It’s not about saving the earth


The earth has been around for about 4.5 billion years. The earliest hominid fossils found so far date between 2 and 3 million years old. That’s about 0.05% of the age of the planet. The planet has been around a lot longer than us and will be long after humans are extinct. The planet has gone through several mass extinctions in it’s history. A mass extinction about 250 million years ago killed about 95% of all species on the planet. Earth Earth survived that and over the next 200 million years dinosaurs evolved and went extinct. Earth goes on. It will continue to go on even after human activity drives us to extinction. Earth will survive until the sun goes into red giant phase estimated to be about 4-5 billion years from now. Now matter how stupid human behavior gets, (and as George W Bush has repeatedly proved, that can be pretty damn stupid) we are unlikely actually destroy the earth. We will destroy ourselves though. The earth doesn’t care if the polar ice caps melt. The earth doesn’t care if there are more powerful hurricanes. Humans care about this stuff. We must change our behaviors to save humanity. If we continue on our current path, the current mass extinction that is happening will include the species homo sapiens (that’s us). Unlike the dinosaurs, we may still have an opportunity to save ourselves. Of course the question remains, should humanity be saved? If we are not smart enough to change then the answer is probably no. But we have the capacity to change. I just hope we are smart enough to do something and prove that we deserve to survive.

Update Everyone should see the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” coming May 24. It is based around a speech that Al Gore has been delivering on Global Warming over the last couple of years. Check out the trailer at the site.

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