Man's war on nature.

Even when endangered, there is often no push, no real effort to save the creatures of this planet. Whether on land, in the air or in any of the abundant waters, officials at the top rarely give a flying fig. By and large there is an attitude of, people can survive without it, so why put any resources into protections?.

Even if token efforts are made, they are essentially meaningless and worthless as long as cluttering of our waters, lands an air with various contaminants continues. When huge tracts of land are stripped of trees and other vegetation, where do the creatures go and how are they to survive?

When a mountaintop is shorn away for mining, lake drained or filled in with soil, where goeth the occupants?

A good deal of this is attributable to religion, as many religions assert (unsurprisingly) that man is the "pinnacle" of creation, and has been given dominion over the "brute beasts." This is not news, either. As long ago as the early 17th century, some philosophers were announcing the death of the natural world. They were a minority, and much scorned--but they were effectively voices crying in the wilderness.

Capitalism, that bastard child of European feudalism, has been the worst enemy of nature. The capitalist is only interested in piling up the money, he or she does not care if the air, the water and the soil are polluted, nor how many people die as a result of their action. All that matters is the bottom line. I don't say it will happen, but it would not surprise me if we go past the tipping point and the survival of humanity is compromised before the capitalists are reined in.

I am currently writing a book of dystopian short stories. In one, the Earth is portrayed in such a way, it seems the planet has decided to divest itself of all land dwelling parasites. It is never asserted that such is so, but a credulous mind might think otherwise. To me, there seems a better than 50% chance our descendants will at best live miserable lives, minus the blessings of functional societies.

I don't feel like we intentionally attack the natural world. I think it's more a matter of neglect in counteracting the affects of our own attempts to survive and prosper. We are simply too powerful of an apex predator.

There was a time when our ancestors had to use their intellect and skills to survive against powerful creatures, but now we have to go out of our way to avoid obliterating entire species through mere neglect.

Vast swaths of our population are still fighting to survive, but they are struggling against larger enemies (than tigers and lions) like starvation and cultural attack, and the rest of the environment is simply getting caught up in that battle and trampled.

We need more banks!

Earth's sixth mass extinction event under way, scientists warn.

Researchers talk of ‘biological annihilation’ as study reveals billions of populations of animals have been lost in recent decades
Opinion: You don’t need a scientist to know what’s causing the sixth mass extinction

https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/10/earths-sixth-mass-extinction-event-already-underway-scientists-warn

While I largely agree with your post, Roswell, I would point out that it ignores the crucial role capitalist greed plays in the destruction of the natural world. Huge areas of the Brazilian rain forest are clear cut, and the wood sold in China and Japan, and in Europe. The detritus of the lumbering operations is burned off, dumping tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Most of the nutrients in a rain forest are in the canopy or the understory of the forest, so what is left is an impoverished soil. This land is then farmed to complete exhaustion to grow cash crops, almost exclusively soy beans. Brazil is the largest competitor in the world with the United States in soy bean production. When that soil is finally exhausted, the industrial scale farming operations move on, and what is left is turned into (very marginal) grazing land. This sort of thing happens all over the world. In what was once called the third world, poor nations have no incentive to protect the natural environment, and every incentive to cooperate with the the capitalists. There is, of course, nothing that any of us, or any nation outside those nations, can do about that.

This remark:



. . . brings to mind something I became aware of a few decades ago. The fertility rate in industrialized nations has been declining at least since the end of the Second World War. The fertility rate in the Untied States only remains slightly above replacement rate because of immigration, and the fertility rate in immigrant communities in the United States declines sharply in the second and successive generations. (You might find this Wikipedia summary on total fertility rates interesting.) Ironically, probably the best way to slow down, or even reverse the growth of world population would be to assure that everyone on the planet has access to basic necessities, is well-educated and has food, medical and retirement security.

I recognize that many people will see this as a political statement, but one would have to be blind, in my never humble opinion, not to see what unrestrained capitalism does to our world. A web search for "fertility in the industrialized world" will produce many interesting results, which I believe suggest a defense against those larger enemies you mentioned.

Yep. Greed, beyond reason, drives capitalists, where there are no restraining laws, as is the trend, these days.

I'm sure Capitalism is a contributing factor, as are many of the other big "ism's", but I wanted to go to the root of the problem, not its branches. Unfortunately the root of the problem (to state the obvious) is simply human behavior. Let's face it, most people lack the self discipline to maintain their own body weight and healthy nutrition, much less the discipline required to analyze global environmental effects and modify daily behavior to supplement a cultural solution. To me, Capitalism, Materialism, Socialism, Communism, Taoism, Hinduism, etc are all just branches of root human behavior, and none of those ism's (or very few) of them have done a decent job of protecting ecosystems. If Capitalism were completely eliminated from the face of the Earth I think we would still be running roughshod over the ecosystem, it would just be some other ism leading the bulldozers.

But the main point of my post was that nobody is attempting to wage a war on nature (as the headline proposes). And I think it's an important distinction because we can't begin to plan a solution unless we focus on the real source of the problem. Which leads me to your second paragraph (or point), which is that the most effective resolution to the problem may not be to try to curtail bad behaviors (which will probably never work), but to remove the need for them.

If we can bring more of the population out of poverty and improve education, a lot of the underlying behaviors which drive rabid expansion and population growth may slow (as you noted).

Humans in their anthropocentrism have declared that no living thing has the right to exist unless specifically protected by a law.