There is much talk about us, as a species, becoming powerful and crossing the limits of peaceful co-existence and there by disrupting the careful and meticulous balance that nature has developed over a span of a few million or so years. There is talk about the need to act fast and amend our ways to save the planet. There is talk about seas becoming more acidic and the composition of the atmosphere itself changing. About ice melting, sea levels raising. About so many species being wiped out, our population increasing and a lot of other things. And all this, they say has happened due to us over a short span of a few centuries. They say failing to act immediately can cause repairable damage to the planet. It definitely is an alarming prospect to consider the possibility of the tiger disappearing. I mean after all that "T for tiger" learning and writing as a kid. But my problem with all this (apart from the fact that i can't think of any thing else to tell the next generation what T stands for) is the assumption that we are powerful enough to do things to the earth and damage it.
Yes we are powerful enough to do things to this planet. And also foolish enough to think that the planet needs saving. If anything, it's we who need saving. What we are doing will cause damage that we cannot recover from. But its a matter of a few thousand or so years for our astonishing planet. If the speculation about the dinosaurs extinction due to a meteorite or some such calamity is true, it is that calamity that changed the path of evolution and lead to the present state just as something similar led to the state in which the dinosaurs were until the catastrophe. A calamity can cause a radical change in the direction of evolution. It may just be the case that what we are doing now on our planet is a catastrophe we are building and creating. It might just be the calamity that our planet need to direct the evolution in a new direction. Anything we do might be a bit too much for us to take, but is a matter just a matter of time for the planet. The planet, no longer ours due to our non-existence, will still thrive and be as diverse as we can possible imagine after our self called change.
The way we act now is not for the better or worse of the planet. The planet knows perfectly well how to take care of itself and its dwellers, whoever they will be. Our actions for change are not acts of benevolence, but steps that must be taken for self preservation. Surprisingly evolution seems to have reached some sort of an inland delta where the survival of the species isn't on the priority list. We seem to have lost track and imagine on a time scale so small that not only do we not see the effect of our actions but we also seem to be believing that we can destroy a system that has evidently recovered and indeed flourished after a few event that were calamities and disasters to the then inhabiting species.
