Single Entity

Something I heard today that frustrates me:

"It's arrogant to think that we can affect the ocean. The earth can heal herself, like the air. Mother nature is a force to be reckoned with."

Something I heard today that pleases me:

"Greatest natural disaster in the history of the planet [well, not quite -- Ed.], and it's all gone? The fish are fine? I don't think so... We just don't know that much!"


Strangely, both of these comments came from the same conversation, and from people who agreed with each other. Yes, I was eavesdropping. Well, more correctly, the conversation happened around me. I'll come back to those comments in a minute, but I wanted to talk first about why the "Debate on Global Climate Change" bothers me so much. fyi, that's what it's called now, not "Global Warming." The official name was changed because it was too easy for people to say "Global warming?! Hah! We had a record cold winter this year! And that's global warming?" The truth is that climates are so much more complicated.

Anyway. I wish people would stop arguing about whether climate change is human caused, human aggravated, or just one big natural cycle that we've only seen one side of, and realize that if the end result is an inhospitable planet, it doesn't matter what the cause is. Whether human actions or natural actions drive the average temperature up 30 degrees is irrelevant. The planet will be just fine -- but will we?

So, a month and a bit later [this was started on 9/2, and I'm continuing it now on 10/12], the second half, going back to that very first statement.

The fact is that we can affect the world. Any one who says that we can't is, in my mind, delusional. When western Europe first really began exploring the seas around North America (for once, I'm skipping the Vikings here -- I don't know what the written records are for them on the subjects I'm about to talk about), when people were first coming over the Nova Scotia and the that vicinity, many were coming to fish, live in camps for a summer, and then return back to Europe. They were fishing for cod, and the stories tell of lowering baskets from the ships into the sea, and pulling them up full of thousands of pounds of fish, fish almost the size of a man.

Today? The cod fishery is almost dead. I'm afraid I can't cite sources for you just now. Truthfully, it was almost dead in about 1900. Same thing with the whales, really. My ancestors stopped being whalers and became plumbers instead because the bottom fell out of the whaling industry, both because whales were going extinct and because whale goods (oil and baleen) were being replaced by other options.

Another iconic story is the "pea-soup fog" of London. That smog has more or less gone away with the introduction of atmospheric pollution regulations.

Alright. I don't want to give a ton of examples. The simple thing is that we have the power to change the world, for good or ill, and it will matter for us in the long run. A significant portion of the world's protein comes from the ocean. What happens if we destroy the ecology of the ocean? I'll be understated, and say say something really really bad.

This rant doesn't really have an end. I'm going to impose an end on it, here, because otherwise I'll just keep saving it to rant about later on. So, in deference to publication, just think about the little things we can do to not entirely destroy our world.

Thanks.