What we Destroyed

By: Paul Rivera

How are we still destroying the natural resources that keep us alive?

“About 17-18% of the Amazon is deforested and 1.5°C of warming over preindustrial levels is likely to be officially reached by 2030.”

The good thing is that we can still do something about it, but we are running out of time.

The World Wildlife Fund writes that, “currently, the species extinction rate is estimated between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than natural extinction rates—the rate of species extinctions that would occur if we humans were not around.”

Simply put, we are not only destroying the only home we have ever had at an increasing pace, but we are also poisoning ourselves in the process.

“Our current farming system has been run into the ground,” Delicious Magazine staff wrote, “From World War II onwards, farmers began to rely on heavy machinery and chemicals to increase their yields. It worked, of course, but the soil paid the price.”

There’s something to be said about living in this technological world where we have access to humanity’s entire encyclopedia of information in a little black box we keep inside of our pocket.

Never have we been so informed, and yet, so ignorant at the same time.

We are at a crossroads.

We can either take Path A and do all of the things we know will help humanity survive (stop polluting the air/water, stop deforestation, stop ocean acidification, save the coral reefs, save the insects, stop using pesticides, stop overconsuming, use renewable energy, plant trees, restore habitats) etc.

Then there’s Path B: maintain the status quo, destroy the rest of this world for money, and leave a dystopian concrete jungle behind for the next generation.

I do worry every week of my life that we are much closer to Path B, than Path A. Remember, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Our destruction wasn’t always so absolute. “In Native worldviews, humans, animals, plants, and rocks are dependent on each other for survival and well-being. This ethos provides a stark contrast to Western belief systems which largely define nature as an obstacle to be conquered, tamed, and exploited by humans,” Texas Trees Foundation.

To be clear, this movement to “Save the Earth,” is more about preserving the conditions that keep the human species alive, rather than making sure our floating life rock doesn’t collapse. Earth will still be here. We will not.

"Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish has been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize that we cannot eat money."

Action is the Cure.

Yes, it’s bad, but we cannot and should not give in to those that say there is no use in fighting back.

If you’ve spent any time reading the comments sections of an environmental post on social media, you will eventually come across comments that say: “you can’t change nature,” “there’s nothing you can do,” “this is supposed to happen.”

“That’s false,” to quote one of my favorite Louisiana conservationists Blaise Pezold, “you have to recognize that we screwed up a lot of things and you have to recognize that we can also fix a lot of things.”

We do not have to accept and repeat the mistakes of our ancestors. We also can’t afford to.

What we do from now to these next 10 years will set the course for saving the next hundred years of any environment that we may have left.

There are plenty of people who are fighting and winning, and don’t worry, I will tell you about them very soon.