Priorities

I just read this article and couldn't help but notice what a good example this was for the screwed up priorities of our society.

http://www.cbc.ca/story/science/national/2005/03/11/acid-forests050311.html

Acid rain is killing off forests in Eastern Canada and is beginning to damage those in west, praries and in the north. Of course this isn't used as a jumping off point to discuss Kyoto or other environmental issues but rather they talk about how much money the forestry industry is losing. How pathetic.

We are killing our planet and its still all about the money. The fact that we need these forests to breathe seems to mean little. I am reminded of the scene in the Matrix when Agent Smith tells Morpheus that he has finally been able to classify humanity: a virus. He describes how we move into an area, devestate it and then leave for the next. A continuous cycle of destruction and non-renewal.

The Amazon rainforest provides one third of the earth's oxygen so we clear cut it at alarming rates. Vegetation ingests carbondioxide and produces oxygen which we breathe. So in our infinite wisdom we create as much CO2 as possible and then destroy the mechanisms that the Earth has for dealing with it. Then of course in a twisted sense of irony we complain about holes in our ozone layer and the fact that the world is heating up due to the increased greenhouse gasses that we have pumped into our atmosphere.

So the world gets together and develops the Kyoto Accord. An agreement between nations to take the environmental impact of humanity upon the earth seriously and to begin to rectify in some small way the devestation we have caused. Of course the number crunchers determine that this will have some negative impact upon certain sectors of our economy so the world's largest CO2 producers decide not to sign. Namely the United States.

I wonder how long it will take people to wake up and see that something needs to be done. What has to happen before they will stop bowing down before the altar of money and turn their attention to something truly important? Do the polar ice caps need to melt, destroying coastal cities around the world? Do we have to have hundreds of thousands of people dying each year from skin cancer? Will it happen when we have to send our kids out in respirators because the air is no longer safe to breathe? Or perhaps when we can't even venture outside because the sun will kill us when it sunny or the acid rain will when its raining?

Did you know that commercial fishing over the past century has almost wiped the oceans clean of truly adult size fish. A study has been underway for more than 20 years that has concluded that the large Asian and Nordic fishing factories have decemated the world's oceans. It turns out the they will move into an area and begin to rape the seas. Their initial catches are measured for size to determine the average size for an adult and then they continue to fish the area until all that they catch is no greater in size than what is determined to be a child. Then they move to the next area and rape it and so on and so forth until more than half of the world's ocean is no longer viable for fishing.

How stupid can we be as a species to think that these things will have not have a negative impact upon the planet? How short sighted can we be to think that in the end we will reap the whirlwind when all of the environmental destruction that we have caused makes this planet unihabitable for us? Our gift to future generations: polarized-radiation shielded bio domes in the vast wastelands of what used to be the praries. Once bison roamed the great plains, the seas teamed with varied life and man lived in harmony with the land. Now the bison are all but dead, the seas churn empty and man destroys the land.