Monday, October 12, 2009

Earth 1, Humans 0

"When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me?" - Michel de Montainge

Every time there is a hailstorm, the trees and shrubs are stripped bare of the weak and dying foliage – it’s like nature pruning itself. But it's something that equals destruction for our cars, homes and just about anything made of glass or steel. Same goes for a bushfire, have you ever seen the bush a couple of weeks after a bushfire?

Beautiful green shoots popping out of trees. The ash is fertile and perfect for growing, plants in Australia even require fire, and yet human construction stands no chance against raging fires.

I watched the news reports recently on the tsunami that hit Samoa. It did a lot of damage, took a lot of lives, it was heartbreaking stuff to watch. It wasn’t just the buildings that were destroyed, the natural surroundings were also left in ruins. The thing that struck me was how nature will eventually fix itself, eventually all those trees will regrow and many years down the track you'll never know there was a tsunami. Human constructions stay broken if you don’t fix them.

This isn't an article bashing the achievements of Man compared to nature, it’s more about how we need to preserve our glorious surrounds for our own sake.

Now I'm not someone who talks about climate change often, I do however fail to see how one can argue against acting upon it, whether you believe it or not. There are these people out there who are sceptical, and might think "It’s not caused by humans, its just the natural warming and cooling off the earth", and think it’s all well and good to continue living on Earth the way we do at the moment... whatever, I honestly don't care what people think about most things, its just there's a problem here:

Here you have a tiny little planet, as Carl Sagan put it: “…a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam”, and if there was even a chance that we might be ruining Earth (lets be Christian, better to be safe then sorry, right?) then why would you not take any steps necessary to preserve your home. I don’t know… everything comes down to money in the end for some reason.

When the asteroid hit the Earth that took out the Dinosaurs (the most likely reason for extinction I believe) 65 million years ago, it didn’t end life, life eventually evolved and new forms proliferated. No matter what we might do to the Earth, it will survive and adapt as in the past and we probably won’t. Earth always prevails, humans do not.

- Dogman

3 comments:

  1. man that's really great. I feel the same with climate change and the aversion to the belief in it. Even if global warming is a hoax, a myth or whatever, how could we possibly shun the prospect of keeping our world in top shape. As you said recently Hamish, we treat our bodies the same way.

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  2. Thats true about us treating our bodies the same. We know maintaining higher standards of health are always beneficial even if it doesn't add five years to our lives (which it probably would), we would feel great for being healthy. Us measly humans are doing the same to our planet. But i think our reign will have its end soon enough and a refreshed earth will try produce life again, only after learning from its mistakes

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  3. I didn't even think about what I'd said about treating our bodies well, and it was very recent! Sorta like what Joe Rogan said, the Earth is tiny organism and we are virus spreading across the surface. If you eat shitty food all the time and smoke cigarettes you're treating your body the way we treat the Earth.

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