by Dave Nocera

Created on: October 27, 2008   Last Updated: January 05, 2010

Ever since we clawed our way out of the rainforest and into civilizations, man has used his large brain to exploit nature to his benefit. The survival of our species depended upon this ability. But now we are faced with a type of crisis that requires a new type of thinking and the solution will either fundamentally change man into Planet Earth's caretakers, or we will die trying. 

 
We don't have a global energy crisis, we have global creativity crisis. From the gravitational forces that create our tides to the nuclear forces that hold together our atoms, the universe is exploding with energy. We need to harness our creativity to tap those energies in sustainable ways. Copernicus shifted our thinking from an Earth centric to a Sun centric solar system. Our next big leap requires a similar paradigm shift in thinking.  
 

We need to do more to save our environment. The Earth will survive without man; the benefit to sustainable energy is man's survival. Joseph Campbell once wrote about pygmy legend describing boy who finds a bird in the rainforest. The boy's father doesn't want to feed the bird, so he kills it. The legend says, "the man killed the bird, and with the bird he killed the song, and with the song, himself". This is what happens when we exploit our planet; with every death of a species part of our humanity dies with it.  
 
Where are the leaders? While clamoring for votes politicians today will talk about sustainable energy, but why did they wait so long? Because politicians, rats and bacteria will exploit their environment until none is remaining, and then populations declined precipitously. This is how Mayan and Easter Island civilizations crashed their ecosystems. Our short sightedness as a species is sending us down the same path. We need to break the cycle of planetary exploitation that has thus far made our civilization great.  
 
Up until recently our leaders considered oil cheap energy, never factoring in the cost to keep armies in the Middle East, to protect the oil flow. And they completely ignored the damage burning fossil fuels does to Earth's biosphere, which eventually costs future generations for the cleanup. Man's historic ability to exploit the natural resources has made us a great civilization, but our short-sightedness has also taken a terrible toll on Planet Earth. Each generation should leave this planet in no worse shape than they found it and that is never going to happen until we master renewable energy. We need to save the environment to save ourselves and stop following the pattern of politicians, rats and bacteria who steal from future generations for short term benefits. 

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