by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: January 30, 2010

Human beings are capable of being one of the most destructive forces on Earth because of our ability to manipulate the environment in increasingly massive ways. Humans are now capable of shifting the earth's uppermost crust with explosives that have the force of major earthquakes in their own rights.

Humans can produce massive amounts of substance that can be toxic, that can introduce tons of material into the atmosphere, and which can create planet wide chemical and electrical reactions. Humans can introduce changes to environments by eliminating flora, fauna, geological barriers and the important structures that exist to hold together thousands of square miles of complex soils that support even more flora and fauna. Humans can build structures, alter the landscape, and cover the land for millions of miles with tools, equipment, organizations of human labor and machines, with alarming rapidity.

Humans are capable of exhibiting three characteristics that contribute to a propensity for causing destruction. First is curiosity that is limited to singular goals and is highly deficient in ability to take responsibility for unintended consequences. Second is greed for growth, expansion of profit, and expansion of power. Third is waste of resources and lack of consideration for returning land to riparian usefulness after resources are taken from the land.

Several areas of scientific curiosity have caused overwhelming alarm and even violent resistance through sabotage or illegal activism. These include creating of new and hazardous toxins, viruses, and bacteria. There are new forms of plant life that may or may not cause problems with entire food chains, as insect repelling plants may affect the bees that pollinate the plants, the birds that eat the insects and the animals that eat the birds, and so on. There is the HARP antenna array and other projects that have been and are capable of generating enormous disruptions to the atmosphere, such as heating huge sections of the ionosphere, with no idea of the potential consequences. There are the attempts to attack the very stuff of existence with the equivalent of neandrethals with sledgehammers, with little or no curiosity or sense of responsibility about the potential consequences.

The greed for growth or expansion of profits from grabbing the planets physical resources has created over building, economic and ecological disasters, wars over oil and strategic minerals,

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