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The human 'superpredator' is unique -- and unsustainable, study says

Los Angeles Times
I can't imagine the world in ten years time. Twenty years. It'll be different. As different as the world was even in my own childhood. As different as the world was from my parents' childhoods.
My elders speak of our role on this Earth as caretakers. However, we've abandoned this role in favor of materialistic pursuits. Of finite beliefs that will quickly degrade into ash when stressed, as heated glass touching cold water.
All cultures historically warn us away from over-indulgence, and yet our own modern society celebrates this behavior as exemplary. This self-interest is our fatal flaw.
We take what we want, and we give nothing. This cannot last.
There are limits on this Earth we cannot comprehend in full. It is simply too vast. However, what little we do know should terrify us into acting more responsibly, even if only marginally. However we do not even do that. Our leaders urge us on to continue on as we have done. This cannot last.
Eventually, soon, we will begin to suffer wholesale consequences of our selfishness. We may suffer not even from the direct impact of climate change, but from the externalities, as a patient suffering from an autoimmune disease dying from a common cold. Drought and famine are the obvious culprits we face in the coming years, but also from increased storms, and harsher weather patterns. Algae blooms are an impact we do not understand in full, but the little we do illustrate such blooms can devastate whole regions.
Over hunting as the article illustrates is a small yet dangerous impact on our ecosystem. We hunt, now, not for safety nor for food, but for sport. Such is indulgence. Such is our desire for immediate gratification, that we would upset entire delicate ecosystem balances for a mere trophy on a wall. The myriad of ways the disappearing of even one animal from a food chain cannot be overstated.
I do not know how the world will change, but I do know how we ourselves should change. We should full stop what we are doing, and walk ourselves back. Reevaluate what we are doing. What is modern is not necessarily always good. What is good may be warped, as a tree growing up and out from underneath another fallen tree. Can we reign in our self-destruction in time? Or will we be stopped in full by the Earth as we slam down hard from our fall when it comes? I would like to say we can grasp our future in our hands, but for now, it looks as though we will fail.

Comments

  1. People of retirement age, Troy, often recall fondly the era in which they passed through adolescence, the 60s. It was an amazing time of plenty and bright futures. We worked all summer to get a perfect tan. Today you'll get microwaved in a half hour exposure to the sun.

    It would take a well informed public to have any hope of achieving the collective will needed for powerful change. That would require a Herculean "all of government" effort. Yet we're still caught in a mentality that demands tax cuts even as we're in need of a massive infusion of tax revenues to fund just the most critical upgrades in our core infrastructure to meet the demands of climate change.

    We take decisions today that will bring irreversible consequences twenty or thirty years later. As for remedial measures, such as decarbonizing our economy, we're running out of time require a lengthy process from consensus to act to research and study to analysis to selection and finally implementation. Start to finish could easily take two or three decades from the moment the collective will demands action.

    Even our best leaders are working on political targets based on political time frames that have only the loosest foundation in science. By not allowing science to call the shots, we're almost guaranteeing dollar short/day late solutions.

    I think our chances are somewhat worse than slim.

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