Can Science Alone Save Us? No, but a little sarcasm does?

[Guest guest]

http://whatcomwatch.org/

Environmental Ethics:

Can Science Alone Save Us?

by Hans

Hans graduated from Colfax High School last spring and will attend

Oberlin College in the fall, where he plans to major in sarcasm.

Look at the world around you. It is full of overflowing landfills,

near-extinct species of animals, crumbling ecosystems, polluted land,

polluted air, and polluted water. The natural world is in bad shape. Here in

our rural area we are slightly removed from some of the environment's woes,

but they are close at hand in other areas of the country and the world. For

example, we and our fellow Americans throw away enough glass bottles and

jars every two weeks to fill the 1350-foot twin towers of the World Trade

Center. Each year, we throw away enough office and writing paper to build a

wall twelve feet high from New York City to Los Angeles. Not surpassingly,

storing this trash is also a big endeavor. The Fresh Kills landfill on

Staten Island in New York is the world's largest human-made structure.

Obviously we need a plan for how to take care of the world we live in, so I

am writing to propose such a plan.

Save Time—Pave the Planet

I believe that the best way to handle the woes of our environment would be

to simply burn and then pave everything. It is entirely too difficult to

conserve natural resources, so instead we will fireproof our cities and

villages and burn everything else. Then we will be free to pave the world

and use it as needed. The human race will be immediately better off than

before.

Just think of the myriad ways our lives will be improved! Unemployment will

immediately shrink as people are hired for the tasks of burning and paving.

Then people can be set to work building new cities to house our

ever-increasing population. In the past this would have required the

destruction of wildlife habitats, but now the whole world will be a habitat

for humanity. To keep the earth safe for humanity, we can also hire special

police forces to watch for subversives who try to undermine the whole

solution by clandestinely growing a lawn. Landfills in these cities will be

a thing of the past. Garbage can instead be stored anywhere, as long as it

is out of our way. There are even emotional benefits to the plan. Creating

all this trash will no longer cause feelings of guilt, and no-one will have

to worry about doing their part to conserve natural resources.

The Naysayers

Sadly, there are those who will try and fool people into thinking that we

depend on the earth for our survival. They will claim that if the earth is

paved, we will be without animals, plains, rivers, lakes, and sources of

oxygen and that supplies of edible food, drinkable water and clean air will

dwindle and disappear. They, of course, do not realize that modern science

will easily find a way to provide these simple commodities. There are some

people who would have us believe that the environment is worth preserving

because of its supposed beauty and recreational value. Many religious types

even say that we should be steward's of God's creation. Do they actually

think that God cares about the things he allegedly put on earth?

Certain people have silly notions that, instead of paving the world, we can

preserve natural resources with strategies that are already being used by

small numbers of misguided souls. They say that humans can prevent damage to

the environment by reducing the amount of natural resources we use or abuse.

For example, some revolutionaries use electric cars and deal with industrial

waste safely, in order to cut down on pollution. Others buy products without

excessive packaging, and use less raw material in general. Then, this

material is to be re-used to cut down on waste. Many things, they say, can

even be recycled and come out like new, to be used or sold again. There is,

of course, still damage that has already been done to the earth, but some

people work to restore ecosystems to the way they are meant to work. They

think that nature can somehow take care of itself without human

intervention. Please be assured that all of these erroneous notions will be

laid to rest once my feasible solution is implemented.

Amazingly, my motives for devising this impeccable plan of action are

completely selfless. My proposal will benefit millions of people, but it

will have no direct effect on me, because in a few months I will be living

in inner-city , Indiana, where the natural environment has already been

practically eliminated. My consolation will be that I have saved so many

other people from the burdens of nature.