A friend of mine recently said something brilliant. He was talking about the environment and he said "Mother Nature Bats Last." In doing so, I think he highlighted a key misunderstanding between those of us who feel the environment needs further protection, and those who feel that nothing is wrong with the environment and that the environmentalist crowd are just a bunch of whining bozos.
This afternoon, I was reading in my geography textbook about rivers and their effect on our planet. It's fascinating stuff and I realized that Rivers form a sort of a circulatory system for the earth, carrying organic matter and other things around. At the same time I am taking this geography course, my grandmother and I are reading Cadillac Desert, a book about the way the politics of water has shaped the politics of the west, or more accurately, the way the politics of water are the politics of the west. As I understand more about how rivers function, I see more and more that we are monkeying with systems that sustain us. Environmentalism is not just about saving animals and plants because they are cute, it's about saving plants and animals because without them, the human race cannot survive.
When I read Cadillac Desert through the first time, it shocked me how much the Government spends on huge water projects that benefit a relatively small group of farmers. But this second time through, I am beginning to see just what's really going on. If rivers act as earth's circulatory system, what are we, as humans, risking by blocking, diverting, and otherwise messing around with that system?
Actually, I am not so concerned about the system being hurt. Mother Nature is a big girl, she can handle herself. The problem is, she can handle us too - quite easily.
