Humankind's Plight at a Macro Level
I just returned from a ~7-mile hike I took by myself in preparation for next weekend’s far more strenuous Point Sal hike with a friend. Check out these images!
At the risk of appearing to be a weirdo, when I hike by myself I often contemplate the world’s situation at a macro level and what, if anything, I can do about it. This afternoon, I traversed a few of those miles thinking about the words of the eminent oceanographer Sylvia Earle, whose viewpoints I summarize as follows:
If you have a colony of bacteria in a petri dish, they multiply and eat, multiply and eat, multiply and eat, until they run out of food and room, and soon thereafter they’re all dead. They have no capacity for any other behavior; in particular, they have no sense that there could be consequences to unsustainable growth and runaway consumption of resources. People, on the other hand, most certainly have a sense of future, and recognize that there are consequences to right vs. wrong, to prudent vs. foolish actions.
But, I ask, given the outrageous rate at which we’re destroying our natural environment and chewing through our resources, will this capacity manifest itself in time to prevent us from the same fate as the bacteria? There certainly are a few factors that provide cause for alarm: (more…)