HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
June 17, 2003 The issue of the Earth’s environment and Mankind’s damage to it has very definitely been politicized into another “Right” vs. “Left” issue. The classic argument of the “Left” is that the environment is being systematically brutalized by Conservative Business interests that are bent solely upon raping the Earth’s resources for profit; while the classic argument from the “Right” is that the entire Environmental Movement has become nothing more than a haven for restructured communists whose real agenda is the lowering of our (US) standard of living in order to achieve a global “socialistic” redistribution of wealth, therefore any ‘scientific’ arguments that the environmentalists can present is dubious and suspect. Unfortunately, both of these views tend to suffer from a kind of myopic definition borne of the political extremes that they represent. Certainly, there is an economic rationale for the continued exploitation of the Earth’s resources. This exploitation is based upon providing energy, food and basic comforts for the US and the rest of the world. Third world countries that are actively deforesting the rainforests are doing so for economic gain and not out of some kind of demented “Dr. No” kind of scheme to destroy the world. They have a resource that is valuable to someone else, and in order to better their own standard of living, they are harvesting that resource in order to sell it. The world’s oceans are being massively harvested in order to supply food for the ever-increasing numbers of humans on the planet, as well as provide feed for livestock and fertilizer for agribusiness companies, again to supply food and sustenance to the ever-burgeoning masses of humans that exist on the planet. And, like it or not, the world today runs on Oil. It powers our vehicles, heats our homes, fuels our factories and production plants and acts as an force within the global economy…in short, we are very much dependent upon oil’s continued production and supply. Equally as certain, however, is that there is some very solid scientific evidence that supports the assertion that the continued use of oil and it’s by-products, the massive harvesting of the oceans and the rapid de-forestation of the rain-forests are all having a profound effect upon the Earth’s environment. The long-term effects of all of our continued natural resource exploitation will be something that all of us will be experiencing whether we are “left”, “right” or absolutely non-partisan because we are all indelibly members of a single unifying group…we are humans. As humans, we are only one piece of the natural system that is the Earth. Whether we believe that we can dominate nature and thus overcome our place within it, or whether we believe that we have to learn to reduce our impact upon the Earth’s systems to almost nothing…is completely moot. The Earth is going to take care of itself. Nature is made up of systems that are intricately interdependent and balanced within a very narrow range of tolerances. Repeatedly, science has observed that when one component of a natural system becomes too much of a burden upon the rest of that system, then nature produces another component that will re-balance the system and eliminate that burden. Humans are incredibly resourceful and clever creatures. We have developed innumerable ways of exploiting our natural resources in order to make our own personal environment more comfortable and personally sustainable. This process has been going on for thousands of years with out any appreciable impact upon the global environment, unfortunately the past 100 years or so has seen an exponential increase in both human population growth as well as agricultural technology that has allowed us to continue to provide for that increased population. The impact of these past 100 years or so has been documented and studied in great depth. We cannot deny that we have not had an impact upon our environment, but at the same time we cannot justify the charge that this impact is the direct result of some Machiavellian right-wing scheme to destroy the planet. We are merely acting upon the prime directive of all species on the planet, namely to perpetuate our own existence. As many have asserted, we have also become the most dominant species on the planet. It may well be, then, that the only counter-balance that Nature can create in order to correct any imbalance that our species produces, will be our species itself. The Earth will survive us, however, we may make the Earth uninhabitable for humans ourselves to survive. ------------ Email Scott Jones: scott.jones@medem.com Comment on this column in the forum. ------------ |
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
