What I want to talk about today is the relationship between all living things and their environment and the only reasonable resolution for mankind I can see to the problems we face. I’ve read many books and watched every TV show on science and nature I could since I was a child. Some more than once, ask my wife if you don’t believe me.
After all I’ve seen, heard, and read I have come to the conclusion that all life is parasitic. It will feed off its host (the earth) until it reaches an unsustainable number. At that point it either cuts back its population to a sustainable size quickly enough for the earth to recover or it becomes extinct. Unlike most hosts the earth is large enough to survive after the parasite either stabilizes or dies.
The other thing I have come to believe there is and always will be is a balance of nature but it only lasts a short time. Nature is a pendulum that swings from feast to famine only passing through balance.
The earth is in a constant state of flux, the continents move on the molten core. This causes ocean currents to change that bring drastic changes in weather patterns.
The earth wobbles on its axis every twenty six thousand years that alters temperatures at the poles.
Meanwhile the suns temperature osculates, every few decades; all these factors have an impact on the earth and everything on it.
What I see is a world that is not exactly the same two days in a row. What we call balance is a snap shot of time that we live in.
Not long ago I watched a show about The Great Barrier Reef; they were concerned about the population explosion of a certain kind of star fish. Seems the star fish were eating the coral and if something didn’t change the reef might die in a few years. This is the feast part of the equation that causes the over population. If this happens soon there won’t be enough food for all the star fish and this will cause the famine and they will start to die. They may or may not kill the entire reef but the star fish population will be drastically reduced and it will take decades for the reef to recover. Then it will happen again and again. This seems to be the way for all species, except man.
We are unique. We can reason and that alone has raised us to the top of the food chain and should make it apparent we can’t stay on this earth forever. Our little blue planet is only a nursery for mankind, it is not our home. Our home is among the stars where new worlds and endless possibilities exist.
Here there is only one possibility, the extinction of civilization. We are using up the earth and no amount of conservation will help; it only puts off the inevitable. We will run out of everything eventually, only to return to what we were three million years ago, simple hunter gatherers.
What a waste that would be.
Thomas