As Pogo once said "I have met the enemy and it is us"

Mankind has a spectacularly bad record when it comes to trying to manipulate and improve nature, don't we?  And that includes the inhumane and unhealthy feedlot practices we subject animals to as well as attempts to play God and alter nature to suit our own needs (needs the manipulators most often define as profits).

It should be obvious to all of us that we are far from perfect and benevolent beings.  Instead of giving in to our inherent negative characteristics such as greed and selfishness and claiming callous dominion over the bounty we have been entrusted with, we should view our temporary spot at the top of the food chain as an opportunity to become better beings.  And we should do so in great part by exercising what should be an inherent duty to be the best shephards we can of this good earth, its many natural resources and the boundless species of other life which have been entrusted to our care.

Mother earth always survives - and will no doubt survive mankind no matter how much damage we might inflict - after all the earth literally has all the time in the world while those who temporarily occupy the spot at the top of the food chain do not. You might look at it as one of a long series of tests nature has given through the eons to the many dominant species which have came and gone.  Size, strength, cunning, adaptability, species versus species, and species versus natural change and natural disasters . . .  so the process has gone.

And so here we are in all of our glory for our brief blink of time at the top - mankind, the most advanced and by far most intelligent species the world has known to date.  But for all that intelligence, we have not yet found wisdom - and it may very well be that it is neither another species, natural changes or even a natural disaster that ends our tiny run as king of the hill, it will be mankind that destroys itself.

DQ