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Unchecked growth in a body is called cancer. We have accepted and grown to expect growth. Like an addict we count on and depend on more.
In every age, pioneers and settlers are struck by the vastness of the forests and herds, shores teeming with fish. Plenty and abundance, there for the taking. And so they did. Never considering the vastness of time that had put them there.
Moving, always moving. New horizons, new hunting grounds, new lands. Moving from species to species and from one extraction industry to the next. A hungry, restless species are we.
And this condition will, in the end, be our undoing.
You cannot refill an aquifer when it has been sucked dry.
You cannot remake the land when the topsoil has blown away.
The processes for reclamation and renewal are slow.
When balance is regained, it will be on other terms.
None of the science of climate or sustainability is new. The basics have been understood broadly for more than a century. What is new is the vast scale and scope of the degradation we are inflicting on our planet.
The true sorrow of the situation is that the majority of the damage has been done knowingly. In the span of a lifetime, while we have been aware of both causes and effects, we have gone…
