I was a mistake, were you, are we all?

[bradly1101]

When I was ten years old I saw the 'abortion episode' of the Maude TV series. I had never heard the word before, so I asked my mom what it meant. She said that sometimes mommies don't want to be mommies. I immediately asked why would anyone not want to be a mom. She said it was lots of reasons and that she and my dad weren't trying to have children when they made us (my brother and me) and were using birth control (I learned a lot that night). At least they tried.

Then God said, "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." I have heard this passage used to justify our negative effects on the planet.

When did man split off from his fellow animals and got smart (and stupid)? Was it when we started watering the land and plowing our fields so that we could cheat the planet into supporting more of us than it otherwise could? I don't know, but the evolutionary event (mistake?) can only be described as catastrophic to other living beings and the globe itself along with its atmosphere.

I know we all know about pollution, species loss, etc. I highly recommend the book The Sixth Extinction if you want to see how deeply and intricately we're killing this place. The author outlines the five great extinctions that occurred prior to man's appearance. They had various causes (volcanoes, environment change, asteroids...). But this sixth extinction has a different kind of cause; the wanderings, inventions and destructiveness of a single specie. Is this what God meant by man ruling over it all?

As soon as man got smart he got stupid. Smart wouldn't exist without stupid. Like everything we touch: cancer treatment wouldn't exist without cancer, which wouldn't exist to its current degree if we didn't poison our own environment and our bodies. We wouldn't know peace without war. Where are we now? Oh yeah the Christians and the Muslims are at it again.

We are warriors and peaceniks, inventors and destroyers, lovers and killers. We even invented a deity to tell us (in our own words) that the earth and its other inhabitants are ours to do with as we please (just my belief, not trying to troll).

Are we now finally smart enough to see the errors of our ways (and beliefs) and do something about it?.............nah...................Will we ever be? How deep into ruin will we take this place before we have to change?

 

[Vdubchaos]

Are we now finally smart enough to see the errors of our ways (and beliefs) and do something about it?.............nah...................Will we ever be? How deep into ruin will we take this place before we have to change?

People NEVER change

is a safer assumption than "expecting change"

People are flawed mostly by everything around us and what we are taught/sold on. It's our responsibility to shit filter just about EVERYTHING on this planet.

And even then, we are still arrogant, selfish and ignorant beings.

As advanced as human kind might be, is as ass backwards and primitive we still are.

 

[Smoblikat]

Me and both of my siblings were all mistakes. I was the first mistake though.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

A group of organisms radically altering the environment of the planet, causing cataclysmic extinctions and vast environmental changes.

It's not something new or unique to humanity. Cyanobacteria did this millions of years ago. The Great Oxygenation event. It created the atmospheric oxygen we now breath - poisoning the planet of anaerobic organisms, and indirectly triggering a ice age. The first mass extinction.

Humanity's problem isn't that we're destroying nature or changing the world. It's that we're making the world into something we don't want to live in. That's all. No mysticism, no nature worship. Just "Uh oh, I don't breathe smog. Maybe we shouldn't turn the atmosphere into smog". Nature doesn't care, and will only be too happy to let us die, like it always has been with everything that has ever lived or will ever live.

 

[alzan]

How deep into ruin will we take this place before we have to change?

We're currently on that road. We can argue about how fast we're going but unless we stop or change roads we'll head inexorably to the answer.

 

[bradly1101]

Something's gotta give, unfortunately that doesn't appear to be in our nature...so far...

 

[Dessicant]

When I was ten years old I saw the 'abortion episode' of the Maude TV series. I had never heard the word before, so I asked my mom what it meant. She said that sometimes mommies don't want to be mommies. I immediately asked why would anyone not want to be a mom. She said it was lots of reasons and that she and my dad weren't trying to have children when they made us (my brother and me) and were using birth control (I learned a lot that night). At least they tried.

Then God said, "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." I have heard this passage used to justify our negative effects on the planet.

When did man split off from his fellow animals and got smart (and stupid)? Was it when we started watering the land and plowing our fields so that we could cheat the planet into supporting more of us than it otherwise could? I don't know, but the evolutionary event (mistake?) can only be described as catastrophic to other living beings and the globe itself along with its atmosphere.

I know we all know about pollution, species loss, etc. I highly recommend the book The Sixth Extinction if you want to see how deeply and intricately we're killing this place. The author outlines the five great extinctions that occurred prior to man's appearance. They had various causes (volcanoes, environment change, asteroids...). But this sixth extinction has a different kind of cause; the wanderings, inventions and destructiveness of a single specie. Is this what God meant by man ruling over it all?

As soon as man got smart he got stupid. Smart wouldn't exist without stupid. Like everything we touch: cancer treatment wouldn't exist without cancer, which wouldn't exist to its current degree if we didn't poison our own environment and our bodies. We wouldn't know peace without war. Where are we now? Oh yeah the Christians and the Muslims are at it again.

We are warriors and peaceniks, inventors and destroyers, lovers and killers. We even invented a deity to tell us (in our own words) that the earth and its other inhabitants are ours to do with as we please (just my belief, not trying to troll).

Are we now finally smart enough to see the errors of our ways (and beliefs) and do something about it?.............nah...................Will we ever be? How deep into ruin will we take this place before we have to change?

Extinction is given too much weight and concern. Every species will one day be extinct. It's not an important issue. What is important is exploiting the planet such that our lives are productive and happy. That means USING what is here, not saving it for some unknown future generation. Pollution and waste products are WORTH IT for us to enjoy a modern and sophisticated lifestyle. Over time we seem to gain control over these things, but going backward or "conserving" things can never be an option. All resources will ultimately be used up. Slowing down the process only delays the inevitable. Use up the stuff and find the next answer once the resource runs out, as all must.

So take fossil fuels for example. Let's develop and burn them and utilize them as fast as we can and for as long as they continue to make our lives magnificent. Once they run out, we'll figure out an alternative. We are really smart, we own the planet, it is here to serve us, we have always solved every problem that comes up, and that will continue until we are extinct.

I don't care about AGW. When the planet warms, more areas will become friendly to mass agriculture. When the sea levels rise, cities will submerge over the decades and we will be forced to rebuild them on higher ground, creating vast opportunities and employment for building, relocation, and re-purposing otherwise vacant land.

Fossil fuels will completely run out at some point and then we can turn to solar and wind and whatever else we invent.

I don't believe in tipping points or other armageddonism. They are simply predictions and scientific predictions are so much toilet paper with respect to accuracy and reliability. Especially scientific predictions funded by universities and governments, where destruction and cataclysm are the best way to stay on the dole. PUBLISH OR PERISH as the professors like to say.

 

[DigDog]

Then God said,

do not want

 

[sm625]

It is entirely possible that we could totally black out the sky and kill all photosynthetic life and still find a way to exist underground in holodecks powered by LENR reactors and eating synthetic meal bars. Anything can happen. The planet as it is cannot sustain more than roughly 1 billion people. Given advanced enough technology, that number could rise to maybe 50 billion. But beyond that, the planet and our lifestyles would have to change significantly to accomodate hundreds of billions. This idea that somehow 7 billion is the limit is just pure shortsightedness and lack of imagination. It is true that the planet cannot sustain 7 billion gibbering and drooling morons. But it could easily sustain dozens of billions of creative people.

 

[SlitheryDee]

I don't think anything that happens in nature is a "mistake". That would imply that nature has a plan, and I don't think it does. Nothing is a mistake and nothing is planned. Things just "are". In terms of the environment, we are the only ones around who can make good decisions or mistakes of any note. Nothing else is going to have the effect we can have, and nothing else has the capacity to have foresight and planning like we do. Nature doesn't much care what we do. It loses species and gains them all the time. For nature to go, they all have to go first, and I don't think we can kill them all before we kill ourselves no matter what we do. The only significance we should see in the loss of species is it's foreshadowing of the planet slowly becoming more inhospitable for things that we ultimately have a lot in common with. Like the canary in the gold mine, it is a sign that the planet just got a little bit more difficult to survive on.

My argument on the whole situation is that we should take notice of this not because it's a great tragedy to nature, (I don't think nature really cares), but out of pure self interest. We want to keep living and advancing in perpetuity. Making the rock we live on into a poisonous wasteland is a surefire way to impede that. We get mired in all the emotional trivialities of this issue far too easily when the real problem is the one of our species' survival. I'm no environmentalist in the traditional sense. I don't have any emotional attachment to anything in nature. I don't cry when we lose a species and I don't cheer when an endangered one makes a comeback. They don't matter to me in any emotional capacity. When it comes to the consideration that this is the only place any humans live in the whole universe; That we're stuck here recycling the same air, water, and land that we're also simultaneously filling with poisons like a fish in a tank that never gets cleaned, THAT concerns me. Lucky for the other animals in the world that an ideal environment for us is also ideal for most of them, because I believe self interest is the only thing powerful enough to make us do anything about it. If we do decide to become the custodians of our planet that we will eventually have to be, they'll get to ride on our coattails.

I know this is a different perspective than most environmentalists tend to subscribe to. Most of them have a decidedly emotional lean to them that turns off a lot of people. There seems to be some denigration of humanity in general wrapped into their personal philosophy. There's a lot of people expressing the idea that if humans would just go away, everything would be better. It's almost like they see nature and humanity as two opposing sides, and they're in nature's corner. I always wondered what it was they thought they were saving though? Nature is a mindless, directionless thing that no more appreciates their siding with it than it would care if it was wiped out entirely. We are the ones with minds and direction. We should save nature, but we should do it for us. There is no sense in the us vs. nature viewpoint, because there is only one side and one viewpoint that matters. Nature is our life-support, we HAVE to be on it's side.

 

[Dessicant]

I don't think anything that happens in nature is a "mistake". That would imply that nature has a plan, and I don't think it does. Nothing is a mistake and nothing is planned. Things just "are". In terms of the environment, we are the only ones around who can make good decisions or mistakes of any note. Nothing else is going to have the effect we can have, and nothing else has the capacity to have foresight and planning like we do. Nature doesn't much care what we do. It loses species and gains them all the time. For nature to go, they all have to go first, and I don't think we can kill them all before we kill ourselves no matter what we do. The only significance we should see in the loss of species is it's foreshadowing of the planet slowly becoming more inhospitable for things that we ultimately have a lot in common with. Like the canary in the gold mine, it is a sign that the planet just got a little bit more difficult to survive on.

My argument on the whole situation is that we should take notice of this not because it's a great tragedy to nature, (I don't think nature really cares), but out of pure self interest. We want to keep living and advancing in perpetuity. Making the rock we live on into a poisonous wasteland is a surefire way to impede that. We get mired in all the emotional trivialities of this issue far too easily when the real problem is the one of our species' survival. I'm no environmentalist in the traditional sense. I don't have any emotional attachment to anything in nature. I don't cry when we lose a species and I don't cheer when an endangered one makes a comeback. They don't matter to me in any emotional capacity. When it comes to the consideration that this is the only place any humans live in the whole universe; That we're stuck here recycling the same air, water, and land that we're also simultaneously filling with poisons like a fish in a tank that never gets cleaned, THAT concerns me. Lucky for the other animals in the world that an ideal environment for us is also ideal for most of them, because I believe self interest is the only thing powerful enough to make us do anything about it. If we do decide to become the custodians of our planet that we will eventually have to be, they'll get to ride on our coattails.

I know this is a different perspective than most environmentalists tend to subscribe to. Most of them have a decidedly emotional lean to them that turns off a lot of people. There seems to be some denigration of humanity in general wrapped into their personal philosophy. There's a lot of people expressing the idea that if humans would just go away, everything would be better. It's almost like they see nature and humanity as two opposing sides, and they're in nature's corner. I always wondered what it was they thought they were saving though? Nature is a mindless, directionless thing that no more appreciates their siding with it than it would care if it was wiped out entirely. We are the ones with minds and direction. We should save nature, but we should do it for us. There is no sense in the us vs. nature viewpoint, because there is only one side and one viewpoint that matters. Nature is our life-support, we HAVE to be on it's side.

I think the environmentalists you refer to utilize their politics as a smokescreen. What they really hate is achievement, wealth, and material progress. Why hate achievement? How is that possible? When the primary engine of one's life is the emotion we call envy.

Environmentalism is an obfuscation for the real motivation: envy and self-hatred. Environmentalism is a paint job. But when the paint peels and the flakes drift away, you are left with someone who doesn't hate Man, just the successful ones.

Why would environmentalists be against Capitalism almost to a man? Why are they overwhelmingly liberal collectivists who favor socializing every human problem? Why are they such fans of redistribution of wealth? Why were the brainless mediocrities behind Occupy Wall Street and the like such "environmental proponents". Again, it all comes down to envy.

Envy, envy, envy. THAT is what environmentalism is really about. Since I don't seem to be able to achieve, I must stop those who are.

So no, there are no mistakes. But there are emotions. And there are intentions. And those intentions are not about saving any planet. And that is no mistake.

 

[Paratus]

I think the environmentalists you refer to utilize their politics as a smokescreen. What they really hate is achievement, wealth, and material progress. Why hate achievement? How is that possible? When the primary engine of one's life is the emotion we call envy.

Environmentalism is an obfuscation for the real motivation: envy and self-hatred. Environmentalism is a paint job. But when the paint peels and the flakes drift away, you are left with someone who doesn't hate Man, just the successful ones.

Why would environmentalists be against Capitalism almost to a man? Why are they overwhelmingly liberal collectivists who favor socializing every human problem? Why are they such fans of redistribution of wealth? Why were the brainless mediocrities behind Occupy Wall Street and the like such "environmental proponents". Again, it all comes down to envy.

Envy, envy, envy. THAT is what environmentalism is really about. Since I don't seem to be able to achieve, I must stop those who are.

So no, there are no mistakes. But there are emotions. And there are intentions. And those intentions are not about saving any planet. And that is no mistake.

While there are undoubtedly environmentalists who behave as you so stereotypically describe them, the scientists who study climate change are simply reporting observable facts or the results of thier analysis.

Those results and observable facts show the externalized cost of fossil fuel use is negatively affecting the environment. That cost is being passed on to you right now Dessicant.

Your insurance company also insures coastal communities where flooding is more prevalent. That cost is born by you.

The drought in California has a climate change component. It's threatening agriculture in the state. Your food prices will climb as a result.

Excess CO2 is acidifying the oceans damaging marine life. The cost of seafood will rise and you will pay it.

Pollution from fossil fuel use causes health problems. Chinese coal pollution is even making it's way here. More use of health care raises insurance rates which you will pay.

Climate change exacerbated the droughts in Syria that played a part in the instability in the region. Our military is now conducting operations there paid for by your tax dollars.

Paying directly now to reduce the impacts of climate change will reduce these indirect expenses that we will all be paying later as the cost of adaption. Over time the indirect costs will dwarf the costs of directly addressing the situation now.

As for the OP as far as I know neither myself nor my sister were accidents and my children were not either.

 

[inachu]

No matter if a birth was a mistake or not we can know that we can not stop life.

Life is one of the greatest things on earth that we can not slow down.

 

[OverVolt]

A group of organisms radically altering the environment of the planet, causing cataclysmic extinctions and vast environmental changes.

It's not something new or unique to humanity. Cyanobacteria did this millions of years ago. The Great Oxygenation event. It created the atmospheric oxygen we now breath - poisoning the planet of anaerobic organisms, and indirectly triggering a ice age. The first mass extinction.

Humanity's problem isn't that we're destroying nature or changing the world. It's that we're making the world into something we don't want to live in. That's all. No mysticism, no nature worship. Just "Uh oh, I don't breathe smog. Maybe we shouldn't turn the atmosphere into smog". Nature doesn't care, and will only be too happy to let us die, like it always has been with everything that has ever lived or will ever live.

The lag time between lignin as a defensive structure and ligninase that could break down dead plants using it was 300 million years. Until then it was just layers upon layers of petrified trees and is when most of the coal we mine was formed.

It was inevitable that one day all the sequestered carbon would be released.

 

[Paratus]

The lag time between lignin as a defensive structure and ligninase that could break down dead plants using it was 300 million years. Until then it was just layers upon layers of petrified trees and is when most of the coal we mine was formed.

It was inevitable that one day all the sequestered carbon would be released.

While that may or may not be true. It's the rate at which the sequestered carbon is released that has specific implications for us.

 

[Caravaggio]

When I was ten years old I saw the 'abortion episode' of the Maude TV series. I had never heard the word before, so I asked my mom what it meant. She said that sometimes mommies don't want to be mommies. I immediately asked why would anyone not want to be a mom. She said it was lots of reasons and that she and my dad weren't trying to have children when they made us (my brother and me) and were using birth control (I learned a lot that night). At least they tried.

Birth control, even failed birth control, is good for the quality of our species at the higher ability end, as clever mums are more likely to use it than stupid mums. The more a woman is educated the less she wants to see herself as a breeding machine.
Alas, it is complicated by religions that insist on high breeding rates and rant against birth control. The downside therefore, is that if only smart people use it, then, by definition, they will be out-bred by the religious and the unambitious.

Which pretty much explains why we are in the state we are in. Airports are crowded, check-in is a nightmare, even business is sold out.

We need a new eugenics to limit breeding, based on agreed rational norms and genome quality tests. This has started but it will only be used where it isn't needed! The policy would need to be international and enforced.

Will it ever happen? Not a snowball's chance in hell. People are too selfish. So as a species, we are doomed.
I buy an electric car to save the planet. My neighbour buys a V8 Dodge pick-up to take his kids to school. I'm the twit, he is the selfish hero. If he runs into me, I die, he gets a small dent. It's a no-brainer really. Selfishness will kill us all, and many other species. But evolution will probably re-invent something a bit like us in 10-12 million years, after industrial societies have wiped each other out. Then industrialism will probably arise again. Until the planet is too toxic for life on land.

So, in a nutshell, I applaud your pessimism and am inclined to disagree with Deessicant's optimism. Paratus is on target too.

 

[bradly1101]

Birth control, even failed birth control, is good for the quality of our species at the higher ability end, as clever mums are more likely to use it than stupid mums. The more a woman is educated the less she wants to see herself as a breeding machine.
Alas, it is complicated by religions that insist on high breeding rates and rant against birth control. The downside therefore, is that if only smart people use it, then, by definition, they will be out-bred by the religious and the unambitious.

Which pretty much explains why we are in the state we are in. Airports are crowded, check-in is a nightmare, even business is sold out.

We need a new eugenics to limit breeding, based on agreed rational norms and genome quality tests. This has started but it will only be used where it isn't needed! The policy would need to be international and enforced.

Will it ever happen? Not a snowball's chance in hell. People are too selfish. So as a species, we are doomed.
I buy an electric car to save the planet. My neighbour buys a V8 Dodge pick-up to take his kids to school. I'm the twit, he is the selfish hero. If he runs into me, I die, he gets a small dent. It's a no-brainer really. Selfishness will kill us all, and many other species. But evolution will probably re-invent something a bit like us in 10-12 million years, after industrial societies have wiped each other out. Then industrialism will probably arise again. Until the planet is too toxic for life on land.

So, in a nutshell, I applaud your pessimism and am inclined to disagree with Deessicant's optimism. Paratus is on target too.

It's hard to think of a single major problem facing our planet that isn't caused by human overpopulation.

 

[bradly1101]

Extinction is given too much weight and concern. Every species will one day be extinct. It's not an important issue. What is important is exploiting the planet such that our lives are productive and happy. That means USING what is here, not saving it for some unknown future generation. Pollution and waste products are WORTH IT for us to enjoy a modern and sophisticated lifestyle. Over time we seem to gain control over these things, but going backward or "conserving" things can never be an option. All resources will ultimately be used up. Slowing down the process only delays the inevitable. Use up the stuff and find the next answer once the resource runs out, as all must.

So take fossil fuels for example. Let's develop and burn them and utilize them as fast as we can and for as long as they continue to make our lives magnificent. Once they run out, we'll figure out an alternative. We are really smart, we own the planet, it is here to serve us, we have always solved every problem that comes up, and that will continue until we are extinct.

I don't care about AGW. When the planet warms, more areas will become friendly to mass agriculture. When the sea levels rise, cities will submerge over the decades and we will be forced to rebuild them on higher ground, creating vast opportunities and employment for building, relocation, and re-purposing otherwise vacant land.

Fossil fuels will completely run out at some point and then we can turn to solar and wind and whatever else we invent.

I don't believe in tipping points or other armageddonism. They are simply predictions and scientific predictions are so much toilet paper with respect to accuracy and reliability. Especially scientific predictions funded by universities and governments, where destruction and cataclysm are the best way to stay on the dole. PUBLISH OR PERISH as the professors like to say.

Let's talk about a single ecosystem, the American river. They're under attack with coal ash, insecticides, fertilizers and other pollutants. So we shouldn't care about the river species disappearing? Aren't these 'dead' rivers a marker for what we can expect everywhere if we keep going like this? If we're to not care, I believe that makes us stupid, ignorant and arrogant.

What happens when there's a flood? The water becomes toxic because of everything that is stored or flows underground like sewage. Floods like this didn't occur before we started 'enjoying modern life.' You think the tradeoff is worth it. I do not.

 

[lucia]

There are three mistakes before me... never mind.

 

[alzan]

Let's talk about a single ecosystem, the American river. They're under attack with coal ash, insecticides, fertilizers and other pollutants. So we shouldn't care about the river species disappearing? Aren't these 'dead' rivers a marker for what we can expect everywhere if we keep going like this? If we're to not care, I believe that makes us stupid, ignorant and arrogant.

What happens when there's a flood? The water becomes toxic because of everything that is stored or flows underground like sewage. Floods like this didn't occur before we started 'enjoying modern life.' You think the tradeoff is worth it. I do not.

Don't know if he's religious or not but he's definitely a "dominionist": the world and it's contents are here for us to control and rule over, to use and abuse, etc.

 

[Exophase]

My mother had an abortion after my next older sibling was born and before I was born. Somehow the experience made my mother vow to never have an abortion again. So I was brought into the world even though my parents were in no better financial situation than when they last decided they couldn't afford a third child.

Worked out okay somehow nonetheless. Kind of weird to think about. I didn't learn about this until a few years ago.

 

[Dessicant]

Don't know if he's religious or not but he's definitely a "dominionist": the world and it's contents are here for us to control and rule over, to use and abuse, etc.

"Dominionist." I like that. And it fits. And also an atheist of course. How could anyone who makes as much sense as I be otherwise?

The Earth is ours to control, dominate, own, utilize, and benefit from.

 

[SlitheryDee]

"Dominionist." I like that. And it fits. And also an atheist of course. How could anyone who makes as much sense as I be otherwise?

The Earth is ours to control, dominate, own, utilize, and benefit from.

I would agree with you if I thought we were capable of controlling the earth. If we had that power, we could turn the planet into an idyllic place where the temperature is always the perfect balance for comfort and cultivation. It would be sunny or rain when we needed it to. We could make the wind blow or be calm at a whim. We could get rid of all the things in nature that bother us without worrying about whether they left a hole in the ecosystem that would negatively affect us. Not a blade of grass or artificial structure would be out of place. The lands would be populated with exactly whatever flora and fauna we wanted, or none at all if that's what we want. The air would be clear of allergens, infectious agents, industrial byproducts, or even unpleasant levels of particulates. It would be a planet that we could command as easily as someone controls the inside of a smart house now. That's a great dream to have IMO. That would be control, domination, utilization and benefit to the extent that it can be carried out.

We can't do that though. We aren't close to the technological capability and we lack the organization to carry it out worldwide even if we were. What we ARE doing is the equivalent of defecating in our own sandbox. It's nothing like domination or control because we simply aren't capable of that. If it consists of utilization and benefit then it is the short term version of those ideas, with little thought of being able to continue utilizing and benefiting in perpetuity. It's simply stupid for reasons that have nothing to do with either politicized or emotion based environmentalism. As I said, I'm all for true domination and control when we can do that. We aren't doing that. Right now we're just despoiling. We'll just keep filling our pen up with our own excrement until we die from exposure to it, all the while killing, chittering, and screaming at each other to the end like the dumb primates we have proven to be.

 

[Ban Bot]

It's hard to think of a single major problem facing our planet that isn't caused by human overpopulation.

Perspective. As someone already mentioned the oxygenation of the Earth was a major catastrophe for many species. And yet it was a panacea for some who exploited such. The Earth's environment has not been static the last 4.5 billion years but instead contains a rich history of species wiping out others and terraforming the environment. Photosynthetic plants and insects like ants are some examples that have radically shifted the balance of what lives, what dies, and what Earth would be like.

To echo PhatoseAlpha: "Humanity's problem isn't that we're destroying nature or changing the world. It's that we're making the world into something we don't want to live in. That's all."

Not sure where Genesis 1 comes into this from the OP. Not that it matters but I am a theist and believe we have a God given directive/responsibility to "rule" or have "dominion" over the Earth which contextually means to keep in healthy order. From a non-theistic view I don't think it really matters--the Earth is toast sooner or later.

 

[bradly1101]

I don't think anything that happens in nature is a "mistake". That would imply that nature has a plan, and I don't think it does. Nothing is a mistake and nothing is planned. Things just "are".

I agree. Whatever that spark was that turned monkey into man would forever change the planet and its inhabitants. It was probably caused by problem solving which all animals do, we just figured out new, complex solutions to almost everything - we became exploiters of resources and consumers (destroyers). From the point of view of the rhinoceros, the elephant, the whale, the frogs, the bees, the extinct mega-fauna, etc. our arrival was a harbinger of doom more than a mistake.

In terms of the environment, we are the only ones around who can make good decisions or mistakes of any note. Nothing else is going to have the effect we can have, and nothing else has the capacity to have foresight and planning like we do. Nature doesn't much care what we do. It loses species and gains them all the time. For nature to go, they all have to go first, and I don't think we can kill them all before we kill ourselves no matter what we do. The only significance we should see in the loss of species is it's foreshadowing of the planet slowly becoming more inhospitable for things that we ultimately have a lot in common with. Like the canary in the gold mine, it is a sign that the planet just got a little bit more difficult to survive on.

My argument on the whole situation is that we should take notice of this not because it's a great tragedy to nature, (I don't think nature really cares), but out of pure self interest. We want to keep living and advancing in perpetuity. Making the rock we live on into a poisonous wasteland is a surefire way to impede that. We get mired in all the emotional trivialities of this issue far too easily when the real problem is the one of our species' survival. I'm no environmentalist in the traditional sense. I don't have any emotional attachment to anything in nature. I don't cry when we lose a species and I don't cheer when an endangered one makes a comeback. They don't matter to me in any emotional capacity. When it comes to the consideration that this is the only place any humans live in the whole universe; That we're stuck here recycling the same air, water, and land that we're also simultaneously filling with poisons like a fish in a tank that never gets cleaned, THAT concerns me. Lucky for the other animals in the world that an ideal environment for us is also ideal for most of them, because I believe self interest is the only thing powerful enough to make us do anything about it. If we do decide to become the custodians of our planet that we will eventually have to be, they'll get to ride on our coattails.

I know this is a different perspective than most environmentalists tend to subscribe to. Most of them have a decidedly emotional lean to them that turns off a lot of people. There seems to be some denigration of humanity in general wrapped into their personal philosophy. There's a lot of people expressing the idea that if humans would just go away, everything would be better. It's almost like they see nature and humanity as two opposing sides, and they're in nature's corner. I always wondered what it was they thought they were saving though? Nature is a mindless, directionless thing that no more appreciates their siding with it than it would care if it was wiped out entirely. We are the ones with minds and direction. We should save nature, but we should do it for us. There is no sense in the us vs. nature viewpoint, because there is only one side and one viewpoint that matters. Nature is our life-support, we HAVE to be on it's side.

The emotional attachment I feel to the 'natural' world mirrors my feelings for anything under threat that didn't bring it on itself (although I guess that nature brought man here, but our current effects are far from natural). If I see an ad for a charity that helps starving children, I feel bad for the child who was brought into a family that couldn't support it. It's not the child's fault, the parents did that. That's how I feel about the environment, which is linked to that same need to procreate beyond one's means. Look to the health of the rivers and waterways around the world which must bear the runoff and pollution produced by us all. It doesn't look good. I guess it could be argued that the river is to blame for looking so pristine.

But the emotional connection leads to logical actions. The more I've learned about how we're affecting the planet and its other inhabitants, the more things I've done to save energy, water and reduce trash. I only hope others are pitching in. There are a lot of small cars around here, but there are more giant trucks and SUV's. It's the emotional connection to nature or lack thereof that drives many of these purchases. So would the connection be helpful?