For all practical purposes the same could be said for the ice ages......More time of course but Nature heals herself.
Now wait a minute. You're being illogical here Pezz and I have to respond and point it out. Here's are some other points you made that will display this inherent illogic.
The fact that some species such as deer and coyotes have flourished does in no way make up for much greater losses in other species.........Common sense will tell you that there is a greater diversity and larger bio-mass in a forest than a city.
Yeah... just like having mankind rise to the top of the food chain as a result of a 30,000 year Ice Age isn't justifiable. Nor are the massive extinctions that occurred as a result of those glaciations. Extinct animals don't come back Pezz. They are gone forever and nature is as guilty, perhaps even more guilty, than mankind in generating these extinctions and reduction in diversity.
No this correct. this is far and away the most damaging aspect of man's activities. According to all environmental groups.
You mean those same environmentalists who mooch off of governmental grants, or public donations, for a living, build their cabins in the woods in order to "commune" with nature, and drive their SUV to the store and gas stations just like the rest of us?
They are telling non-developed nations that they can't have economic modernization, or only the kind of modernization that would protect the environment. But they are unwilling to pay these nations for the additional cost of such a controlled modernization through expensive technology. It would be tantamount to the Europeans some two hundred years ago telling American they can't expand and grow because it would damage the those forests you talked about running from New England to Mississippi. In fact, had you lived during that time, I'm sure that's probably the attitude you would have had.. :0) It's racist and certainly imperialistic to think that others don't have the right to share the same "pursuit of happiness" that is guaranteed in our constitution.
And let's face facts about the situation here in the US. Minus the ski bums living in mountain resorts, most of the expansion of urban area in his nation has come at the expense of farmland, not wild habitat. Farmland is not "habitat" under the traditional definition of the word.
We'll never go back to the level of habitat that existed 500 hundred years ago. On the other hand, we're talking actions that preserve and manage large quantities of what does remain. And sometimes permitting private enterprise to exploit underground resources, in a relatively non-intrusive manner, can create the conditions where wildlife actually flourishes. Alaska's north slope has been a prime example of that benefit since public hunting is not permitted on their private land.
I have no heartburn about encouraging environmentalist views, so long as they are rational and balanced with the needs and desires of humans. And one of those desires is to retain a quantity of pristine wilderness to enjoy.
Regards,
Ron |
