h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Only a species with the largest ego and the bare faced selfcentredness could think that we will make a seriously big impact on a planet that has survived perfectly well for several billion years without us. There have been several planet wide climate changes over the life of the earth and a couple of degrees of global warming hardly constitutes the end of the world.

Of course the humans on the planet may find the changes difficult to deal with but is this really such a bad thing. We have raced all over the world changing, destroying and generally making a mess of things and if the planet is gearing up to take charge its shouldn't really be a great surprise. We are such short lived creatures that we are unable to conceive of the timetable that the planet may have for putting things right.

Equally, the extinction of the human race does not mean the end of the world. That is only our great conceit. Even if all life as we know it should be extinguished the planet is very likely to continue. If life is viable at all in any of its limitless forms it will find a way to continue.

Even if we are to disappear we have existed on earth for such a short period of time it is likely there will not even be fossil remains. With luck our short sojourn will not have any long term effects and the rest of the universe will go on happily without us.

I sort of agree. While we may think that it's such a big deal that we are creating stinking piles of refuse where there used to be just... I don't know, nicer things, I think George Carlin said it best when he said the Earth may have created us because it NEEDS styrofoam. The Earth doesn't care much really if we are here or not and will probably shrug us off like a head cold. Just as you would move out of an apartment because of strange noises, or a horribly ugly linoleum floor, maybe we should find the best interplanetary moving company.

But I think we are doing the wrong thing in a moral sense, for what that's worth. Just because 'Mom' isn't around to scold doesn't mean you shouldn't pick up after yourself.

It's true the planet will recover whatever we do on it. But we *are* having a serious impact on the ecology of the planet *right now*. It's because first of all, there are almost seven billion of us ON this planet right now. That's probably more than any similar-sized species of being that ever existed here. AND another thing ... we have the ability to use sources of energy no other being before us had learnt to exploit. We are having a noteworthy effect because of the number of us, and the amount of energy we are using.

We *are* doing things that could seriously disrupt the function of ecosystems all over the planet. We *have already* caused the extinction of many, many more species of creatures than would have gone extinct if we were not here.

Anyways: the planet WILL recover. But I'm not only concerned about the planet - I'm concerned about US HUMANS as well! I'm concerned about future generations of people. If the planet 'strikes back' at humanity, then a very large number of people will die or live in misery. For their sakes I don't want that to happen. Also ... IF we humans devise a way of living in harmony with each other and all the other living things down here, it will just be so beneficial for all of us, and it would be so cool!

Given the age of the EARTH [ not to mention the Universe ] , i'm sure it is barely aware of us humans. In the life cycle of a planet , she will have many surprizes for us that could , and probably will , kill us. If we don't adapt to what havoc we make on this planet then we're getting what we deserve. first rule survival of the fittest!!

One thing that really gets me is is the arrogance of the environmentalists. They say, "Oh, we've gotta save the planet, we've gotta save the planet!" What they don't understand is that the planet and the world are two completely different things. The planet is a lump of rock in an atmospheric envelope spinning in space about 90 billion miles or so from a nuclear fireball. The world, however, is a completely human invention. The world is concerned with us humans and what we are doing. There is no way...well, I wanted to say 'in the world', but maybe that's a little redundant, anyway you get the idea...that we can destroy this planet. The absolute "worst" thing we could do would be to, in one fell swoop, all because we don't know what we are f*$<ing with, detonate all the nukes and cleanse this planet of all life. Just because our lifespan is over doesn't mean the planet won't be here, happily whiling away the millenia. I just really hope that we don't discover a workable means of interstellar travel, cuz if we do, we'll spread across this healthy Universe like... I was going to say the flu, but maybe Cancer is more appropriate.