I got into a really neat discussion on facebook the other week with some people about how no matter how much humans screw up the Earth and the environment, the Earth will survive and live on, even if people die (probably especially if humans die off) and that I find that comforting. Some people thought this wasn't very nice of me to say, that I hoped humans died of asphyxiation. Which is not what I said, I just meant that everytime I see my neighbors warming up their car in 40 degree weather for five minutes I don't go apeshit and start hyperventilating because THEY ARE DESTROYING THE ENVIRONMENT AND ADDING TO GLOBAL WARMING. Instead I take a few deep breaths and remember that compared to the Earth, humans are just a small fart.
Side note: I hope humans die out from a supervolcano eruption, preferably Yellowstone. Oh man I'd be there for that, no doubt.
I finished Jurassic Park, and if you can believe it, Ian Malcom (played by Jeff Goldbloom in the movie) put into words much better than I could about how the Earth will survive. I would copy it here for you but it took him 2.5 pages to do it and I'm not retyping all of that. I think it's pages 367-369 so you can go check in your copy. Everyone in my following has a copy of Jurassic Park right?
From my memory what he said is that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old...and in the beginning oxygen was a toxic gas, but life adapted to it and survived...and it is still a corrosive gas, like fluorine, we're just used to it. Then large insects came and went, and large sea animals came and went, and then the dinosaurs came and went, and then large mammals came and went, and now the humans come and soon we'll go. He says that no matter what we do...nuclear bomb everything completely, in time life will continue onwards and re-evolve into something even different than it is now.
But if you want to save the Human Race then we must save the environment.
Here's proof that Earth will survive. About 30,000 million years give or take after earth formed a GIANT asteroid hit Earth at an angle, instantly evaporating all of the rocks. There was an atmosphere of silica which is the main component of most all our rocks. The asteroid continued onwards, but became stuck in a new orbit around Earth. We now call this asteroid the moon. Life grew from a planet that was at one point gaseous silica. There is even thoughts/arguments that life existed before the moon hit earth and then had to start over!
This is just so exciting!
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