Readers in Council,
The Japan Times,
5-4, Shibaura 4-chome,
Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0023
It might be said that former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and other so-called Friends of the Earth have difficulty comprehending the geologic age of the planet. We know in our heads that the planet is about four billion years old and will last another four billion until our Sun explodes. It is certainly not a permanent or immutable fixture in the universe. But understanding what these large numbers mean is difficult to grasp even for educated people. Therefore, in addition to the moral high row that it tries to hoe I take the entire environmental movement as a demonstration of innumeracy and species chauvinism. Although I do not oppose environmentalism I must question it repeatedly. It makes for good headlines, but the Earth is not in “danger” from human pollution, global warming, human over population and deforestation, species extinction, etc. The planet survived eons before us it will survive long after we naturally have gone the way of most species into extinction. Life forms come and go over eons of time that environmentalists seem unable to put into perspective. So it is we who are in danger and the planet is just fine. Over time the Earth has been a firey furnace, a poison gas chamber, a sweat box and an ice box, an unformed molten blob, a liquid void, a broiling desert and a Garden of Eden. Each condition was“good” by itself. Now we are consciously using the planet to create a uniquely artificial lifestyle (agrarian, industrial, urban, technological), so we ought to be satisfied with our achievement and complain less about how we are “destroying” the planet. We are destroying ourselves, which is a whole other matter.
But I could be wrong.