Humans have always been interlopers. IN pre-historic times, humans were nomadic. Why? They would come into an area and deplete it of other wildlife (top of the food chain even then - we ate them), so they would pull up the tents and move to an area where food was abundant again. This changed with the advent of farming where they were locked into the land. They stopped their nomadic, species destroying ways, but then claimed (with the exception of the occassional lion, tiger or bear) the land as their own.

The difference is that in prehistoric times, there were maybe a few million people. Today there are over 6 billion.

Waste? You really would not want to go to a village circa 1589. Have you heard of them excavating the sites of the original Jamestown and Roanoke Island settlements? Do you know what they are excating? Let me give you a hint. It is not the fine china. It is the crap that the settlers left behind (literally and figuratively). Since man first learned how to make tools, he has been creating waste. (before actually - men dont eat bones - that is what they got dogs for).

Again, the only difference between 10,000BC and today is the number of people. SO the question becomes - which ones do we do away with?

The type of waste is much different.  It's not like they were making petroleum products that won't decompose or creating nuclear wastes.  They also didn't kill animals just because the animals were "over populating" the area.

Humans destroy.  That's what we do.  For being the "top of the food chain", we sure aren't too bright.  We're a mighty wasteful animal.

I don't think we can "break" the earth. I think it's a lot more resilient and long-lasting than we can imagine and it will definitely outlast us!

What we can do/are doing, is making it less hospitable for ourselves and future generations. I was reading the other day that "In 1998, the annual figures, for the U.S. alone, were estimated at 12 billion sanitary pads and 7 billion tampons."

Some women are switching to products like the Diva Cup and others are going back to reusable cloth products. Cloth diapering is actually trendy now. Changes are being made, but I don't think it's a big enough movement to really make an impact.

A lot of environmentally friendly changes seem like a technological step backward, so they are not as appealing to a lot of us.

And then of course, there is the waste like Karma described, the yucky toxic stuff that stays around forever.

All things decompose - the difference is in the timing. As we see, they were making things hundreds and thousands of years ago that do not decompose quickly (or there would be nothing to excavate).

The products we are making are from materials that already exist in nature. Not that came from another planet. Oil is here, as well as Uraniam and radon. The difference is that instead of contaminating hundreds (or thousands or millions) of acres, we put it into "dumps" so that in another thousand years, future generations can excavate our sites.



I agree with the last part. We aint too bright and we are wasteful. But we do not destroy. We change matter from one form to another. When you get right down to it, the only time matter is destroyed or created is in nuclear fusion and fission. A plastic cooler was around a million years ago - as a pollutant called oil (Oog and Gorg did not know what to do with the stuff, so they just moved to where it was not).

We definitely are not very bright. We have yet to understand our part in the "circle of life", but it is our ability to be able to choose right or wrong that does not let us reach that goal of a balance with nature. Animals basically follow their instinct of survival that allows them to be at harmony with nature (the one who eats learns to find food and those who are the food learn to protect themselves). At least that is my understanding. We on the other hand as the one looking for food always wanna win so we are capable of finding a way to defeat the ones who learn to defend themselves, making us the ultimate predator.

Happy hunting!  

Perhaps you're ready to give planned parenthood a try?  

My old retriever died. I used to buy soup bones for him. Now I actually make soup.

Cheer up, eventually the human race will have Mars and Jupiter's moons to populate and pollute.  

Sorry about your dog. I know how it is to lose one so loved and loving.

Sorry I've been MIA for a bit with back to school and such.

 

Animals do that don't they?  It is a natural tendency I believe.

 

 

Yes, the population has exploded!

 

I like my bones too!lol!

 

Agreed!  And I hate that kind of cruelty that seems like it is kind to animals.  It is more like making room for man! (

 

 

 

You're right Tex.  We can't break it but we have added to it's breakdown and it definitely isn't good for our children.

 

Oh yes we do!  Plant life being a good example, anitmals when we don't need to.  Innocent lives, because some of us are mean and can!  We do build and create and love, but we also destroy!

 

I agree!

 

 

LOL!  OK!LOL! Not amusing (I know it's sarcasm) but it's funny!

 

 

Me too.

Did we create the Sahara desert? The SW desert? No.

Can we kill "a plant"? Sure. Can we kill "plant life"? Dont think so. People confuse a site with the earth. The site is less than a pimple on the earth. We have yet to render any significant patch of the earth uninhabitable. Even in the middle of a concrete jungle, life pushes up through the cracks. Look at Chernobyl. Undoubtably the worst man made disaster of all time. And what do you see? nature reclaiming that which man has built.

No, man can scratch the earth. But man cannot destroy. Nature is bigger and stronger than man, as man is a part of nature, and a part is never greater than the whole.

The same can be said about our Gov't. One political party is part of the whole system "and a part is never greater than the whole".

In my half tired, sleepy state, I kinda get what you're saying!lol! 

I think we need to change some of our habits and think about how we use resources better, how we dispose of our waste and how we might change our habits to become less wasteful.

Look at what is happening to rainforests around the world and tell me we're not capable of destroying landscapes. 

I never said landscapes, or even "our" environment.  I only was picking the nit of "the planet".  It is a popular catch phrase today.  What many who repeat the mantra fail to realize is man has been "destroying" "our" environment since the dawn of civilization.  the magnitude today is different only because the population is larger.  But we have come far from the mid-evel days of rampant cholera due to "throwing crap in the streets" (literally).  IN some places it is really no different.  In others, we have started to clean up our act so that our destruction of the local environment is much smaller.

We can make an area uninhabitable by man or even some species of animals.  But as nature has taught us, she will always find a way to reclaim what man messes up.  It is our responsibility and duty to make sure "our" environment is habitable, but nature does not care.  She will take care of her own.  The verdant rainforests of today were not there in ages past.  And where they were, are now deserts.  The earth is not a static biosphere (and why all those biosphere experiments are kind of stupid).  It is adapting to changing factors beyond its control (the sun, the rotation of the earth, the tilt, etc.) and making the planet very habitible to life, not always to man.

Doc, I see what you are trying to say, in some respects.  But in razing rainforests, we are destroying habitats, ecosystems and species.  This, in turn, can have devastating consequences for much greater areas than previously thought.  If all the rainforests in the world are gone, we essentially loose the 'lungs' of our planet.  Who knows what this could potentially mean.