Easy come, easy go

I don't usually deal in environmental issues. Even though they are political issues as well. For one thing, there are just waaaaaaay too many. But for another, I think we don't step back far enough to see the big picture. The entire earth is changing. We are in an evolutionary leap. Evolution is not a gentle slope. It's slow climbs and giant leaps. We're in a giant leap right now. Check some earth and sun watch sites. Solar flares have been increasing in both intensity and frequency. (CMEs they're called. Coronal mass ejections. And if you don't think changes in solar radiation affect everything on this planet, well, you don't think.)

People argue that it's mankind who is causing planetary degradation. That may well be true (at least in part - and maybe major part), but how do we know that isn't built into the overall design? Disease organisms exist as part of the design - because things have to die here in this part of the universe. Everything is in cycle through conception, birth and death, including entire species, including stars, including planets. Earth won't be an exception. It's a law of this universe. So perhaps she needs a causal agent, like living organisms make use of a bacterium or a virus. Voila! Humans! (In fact, maybe she's already dead, and we're the "breakdown" organisms. The rot organisms.)

Recently we're witnessing discoveries of new stars and planets, and on the earth, constant extinctions, but constant discoveries of new species. Of course, the species discoveries could simply be coming along because we've destroyed enough habitat that we're finally coming into their territories...

Naturalists celebrated the discovery of a new species of bird — a blue-flecked, seed-eating finch — in Venezuela Wednesday, but they mourned that a state electricity company destroyed its only known habitat to make way for a dam.

I get an Environmental Network News daily newsletter, which is where I discovered that article. And the following one.

"This export to the U.K. could give the Bush administration a terrible precedent ... to begin the wholesale dumping of this fleet of toxic ships on poor Asian communities."

The four rusting hulks contain more than 620 tons of asbestos, the group said in a statement, in addition to more than 470 tons of old fuel oil and 350 tons of polychlorinated biphenyls — a carcinogenic substance banned in the 1970s.

Able U.K. has said that all the ships had been drained of the more hazardous liquid PCBs ahead of their journey. It denies the vessels pose a risk and says they will be scrapped in a controlled and professional way.

Don't these naysayers understand the free market? Well, one is already on its way (although a U.S. court has put a ban on shipping the others for now). And really, if we're going to destroy the planet, we have to get more serious about the oceans. A few oil spills and overfishing aren't keeping pace with our land and air destruction.

So, let's step back, take a deep breath, and look at the universal picture. And don't ask why I squawk about inane, insane human activity and destruction, if I think it's in the design.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.