Why are we doing this, why do we care?

Why are we doing this, why we should care?


Several years ago when listening to a leading environmentalist speak I was asked to read this letter; written in 1992, to the Worlds Leaders by the late Henry Kendall and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Scientists Warning to Humanity 1992

http://www.ucsusa.org/about/1992-world-scientists.html

Represented in the letter were the collective thoughts of the world’s leading scientists including the majority of the Nobel Science winners living at the time. The main purpose is as a dire warning that humanity and the world’s ecosystems are on a collision course. It also lists the ways we must act to remedy the problems and the time frame for our actions. This was one of the first times I looked at myself in the mirror as an adult and had to shake my head.


Many years have passed since that time. Sadly, It seems even more so today that we are being bombarded with news of the latest man made or natural disaster occurring somewhere. From oil spills and tailing ponds to Dolphin slaughters and Shark fining. It's unfortunate that so much devastation can be caused so quickly by mans actions.

Have we changed? Our world took billions of years to create, but with our help it may take only hundreds of years to destroy.

Have we learned? It seems not, our continual exploitation; caused by greed and apathy, of the earth’s fragile animals and ecosystems is deplorable. The environment has a fixed capacity to recover from problems and we are impacting it in such dramatic ways. The biggest tragedy is that we know that we are doing harm; some of it unfixable in many generations if ever. Yet we continue to pollute and poison. Mass extinction of plants and animals is commonplace and our ability to repair and recover the biosphere is diminishing with every lost plant and animal.

We need to understand and remember that it is all inter-connected and if any part of the chain suffers we all suffer. Governments are slow to act and are swayed by lobbyists. Big business and their shareholders care about profits more than the environment. That's why it's the people who must care and act now to remedy the human activities that are destroying the incredible and limited biosphere that we ALL inhabit together.