The No Plan Planet

Perhaps the sky is falling. I am never amazed at the stories that show up as I put together each issue of the paper. Exotic species raising havoc in the Great Lakes, new synthetic chemicals to mix into the boil we already have brewing, cloning and sperm production in unrelated animals, politics driving science and common sense from the decision making process and nature’s food factories despoiled by the very animal that sits at the trough the most. Most environmental battles will be won or lost not on biological but on economic grounds and by government policy. Nature has its own way of maintaining balance in the ecosystem. The long slow geologic and climatic changes that have taken place on this planet have resulted in the miracle of life we take for granted. A total disregard for the understanding we have for the care and feeding of this vast ball of real estate will eventually make some dismayed future generation think, “What the heck were those idiots thinking?”

The problem is we were given way too much property. If we would have ended up on a smaller planet we might be able to manage it better. It was like giving a kid running a lemonade stand the cola factory. He never gave a thought about how to run the place, he just wanted to drink pop. Here is how I see us. We are a bunch of cows on a ranch. We all get together, chew our cud and organize. We vote ourselves a rancher to oversee our herd and the rancher divides us into smaller groups and slowly takes us all to slaughter so he can line his leather wallet. When you go to the grocery store and know you are buying genetically engineered, growth hormone laced, pesticide basted food products—what do you say? You say, “It can’t be all that bad, everybody’s eating this stuff.” Don’t you remember your mother saying, “If Johnny jumps off a building are you going to jump off a building too?” Well, yes and no. We are not all jumping off buildings. Many of us are getting pushed. We have become those conquered and divided cattle with little choice but to push our way along the chute and have the Czar of misinformation turn us into hamburger.

When I’m out hiking trying to forget about all this crazy stuff is when I come up with so much of it. The scary thing is—most of it is true. We have become our own endangered species. Not because our numbers are low but because our potential for self destruction is high.
—Richard E. Mallery, a.k.a. Dick E. Bird

Since man has learned that the universal brotherhood of life includes himself as the highest link in the chain of organic creation, his interest in all things that live and move and have a being has greatly increased. The movements of the nomad now appeal to him in a way that was impossible under the old conceptions. He sees in each of the millions of living forms with which the earth is teeming, the action of many of the laws which are operating in himself, and has learned that to a great extent his welfare is dependent on these seemingly insignificant relations; that in ways undreamed of a century ago they affect human progress. —Clarence Moore Weed