This photo is from a bulletin sent out by the Center For Biological Diversity (or CBD), and it shows the effects of tar sands oil production in Canada. It is not a pretty picture. What we are doing, in Canada and elsewhere, is more than aesthetically displeasing.
It is increasingly clear that our human activities are having a profound, and profoundly antagonistic, impact on the world of Nature. Since our human world depends, ultimately, on the world of Nature, this can’t be a good thing.
CBD is calling our latest efforts to develop new energy sources "extreme energy," which seems descriptive. Extreme energy developments, like the tar sands oil development pictured here, are threatening Canada's boreal forests, the pristine Arctic Ocean, and are putting the continued existence of human civilization in peril, as our combustion of hydrocarbon fuels drives global warming forward at an accelerated pace.
All correct except the global warming part. We do not yet know that anthropogenic CO2 is driving climate variation.
ReplyDeleteClimate variation occurs naturally, and we do not understand the complex natural processes that drive it. Therefore, we cannot know the extent of the human contribution.
However, there are sufficiently documented effects of human pollution and development of critical habitat for non-human species that it is obvious we cannot continue on this destructive path.
Continuous human growth and development cannot continue in a world of finite resources.
I think we may disagree about the largely "anthropogenic"nature of global warming; however, even if our own hydrocarbon habits aren't the main or driving force behind global warming, we are definitely adding to the problem, and we should be doing everything we can to reduce our combustion of hydrocarbon fuels. At least, that's my view.
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