I've always laughed at people freaking out about man destroying the Earth. People worried about "Global Warming", or now, "Climate Change".
Driving today I heard Charlton Heston reading a passage from Michael Crichton's book, "Jurassic Park", which he apparently did while calling into the Rush Limbaugh show in 1995.
He did a fantastic job, of course, and it brought back memories of the first "Planet of the Apes" movie where in the end his character realizes we destroyed ourselves.
Now don't get me wrong, I firmly believe that we should do all we can to make sure we do not abuse our time here on the planet. We should not be killing animals needlessly, clear-cutting foliage willy-nilly, or polluting the atmosphere if we can do things in a cleaner way.
Where I draw the line is trying to keep the Earth so pristine that we hurt ourselves in the process. There has to be a compromise in mankind's interaction with this planet. It isn't an all-or-nothing approach on either side of the argument.
We must do things to increase our energy levels, which means we must drill in places like Alaska and the ocean, but we should do so in a responsible manner. We need to improve our cities to be more efficient, and we must recycle as much as we can so that there is very little waste being tossed into the environment. We are omnivore's. We were made to be meat-eaters. It's cool if you want to be a vegetarian, but it's also perfectly fine that we raise and hunt animals for food.
For the most part, I think the human race is doing well at these things, but we must encourage, and help, the less fortunate countries in doing the same. Help them clean up their waste, and show them how to improve their living conditions. This has the added benefit of making their countries more attractive for companies and people to move in to, and reduces disease and death.
Since this is a blog about quotes, here is the passage Charlton Heston read on Rush's show.
"You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity.
"Let me tell you about our planet.
"Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away -- all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval.
"Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us.
"If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again.
"It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not.
"If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that's happened?
"Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life.
"Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself.
"In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try.
"We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us." - Charlton Heston reading from Michael Crichton's book, "Jurassic Park"
