late to start saving the planet. I think this is absolute poppycock. This planet has survived eons of threats, and will survive humanity. I posed two simple questions - Why are people saying this and what's going on that's destroying the planet?
The response I got was that humanity has changed the face of the world with the things like deforestation and that humanity likes to remove natural resources from the planet. So, I tried tackling those two topics. Let's start with deforestation. While I may have agreed with this person 100, 50 or even 20 years ago, this is simply not the case anymore. We are planting trees faster than we can cut them down. There are also international laws protecting certain habitats from being cut down. There is actually more forest on the surface of the earth today than there was 50 years ago. Here's an article from 1921 that speaks about the subject. In the United States, there are more trees today than there were when the country was founded. I also pointed out that the only places in the world where deforestation is still a major problem is in impoverished areas. Although it is still a sensitive issue, I used Haiti as an example. Haiti also exemplifies "change or die." While it's neighbor is green and lush, Haiti's environment has suffered to the point of no return.
I also questioned if this is an unnatural phenomenon and whether it's really bad for the planet or simply bad for us. Again, I realize it's a sensitive issue, but I am going to use a morbid example. If all life ended in Haiti, whether by death or relocation, the island would still be there. The island wasn't destroyed or vaporized due to the massive environmental damage it suffered. With time, it will naturally recuperate and life will begin again. This is essentially the history of the planet Earth. The environment changes, things die, and it starts all over again. We don't need to worry about the planet. We need to worry about our own survival. Change or die.
This person, unfortunately, didn't believe me that reforestation rates are currently surpassing deforestation rates. I don't include deforestation by natural causes. If there's a fire, earthquake, etc that levels a forest, we can't blame ourselves for that. The other thing I'd like to point out is that while trees are good for the environment, there's only so much room on this planet. Right now, trees serve a useful purpose in things like construction and filtering pollutants. How long will it be before we no longer require so many trees, though? We are constantly making advances in technology and industry. I think that eventually we'll reach a point where we will not require them and the only place you'll see them is in places like parks or people's gardens. In Brazil, people talk about deforestation in the Amazon. What some people don't know is that the deforestation is the result of cattle ranches and large scale farming. Sorry, tree huggers, but I'd rather plant and grow food than worry about a bunch of useless trees. China suspended their reforestation project due to food shortages. They decided that feeding their people was more important than planting some trees, and I don't blame them. Now, if only they could control their pollution output. Either way, this goes back to something I said earlier. While deforestation may have bad environmental effects, it is certainly not "planet destroying." Since changes to the atmospheric air content was mentioned, I added that we could turn this planet into Mars and it would still be here. Ending life on the planet is not the same as destroying the planet. Even if it were to be lifeless, it would still exist in the solar system, spinning around the sun along with all the other lifeless planets.
As it is one of the more popular topics, global warming was also touched upon.There is so much nonsense surrounding this issue, that I really dislike discussing it. I suppose I will have to just grit my teeth and do it anyway. Here's a quick summary of how many people came to know of global warming:
One day, Al Gore woke up to his usual life of obscurity. He probably thought long and hard about how to get back into the media's attention and came up with this nonsense that we now know as global warming. Some people think the world is getting warmer. That's all fine and dandy. Thanks to meteorology, we can analyze the weather and it's patterns. Whether or not the world is currently getting warmer shouldn't be what people are worried about. It's whether or not this is an unnatural, man-made event. There are many that believe we are to blame for this global warming, and that it's going to eventually lead to inhospitable conditions on the planet. The reason I dislike this issue is because for every argument linking this to human irresponsibility, I can pull out two arguments that it's human arrogance and ignorance to think the planet is getting unnaturally hot. One of the biggest problems with most of the information supporting warming is that people are not looking far back enough into the planet's history for weather patterns. They look back maybe 50 years or so and say there is an upward trend in the Earth's surface temperature. Back around the 1970's, we were certain that we were headed towards an ice age since it seemed that the planet was getting colder. If we look as far back as we can into Earth's weather patterns, we find that it constantly shifts. There is so much controversy surrounding this subject, that I still can't believe people take it so seriously. I'm going to refrain from posting articles on the subject for now because they would just be endless. I'll leave it up to the reader to do their own unbiased, objective research into it.
More to come.....
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