you know, you would think that most people attending a place of higher education would actually have some intelligence or critical thinking capabilities beyond what they have been told all those years prior to getting here. in yesterday’s local university paper, the main front page article described the many death threats and hateful emails a UT professor receives due to his speeches and lectures, which address “the topics of global warming, biodiversity and the possibility of pandemic with diseases like HIV, bird flu and the Ebola virus.” basically what he is saying is that due to the inconnectivity and interdependence of the global population and the drammatic rise in the human population, we are just awaiting a major population crash due to widespread disease and famine. “Humanity is so mobile, social and dense that all it takes is one ill-infected individual for an epidemic in the making.” throughout his speeches he “expressed his beliefs about the negative effects of the proliferating human population on ecology.” additionally, he discouraged the notion of humans as the center of the universe.
okay, for those with specific religious beliefs, place those aside for a moment. now, if you have been paying attention at all in your lifetime, especially in the last decade or two, you should be quite appalled at the state of the world and human’s relationship with the earth. just look at how we trash it, consume it, and could care less the effects our current actions have on future generations of our species. so, of course i would have to agree with the above mentioned professor when he suggests that we are about due for widespread disease and eventually a population crash. for one, earth cannot possibly sustain a population that we are quickly reaching… close to 10 billion. there are already major food and water shortages. densification of available land will quickly fill up with increasingly closer contact with one another. we consume any and all available natural resources… again without planning what to do after they are depleated. we walk around everyday looking down on all species with the idea in our head that we, humans, ARE the center of the universe. well, let’s just keep thinking that and live our lives as carelessly as we have been. in time earth will revolt and fight back, which can already be seen in the increase in destructive weather events in the last five to ten years. we are at nature’s mercy… we cannot control nature, earth or its species. we are not an immortal species, and one day well beyond our lifetime there is a good chance our species will cease to exist.
so, how can we possibly be the center of the universe?