Man Versus the Asteroid

"...we are incapable of 'raping' the environment; the most sinister effect we can have... is to pester it a little, and briefly at that."

[The following is a response to this article.]

Jan— Thanks for sending me your paper, “Global Warming is a Controversial Political Football.”

I am at a disadvantage, not having been able to read either Jack Rabideau’s or Jon Frangipani’s articles, but as you can see, that significant handicap doesn’t prevent me from barging into the discussion anyway.

You write that nowhere in Mr. Frangipani’s article, to which Mr. Rabideau’s article is apparently a response, is global warming mentioned. It is worthy that you point that out, if for no other reason than to frame the terms of the discourse; furthermore if Mr. Rabideau wrote primarily about global warming in response to an article on another subject, he has done you and his other readers a disservice—a 'bait and switch.'

I'm pleased that you agree that “He [Mr. Rabideau] is correct about the Earth’s ability to rejuvenate and rehabilitate itself.”

I concur that the Earth will be just fine, by and by, without us (unless the asteroid strikes!) and can easily slough off any effects, negative or otherwise, of our brief sojourn here. I would say further that we would be hard pressed to have ANY impact that would outlive us for long.

One example: we only recently, in the scheme of things, discovered the pyramids of Chichén-Itzá and Teotihuacan, which the Mayans and their predecessors surely thought were destined to last forever, but which nature promptly proceeded to wreck and then hide from prying eyes for about a millennium.

Your generous assessment of some of Mr. Rabideau’s salient points (“allow me to first debate in favor of Mr. Rabideau’s point of view”) reflects well on you. However, you show your teeth a bit in your reference to “…we humans with all our pollution and raping of the environment…”

I have to say we are incapable of “raping” the environment; the absolute most sinister effect we can have on the Earth, assuming we really put our devious minds to it, is to pester it a little, and briefly at that—and furthermore, that whatever temporary ill effects we may have can be effects that only annoy and even maybe endanger us, but not the planet.

Having said that, I do agree with you: We ARE stewards, of a sort, of the tiny sliver of Earth’s crust upon which we fancy ourselves holding sway; but remember that we have taken on that responsibility voluntarily, with the best of intentions, and deserve full credit for it. All those who curse mankind for its very existence (the most rabidly “environmentalist” of the environmentalists) should try to bear that in mind.

You write: “I can not find anything wrong with having compassion and acting responsibly when it comes to the environment.” I can’t either. And I challenge anyone to present a cogent argument to the contrary.

Where people differ is in the emphasis. Is this given thing a big deal, or just nature doing what it will? Is that other thing not to be bothered about, or is it an existential foreshadowing of planetary doom?

In whose estimation—and when—does a “concern” become a “crisis”? A local event, like the water in the Everglades, doesn’t cut much ice on, say, most of the continent of Africa, since every day is Earth Day when you wake up on earth, scratch at it all day for enough food to stay alive, and then sleep on it again that night.

Here again, the “developed” countries take a beating they don’t deserve. Because environmental stewardship is an ethical construct to which only the denizens of the “developed” countries have given any thought, to their—our—everlasting credit.

Everlasting, that is, until we go extinct, or the asteroid hits.