Off World
Posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 3:36 pmOff World
Would the world be better off without human?
Suppose all of us have an agreement to have a voluntary extinction of our species by simply not breeding anymore. The world would be without human within approximately 100 years. After that, would the world be better off?
There certainly would be no more environmental destruction caused by human, although mother nature could still wreak havoc the world in her own way. But I think if we could observe the earth from above, our world would be much more peaceful since there would be no more conflicts and wars between human that we always have. Certainly, animals may fight with each other but nothing compare to ours.
The environment is not one thing, it is not nature. The environment is defined as:
1. The circumstances or conditions that surround one; surroundings.
2. The totality of circumstances surrounding an organism or group of organisms, especially:
a. The combination of external physical conditions that affect and influence the growth, development, and survival of organisms: “We shall never understand the natural environment until we see it as a living organism” (Paul Brooks).
b. The complex of social and cultural conditions affecting the nature of an individual or community.
3. Computer Science
a. The entire set of conditions under which one operates a computer, as it relates to the hardware, operating platform, or operating system.
b. An area of a computer’s memory used by the operating system and some programs to store certain variables to which they need frequent access.
So let’s try to figure out what you mean when you say the environment will be better off without us. Better off to whom? Domesticated animals certainly wouldn’t agree that they are better off. We certainly would be far, far worse off. Who is going to determine that things are better?
From what I gather, when people talk about “protecting the environment” what they generally mean is keeping things the same way they have been. The only problem there is that things have always changed, so our very concept of environmentalism is to stop the changes. That is more unnatural than anything else I could imagine.
For instance, the place I live right now used to be an ancient lake, Lake Bonneville. That lake is gone, and the Great Salt Lake is Left Behind, a stinky, lifeless mud puddle. Oh my goodness what a travesty! The glaciers that carved the canyons are also gone. Again, how horrible! Yet these things happened without any human intervention at all. If humans had been here 15,000 years ago there would probably be people fighting to save the lake and save the glaciers, and they’d do it in the name of environmentalism. Yet it is the environment itself that did them in.
Long story short, the environment isn’t going anywhere. It is what it is, and life will find a way to exist in whatever framework exists. When people talk about environmentalism they are talking about keeping things the way they are, which benefits humans economically far more than it benefits “nature” so don’t fool yourself into think that you’re fighting for the poor little animals. More species have come and gone before the rise of man than we could ever hope to destroy.
