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If you’ve read the first page of this website you will know one of our tenets is for humans to live in balance with our environment. This is an interesting task. You have to remember, people are as much a part of nature as all the other animals, minerals and vegetables. So for us to dominate and decimate our environment is nothing new…from a species point of view. It is a part of our survival strategy. However, with that said, because we are humans and because our only natural enemy is ourselves and to a greater extent - bacteria and virus’ - it behooves us to question if our impact on the rest of nature is in fact concordant with survival.  I am not a big believer in humans impacting global climate change. We are not that big of a threat when it comes to the big Kahuna in the sky, the Sun. The Sun has more influence on Earth than anything us lowly humans can think up. And the Earth itself packs quite a punch as well. Just think back to the tsunami from three years ago in the Indian Ocean. Earth has other surprises in store for us too. Such as super volcanoes and methane hydrates locked into the ocean floor that could bubble up into our atmosphere one day, as they have in the past. 

So getting back to the question: Are we only taking what we need from the Earth or are we pigging out on our resources? Unfortunately, there really is no way of knowing. All we can do is look at our current resources, contrast them with past levels and extrapolate. We know that commodities such as oil, gas, copper, helium are all finite and are quickly dwindling. We know that the seas are being emptied of fish in a relatively short period of time. We know people inhabit every single ecosystem on the planet. And with every new habitation we are like an invasive species, disrupting the ecological balance that was once there. But because we are only looking at the environment over a short span of time, one or two generations, we are not capable of accurately predicting our true impact. We have no way of knowing if this is in fact natural. And to be frank, it is. 

If our species does not survive, it will not be at the hands of man. It will be due to a force of nature itself. This does not mean we should be free to eat all the fish, chop down the forest, smelt all the copper, consume all the helium, burn all the coal, oil and gas, drink or pollute all the fresh water; it means we need to strike a balance. I say this because while these things are plentiful now, they will not be in a few thousand years. And I’d like to see humans live at least as, if not longer than the dinosaurs did, for several hundred million years. I’d like to see us evolve further and that will require us to live in concordance with our environment as we continue to drive the most powerful force in life — survival of the fittest. 

 

Survival of the Fittest Sculpture