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The State of the World According to Paul Ehrlich
August 27th, 2008 by Paul EhrlichStanford professor Paul Ehrlich delivered a seminar to the Long Now Foundation a few weeks ago, and you can watch it here. Ehrlich offers an overview of the “state of the world” from the point of view of an ecologist/biologist.
Ehrlich is the co-author of The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:22 am
When humanity stops believing in the Judaeo-Christian tradition that we are above all other life and in fact expected to dominate it, we will realize that our role is quite different than what we ever imagined before. Humanity is part and parcel of the Earth and everything living. Our sentience is not reason for us to try to correct what is going on in the “world.” It’s not a question of the Earth against humanity, the cyclical and evolutionary processes of the Earth and of life will continue with or without humanity. Yes, humanity has accellerated and even caused some of these processes and extinctions of other living beings; however, it is not our role to correct this process once it has begun. Look at forest fires, they have a purpose, namely to clear and cleanse underbrush and renew and replant the forests – humans just plant themselves to close. Unless we are ignorantly directly the cause of the forest fire, such as a distraught human burning his or her love letters in the middle of a majestic grove of redwoods!, forest fires need to follow their course. Humanity’s role is to correct our own process, with our sentience to deduce what we have done to cause harm directly or indirectly to all other processes, and to reduce the harm we are causing. Such as stop building inside or close to our forests. If we don’t take care of the harm we are doing to the Earth, the Earth will take care of itself through reducing the harm we are doing most specifically by reducing humanity. We need to curb our footprint, to reduce our overpopulation on the planet. If we don’t, Hurray! for Earth with its megestorms, pandemics, seismic and vulcan activity, mental and physical genetic manipulations to curb the overgrowth of humanity which directly or indirectly causes the accelleration of Earth processes and evolutionary processes of other lifeforms. We deserve it, ignorance is not a good excuse when we claim to be the most sentient lifeform on Earth. Another issue is that we’re not even smart enough to communicate with the other lifeforms which share our planet. We need to learn to share better, learn that there’s only so much to go around, the universe’s resources are limited, and that there’s more to go around when there’s less of us!
October 14th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
It’s scary how much damage humans have done to the earth and how little folks are willing to change their habits to stop destroying the planet.
Chris
LEED AP
http://www.everblueenergy.com