by Christyl Rivers

Created on: November 16, 2010   Last Updated: November 17, 2010

Humans were once just like all other animals.  But developing a much larger cerebral cortex led us to abandon our footloose and fancy free hunter gatherer ways.  We began to manipulate, and seek to control our environments. 

Now we control the entire globe, and the cost is much higher than most of us realize.  Because we live indoors and don’t know about the lost domain of the soaring raptor, or the loss of the forest primeval, we do not calculate the full loss of other living things.  Biodiversity is necessary, and it is going fast. Our numbers are greater than any other animals, save insects. We have taken every habitat of theirs and molded it to suit ourselves, which is not to say we have gained much, since we have less leisure time than at any other historical period. We have to keep our stuff, fueled, running, maintained, mortgaged, and status elevated.

It is somewhat ironic then, that we see ourselves in control.  Nature is so big, wise, and ancient; she runs the show with what we call natural laws.  Although we seek to defy them, we never really can.  We can drive, fly, change worlds on the Internet. But at the end of the day, until we are robots, we need air, water, food, and shelter, in that order.

Earth creates these things, and until the ferocious out of control spread of humanity, earth supplied in abundance. Yet at the burst at the start of the Industrial revolution, we took control of most every bit of land, burned things, and continue to burn them, even while our sources for arable productive soil, the bounty of the land and sea, and even our air quality is in jeopardy. A corporation is not a human being that needs air, water and soil. A corporation needs profits, and cares not about costs paid by you. But we must recognize that corporations, too, are made up of human beings with choices.

Two things need to happen to reverse these obviously unsustainable trends. Number one is that humans must control population growth.  Nature does this for us, of course, but our wealthier world contributions have been stemming the tides of once contagious disease, and increasing our life expectancy. The cost of living indoors is not just alienation from our source and our creation, it also keeps us less likely to fall off cliffs, stab ourselves with spears, get caught under a falling rock or tree, or being exposed to brutal weather. Death still reaches all eventually and a dangerous trend has developed. 

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