Something that has been bothering me for a week...

A week ago, on April 01, 2009, a few colleagues and I went out for drinks at the local establishment (The Inn just down the road from Pearson Hall on campus). There were about 9 of us there talking about the normal stuff that is talked about when us scientist are drinking a couple of tasty brews. One of us started talking about over-population and how it needs to be controlled. A comment was said (which I am not going to repeat and not going to say who said it) that was sort of harsh, and I agreed with it. The fact that I agreed with it is because population growth is out of control and technological improvements in third-world countries is causing greater harm to the environment that could ever be expected. Later in the conversation, we were interrupted by a passer by. He was a fellow student (because we all had name tags on and his said that he was from the Physics Department) and he blatantly interjected his opinion into the conversation. The conversation got heated and people, colleagues of our, got up and left. Our conversations continued down the road of over population and then changed into a debate on degradation of the earth. We were headed that way as it was and that was the reason that this conversation came up. It was a nice sunny day almost in the 80s. April 1 is not really supposed to be that way, especially in the Midwest (Southwest Ohio). The passer by was on the stance that, from what I got, that we are more important than other organisms. Everything that we did as humans was “natural.” He used as example that, there is no difference in using a stick as a spear and molding metal into a gun to hunt. They were both “natural.” Everything we did to the earth is supposed to happen because earth is supposed to evolve and not be stable equilibrium. We were to “evolve” and force climate to change. He saw that as “natural.”

What he thought is that humans, as the top predator, has total control and if were to die off then another species will be dominant and do the same. Listening to him made me finally realize what other people think. To finally understand this is scary. He is obviously educated, going to Miami University and most likely a graduate student, because professors and graduate students are the only people to know about CLEP and drink free drinks. He is not educated enough on the issues that what we are doing is not natural evolution of the planet. What we are doing is destroying everything and we are actually causing our own extinction (not before we cause everything else to go extinct first). And he is okay with this. Reflect on this…

Are we supposed to use up every resource and deplete everything that is out there? We are on the though that technology will save us. What is actually happening is technology is killing us. We are coming up with new way stay global and continue to expand. When we use up one resource (i.e., oil) we only find another one to replace it (i.e., biofuel). We are making halide chemicals that are released into the atmosphere that are 17,000 times the strength of carbon dioxide on global warming. Currently, we don’t know that concentration of them in the atmosphere and the residence time for halide to break down is 550 years. We are not to slow down, we Americans are to consume everything (I could be going a little off track here). How can we get people to finally understand that what we are doing is wrong and that we aren’t just “liberal elitist” (I just heard this term used to describe anyone that drives a Toyota Prius). I don’t know, maybe it is too late and we are already past the tipping point.

This was bothering me and I just want other people to reflect on this…