Quote Originally Posted by Ghengis Chron
You know what we mean when we say we're "hurting" our environment. Why would you feel the need to correct someone on that? The fact is, we as a species, are detrimental to the varius environments throughout the world. That's the fact. It can't be denied.

Indestructible ecosystem? I really don't think you know what your talking about. It has taken thousands, billions, of years for these ecosystems to develop, and in a blink of the eye, are being destroyed. Do you have any evidence to back up this "ecosystems are indestructible" claim?


There is incontrovertible evidence as to the indestructibility of the "ecosystem."

An ecosystem is nothing more than a stage upon which biotic factors interact with abiotic factors. "Ecosystem" is a word with no direct physical meaning, it is simply a label for a very general sort of natural earthly phenomenon.

The word seems to have come to mean "place where plants and animals can live without being killed by human garbage or human interference," and this is simply not accurate, as the human race is OBVIOUSLY part of the earth's ecosystem just as much as the rocks or the grass or the tapeworms are. This leads me to believe that there is no validity to the claim that human conceptions of "right" or "wrong" or "nice" or "weak" or "strong" or "detrimental." There is only what survives and what does not, and that is an inarguable rule of the natural world.

Human beings, as surviving members of earth's ecosystem, have naturally struggled to our current status as reigning large animal on the planet (in our eyes) through the seemingly impenetrable forces of nature that exist solely to our "detriment." We got here by destroying (replacing) that which could not be adapted into our lifestyle. We have made our ecosystem at the expense of every ecosystem on earth which does (or did) not include us.


It is true that current actions by the human race to increase comfort and allow for population and modern living are irreversibly and drastically altering the ecosystem of which we find ourselves living, and it is this ongoing alteration that you label the "hurt" we're putting on "our" environment.

It is not OUR environment. It is THE environment, and it will stay that way whether human beings are around to grok it or not. As the character Ian Malcolm put it, life will find a way. Whatever a closed-minded scientist will tell you, there are no defining characteristics an environment MUST possess to sustain life. Oxygen, which is indispensable to human life, will stifle and kill obligate anaerobic organisms.

When we've altered the environment so drastically that our species and possibly many others fall into extinction, life will either persevere or die out and redevelop by whatever process it arose in the first place. You can count on that.