Our Exploitation Of Nature
Our society is run through the use of energy. Since energy cannot be created out of nothing, it must be taken from something that already is existing. We often make such energy out of useful minerals in the ground. Things like oil, zeolite, iron and copper are all extracted from out of the ground. Since the whole of the Earth is not infinite, though, it’s clear that all the oil and zeolites we have will sure enough run out, and at that point we’ll be in real trouble as to what we should do.
Consider for a moment just how much of our daily activities require the use of power and the taking of resources around the world. Not only do the valuable metals we extract from the Earth power our economy to a large extent, but oil is needed for virtually all things we do, silicon is needed for our computers, plastic and tires are made from oil, and of course trees are required to be cut down for wood and paper.
The price this has on our environment could not be overstated. While it could be argued that plants are renewable resources, the notion that a three hundred year old tree could be cut down and substituted with a small tree, and that this is a fair replacement, is obviously silly. The amount of harm that forest excavation creates to wildlife and the delicate ecology humans rely on cannot be wholly grasped.
For lovers of the environment, however, the news is not all bad. Unfortunately, the re-instatement of the balance of nature may come at the price of many millions of people. As global warming grows more and more into a visible reality, we’re starting to see that the toll human society has taken on the Earth may be irreversible. Increasing amounts of natural disasters have been the result of our destructiveness, and as our mode of living does not appear to have changed at all over the past fifty years but only gotten worse, it seems that the reaction this will create from our natural world will be even more significant.
It has been stated that if human beings were to become extinct, the Earth would flourish, but if all insects were to become extinct, human beings would not be able to live for very long. It appears that we’ve forgotten our own place in nature, and become tricked by television and the false image of the world it portrays. Perhaps with the destruction of a portion of our civilization, and the total loss of fuel to run it with, we’ll be forced to recognize our part in a wider ecology.
The idea that human civilization can go forever using non-renewable resources is obviously ludicrous. Unless we begin to make real moves to fundamentally shift the ways we lead our lives, the damage we make to ourselves and the Earth could be irreversible.
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