Idle Culture

Writings of a cultural dysfunct

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Location: Seattle, United States

Monday, September 27, 2004

Edward O. Wilson--The Future of Life

I am currently in the middle of reading "The Future of Life" by Edward O. Wilson, one of the world's premier ecologists. Early on in the book, the following paragraphs really caught my attention, prompting me to read them more than once. The words really capture the importance of caring about the condition of our only planet we call home. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who has the slightest interest in lessening human impact on the environment.

“Earth, unlike the other solar planets, is not in physical equilibrium. It depends on its living shell to create the special conditions on which life is sustainable. The soil, water, and atmosphere of its surface have evolved over hundreds of millions of years to their present condition by the activity of the biosphere, a stupendously complex layer of living creatures whose activities are locked together in precise but tenuous global cycles of energy and transformed organic matter. The biosphere creates our special world anew every day, every minute, and holds it in unique, shimmering physical disequilibrium. On that disequilibrium the human species is in total thrall. When we alter the biosphere in any direction, we move the environment away from the delicate dance of biology. When we destroy ecosystems and extinguish species, we degrade the greatest heritage this planet has to offer and thereby threaten our own existence.

…(Humanity) evolved here, one among many species, across millions of years, and exist as one organic miracle linked to others. The natural environment we treat with such unnecessary ignorance and recklessness was our cradle and nursery, our school, and remains our one and only home. To its special conditions we are intimately adapted in every one of the bodily fibers and biochemical transactions that gives us life.”
----"The Future of LIfe"
Edward O. Wilson
http://www.thefutureoflife.com/speakers/wilson.htm


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