MarkI-ZeroPoint <[email protected]> wrote: If the history of natural disasters has taught us anything, it’s that the > inherent powers that get unleashed over this planet make even the most > powerful human inventions look like a pitiful whimper. >
That is the wrong lesson. It is a false lesson. Look at the number species wiped out by humans in the last 100 years. Look at the amount of topsoil washed down the Mississippi. Look at the effects of blacktopping a huge portion of North America. Look at invasive plants such as kudzu in the U.S. south. Heck, look at a Google map of any portion of the East Coast of the U.S. and the changes cities and towns have made on the landscape. People are making tremendous changes to the earth. Nearly all the changes are deleterious, and some are unprecedented disasters. People are causing tremendous effects on the earth, such the desertification in Asia and Africa. This is far worse than volcanic action or hurricanes. I think that nearly all of these problems can be fixed, or ameliorated. The effects can be reversed; the earth can be restored. This will add tremendously to everyone's quality of life. But we cannot do anything unless we first acknowledge there is a problem, and we start looking for solutions. Saying that "nature is worse" or claiming that we are not having an effect will lead to unthinkable disasters. In Japan, in the 1950s and 60s they allowed horrendous pollution in cities all across the country, and even in beautiful rural towns such as Minamata. They were blind to the problems this caused. It killed thousands of people, and blighted the lives of millions of others. It made everyone miserable. People were resigned to it. They thought this was the price of progress. That was nonsense. It was easy to stop this pollution. It cost practically nothing. In many cases, it was more profitable to stop polluting and to recover the wasted materials than it was to keep polluting. All that suffering. All those wasted lives, blighted land, dead wildlife. For nothing! Because people were stupid, blind and inhuman. Because they did not care about suffering. They had no imagination and no vision of how things might be improved. Not because they put profits ahead of human lives -- because they THOUGHT they were putting profits ahead of lives!! They let ignorance, stupidity, greed and waste ruin their lives and destroy the nation. To no purpose at all. No one benefited, not even those who thought they were benefiting. That is the history you want to re-run. That is what happens when you turn a blind eye to global warming and pollution, and you say it does not matter if people in Bangladesh suffer. - Jed
