The tremendous myopia of the human race is an ironic thing.
How can a single specie, so self-centered and self-indulgent,
possibly have any effect on the remaining 30 million species
that share the planet with it? You'd think the others
would go unnoticed, wouldn't you? Well if the one specie
manages to impact global ecology through toxic refuse,
exploitation of natural resources, breeding animals for
food, forcing dependencies on organic fuels, developing
weapons for mass destruction, deforestation, pillaging
the sea for its resources, wrapping the globe in electromagnetic
fields, following its xenophobic reaction to any kind
of competition, it can indeed change, affect or endanger
its less empirical brothers who, through some
trick of Fate,
manage their respective journey from cradle/egg/cocoon/larvae/bulb/bud/seed-to-grave
without the benefits of a Hammurabi law-giver, holy book,
Home Owners' Association, lawyer, legal permit, corporation,
or Holy Dispensation. Whew! --long sentence!
When the one specie unconsciously or consciously
deploys itself around a defenseless geographic feature
(better known as a natural resource), the resource
is pretty much doomed, along with any other specie that
happens to live in a state of delicate balance with it.
Sometimes it's the other way around --the defenseless
specie is surrounded and harvested and the geographic
feature suffers from its absence. At any rate, the polymer
of relationship ensures that no single thing is isolated
from the effect of mankind's self-serving actions.
The technology-challenged ancestors of modern
man were perfectly capable of devastating an environment.
They just lacked the means of inflicting wholesale and
lasting damage. Some cultures, insulated and autonomous,
still managed to avoid long history lines by acts of nearsightedness,
as occurred on Easter
Island (Rapa Nui), for example. Their agenda was leavened
by the same ingredients we heap on our own activities.
In the face of modern technologies our planet has now
shrunk to Rapa Nui stature. Destructive priests and natives
are now called Multinational
Corporations and governments. A hand axe has become
a nuclear power plant or the fishing industry's factory
ships. An ancient village fire is now an annual conflagration
of 3 million hectares in the Amazon
Basin. Buffalo Jumps have become factory
farming and slaughterhouses.
The Sea of Cortez is just another natural
resource falling under the flailing-sticks of modern economics.
As far as this beautiful area is concerned, tourism
is just a euphemism for terrorism. Shrimp boats,
sports fishing, hotel and boat sewage and festival garbage
embraced by tides all take their toll. Below are a few
links that speak to this problem.
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