Now I'm not anything close to what you'd call a tree hugger, although I have hugged a tree and I would recommend it if you ever get the chance. My point is that while I enjoy the environment I'm not one to consider it a passion to try and save it. Part of the reason for that is because I don't believe the environment can be saved. That's not a fatalistic statement either. There is a lot of arrogance on the part of people when they think that we're going to cause the end of the world. All we'll do is make it a crappy place to live. The thing to remember is that the environment is an ever changing system so complex that to this day we don't fully comprehend all the moving parts. Saying that doesn't mean we should dump our garbage in the river and just assume that the Earth will sort it out for us. I think we should do what we can to not actively destroy the world around us. At the same time it's unreasonable to think that we won't have an impact. There are over 6 billion of us on the planet, so we're very likely going to alter the landscape a bit with our passing.
For some people there is this innate need to preserve things. I'm not sure if this is for posterity or nostalgia or something else. We hang onto things from the past as reminders of where we've been and where we're possibly going. In some cases we prefer how things used to be over how they are right now and try to hold back change at all cost. If we keep things from changing and try to preserve things in a way that we think it should be, then maybe we're slowing down potential evolution of the environment itself. Not only that but we may be hindering our own evolution because we never allow ourselves to move from the past. They say that those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it and that's often times true. There is a certain beauty to things created in the past and maybe we should try to preserve them so that they're not lost to the ages. Still though, at what point do we start holding onto the past? If a car is at least twenty years old then it can be considered a classic. By that logic a used Chevy Nova is a classic car. Just because something is old doesn't mean that it's really classic. Sometimes it's just old. We want to save things for future generations, but what if they weren't meant to see things that way? What if it was just the natural progression for those old things to experience their time and then make way for something new? The dodo has been extinct since the 17th century and maybe there's a reason for that. I know that there is a huge difference between cars and a species of animals the same way that there's a difference between the ruins of The Colosseum and a national park.
One of the major catch phrases of the environmental movement today is the "carbon footprint". Really this is the amount of pollution a person, organization, or product creates. I'm glad that it's something that can be quantified because for too long people pretty much did whatever they wanted with little thought to the impact it would have on the world. Come to think about it, people have done that with more than just the environment, but that's for another time. For years chemicals were pumped into the rivers and oceans with almost no regard for the lasting effects it would have. Maybe that came from the fact that when you think about it the world is a pretty big place and the output from some leather mill seemed almost insignificant. The same was probably true for a single person who threw out a plastic bottle or newspaper because there was a time when it probably felt like there was an endless supply of both. It's only in the last few decades that people have started taking notice of the fact that maybe there is an end to what we can use before it's gone forever. Granted in some cases there is a fair amount of fear-mongering by various groups that paint the situation a little more bleak than it may actually be. I've often wondered about the motivations of people who do that. Are they so desperate for people to pay attention to the issue that they yell "fire!" in a crowded room? Or do they sincerely believe that things are that dire? I suppose either would be a horrible way to go through your daily life. Part of the problem with this sudden realization that things might be going downhill is that there is a level of near panic when it comes to trying to fix things. Now I'm well aware of the fact that the problems we face can't be things we take our sweet time with trying to resolve, but there is a difference between taking responsible action to correct past mistakes and frantically grasping at any solution presented. Right now the boat isn't sinking, but we're starting to see water come over the side. So we should act accordingly.
We also have to understand that things aren't always black and white. I remember growing up hearing about how the Amazon rain forest was being cut down at an alarming rate. When I heard that I thought the people cutting down those trees must have been idiots. Didn't they realize that they were killing the world's oxygen tank? It seemed obvious that it was a bad idea and I couldn't understand why anyone would want to actively hurt the world. Turns out in a lot of cases the people doing the harm aren't bad people out to do harm. They're just people doing what they feel they have to. People who live in and around the rain forest need to make a living just like we do. They don't always have the option to just pick and choose a career. If you had to cut down an acre of rain forest every day so that your kids could eat the only thing you'd be asking is when do you start. That doesn't make what they're doing right or wrong, it's simply the situation they're in. It's easy to get sanctimonious about what other people are doing when we're not in their shoes. People may rage about how the environment is being torn apart, but that doesn't stop them from going to Wal-Mart and buying cheap disposable goods or driving a car that gets twelves miles to the gallon. I'm no different either. I see the problems and know that I'm equally to blame.
Going back to the carbon footprint and more importantly our general impact on the world. How come I'm expected to keep track of everything I do, but a deer isn't? Sure my mental capacity might be greater than that of a deer, but we both live here. Plus there's a good chance that I've lived here longer than the deer so wouldn't I have more of a right to be here than they? Also I contribute to the world in a way that the deer can't even comprehend. They're basically giant rodents with antlers that just prance around the woods eating and shitting. So how come when I'm hiking I have to abide by the signs that say "Stay on trail" because the area is in a state of regrowth? I'm going to have less impact on the surrounding woods that the deer because I'm not going to eat some underdeveloped bush or rub up against a sick tree. Obviously all of that is a bit of a sarcastic argument because as people we are, for the most part, more capable of realizing our impact on the environment and in that fact we are able to do something about it. The deer is simply existing on instinct and little more. They can't be expected to rationalize anything. They can't even be expected to move out of the way of a fast approaching automobile without some serious indecision. In a way it's our responsibility to be aware of how our passing through can change the world.
As I mentioned before, the environment is so very complex. Attempting to understand it is overwhelming and anyone who says that they know all there is to know is lying to you. We've all heard about global warming and yet what we think we know may not be true. Based on everything scientists know there are still questions as to why things behave the way they do when we expect it to do something completely different. When we hear about this it's easy to throw our hands in the air and wonder if anything we do really has an impact. How important can we really be in a worldwide system? Again I'm not saying that we should fill the air with carbon monoxide or turn the oceans into sewers. The Earth has experienced 12 billion years of changes, all of it part of a natural progression. What's to say that we're not a part of the next environmental progression towards something else?
