To your position that humanity cannot significantly impact the environment in a damaging way...
Just historically, I give you the Anasazi, the original inhabitants of Easter Island, and other cultures that wiped themselves out by destroying their environment.
There is an excellent show on the Smithsonian Channel right now called "America Before Columbus". It shows with very well done CGI what the Americas were like throughout the past 500 years.
In just 300 years after the landing of Columbus, the European influx of people, livestock, and vegetation transformed 2 continents. That's with axes, plows, horses, pigs, wheat and trees. Throw in diseases to kill millions of Natives, and that's pretty widespread environmental impact for what we would today consider primitive industry.
Fast forward to today, where for centuries since the industrial revolution trillions of tons of pollutants have been thrown into the environment. For the first nearly 200 years of that, with zero attention to pollution control. In the years hence, zero restrictions on pollution from nations like China and India, to name a couple.
The forests of the world (the 'filters' if you will that suck in CO2 and pollutants and send them underground in exchange for oxygen) have been decimated.
The very chemistry of the oceans (another CO2 sucker and recycler for the environment) has changed to a degree that it is no longer absorbing like it did, and many of its benefits are weakening.
With that kind of pollution, and that detriment to the natural scrubbing mechanisms, how can a rational person dismiss out of hand the possibility that it has damaged the environment of the planet?
I really find it difficult to wrap my head around.
And...
Just historically, I give you the Anasazi, the original inhabitants of Easter Island, and other cultures that wiped themselves out by destroying their environment.
There is an excellent show on the Smithsonian Channel right now called "America Before Columbus". It shows with very well done CGI what the Americas were like throughout the past 500 years.
In just 300 years after the landing of Columbus, the European influx of people, livestock, and vegetation transformed 2 continents. That's with axes, plows, horses, pigs, wheat and trees. Throw in diseases to kill millions of Natives, and that's pretty widespread environmental impact for what we would today consider primitive industry.
Fast forward to today, where for centuries since the industrial revolution trillions of tons of pollutants have been thrown into the environment. For the first nearly 200 years of that, with zero attention to pollution control. In the years hence, zero restrictions on pollution from nations like China and India, to name a couple.
The forests of the world (the 'filters' if you will that suck in CO2 and pollutants and send them underground in exchange for oxygen) have been decimated.
The very chemistry of the oceans (another CO2 sucker and recycler for the environment) has changed to a degree that it is no longer absorbing like it did, and many of its benefits are weakening.
With that kind of pollution, and that detriment to the natural scrubbing mechanisms, how can a rational person dismiss out of hand the possibility that it has damaged the environment of the planet?
I really find it difficult to wrap my head around.