Humans have affected the life on earth more than anything else. Humans are responsible for the extinction of many species. We have been destroying natural habitats of many species. We cut down trees, we destroy forests and we build houses, factories and cities. We are making changes in the nature so as to make it more livable and comfortable for us, but in doing so we are making it uninhabitable for other organisms. Is doing so entirely wrong?
Earth is least bothered that one of the species living on it is causing the extinction of others. It has seen this game for millions of years. And I am pretty positive that it will see it for another million years, because no matter how much we destroy mother nature, we are not going to extinct and neither is life on earth. Earth is not walking down Mars's road. Yes, humans will make many more species go extinct if they don't stop now. But there will always be organisms that would survive in the new habitat created by humans. Even at the time of dinosaurs, there were life forms that could survive the extremities created by an asteroid impact. Why wouldn't there be any life forms that could survive changes made by humans. That argument may not be logically or scientifically correct but what I am trying to convey is the optimism that 'life will find a way'. Life will evolve so that it will be more fit to the new ecosystems created by humans that are called cities. Another basic reason that species are going extinct due to human interference is that humans are making these changes to fast for the organisms to evolve and fit in the new environment, but still there would be other species that were not so for in the earlier habitat and were on the brink of extinction but they turn out to be fit in the human-made environment.
But does that mean that the way we are making these changes and handling nature justifiable? Should we just keep cutting trees and making more species go extinct just because it's a natural thing? Or should we just stop playing god?
Yes, We should.
Because we are terrible at it. We are not playing god in a very systematic way, we are just doing it randomly and misusing the power that we got from our understanding of universe. That's why we are not able to control things and facing problems such as global warming. Global warming is just an outcome of our unplanned industrial development. It will affect our lives. Other species will evolve and survive these changes, but humans will certainly not. Even if it would not result in our extinction, it would still result in a massive loss of life in the worst case scenario which might as well be the reality if we don't choose to act now. There are more reasons to why we should respond to global warming which I illustrated in my earlier post Why we should reduce our CO2 emissions.
Global warming is just one of the issues, who knows there might be more problems that result from our modern lifestyle about which we don't know yet. We have created new ecosystems that are not inhabitable to the oorganisms on which we are highly dependant. For example- Bees. If bees went extinct, we will no longer be able to produce food and we will have nothing to eat, world will die out of hunger. Bees will most probably not go extinct anytime soon, but we don't know what would be the effects of climate change on the bees and what would be the climate change situation in the next 10-20 years.
Conclusion- We are not destroying earth, We are destroying ourselves.
That is why we should just stop. Stop altering ecosystems, stop cutting trees. Because the only thing we are hurting from doing that is us. We are only creating more problems for ourselves. But then, what should we do? Discard our development and start living like Neanderthals?
Of course not! We should just rely on science. We should just think scientifically before doing anything. If there are solar and wind and all other renewable forms of energy available, then why should we still use fossil fuels despite knowing all the bad things it is responsible for. We should just think about the effects of our decisions on us, on our society and on our world before taking any not just on the industrial level but also in our day to day life!!
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