The Cavalry Is Coming

Abstract

Human activities are making a mess of our one and only planet. We pollute our air. We pollute our water. We pollute our food. For short-term gain, we cause long-term damage. The only face-saving aspect of it all is that for most of the time our technology has been reshaping the planet, we have been unaware of the damage we have been doing. Like children playing a game, we have wrought a civilization with no appreciation of the harm our activities have been doing to the fabric and holistic life of the Earth. If there is anything special about the human animal, it is that we have the ability to set our own constraints. In nature, competition, predators, disease, and available resources constrain populations. It’s our technology and our ability to devise it that makes us different from other animals. Strip us of our technology and send us naked into nature and we are not very special. Without the tools that enable us to punch above our weight, nature once more imposes on us a balance determined by outside forces. But our technology allows us to step outside the biological constraints and impose our will upon the world. This technology Fm thinking of here is not at the nuclear power and rocket science end of the spectrum. Once this primate discovered fire, a Single human or ape-like creature could level a 1,000-year old forest into scattered smoldering embers. By inventing flint axes and arrowheads, he can inflict death and destruction on the most fearsome predators.