"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us." - Aldo Leopold
By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
We abuse the Earth and Her resources because we regard it as a commodity, as something belonging to us and as something that we, man, have been given dominion over to exploit.
Often this very term “and G-d gave them dominion over the Earth” is being used to justify man's exploitation of the Earth and of Her resources and the total destruction, often, of parts of Creation.
However, “dominion” in this context has never meant and does not mean “domination”. Not by a long shot.
Dominion, in this context, means being, which is also used in some translations, a husbandman of the Earth, a steward of Her and Her resources. There is no license given for exploitation of the Earth and Her riches nor for exploitation of man through man.
The abuse that we have meted out upon the Planet and the resources of Mother Earth is now about to bite us all in the butt, whether or not we are directly responsible for it.
We have based our economy, that of, basically, the entire world, on fossil fuels, on coal, oil and gas, and predominately it has been and still is on oil. Already in the late 19th century scientists warned that we must not base our economy on fossil fuels and no one wanted to know.
A similar warning was issued in the 1940s and even many renewable power projects that are just about being looked at today – and one that has been abandoned for stupid reasons – were on the agenda then already. But the coal and oil lobby was just way too powerful. New we are going to suffer the consequences.
The Sterling Engine, for the production of electrical energy, has been known ever since the end of the 19th century as well but has been totally ignored in the quest for powering our world until only very recently.
In the quest to keeping the status quo with gasoline and diesel vehicles we are now destroying habitats on a wholesale basis to grow crops for palm oil (as base for biodiesel) and other plants the oil of which can be used for this fuel, as well as maize, etc., in order to make into bioethanol, with which to run gasoline engines.
Instead of using land for food to feed the starving, and those of us who not as yet starve but soon will be if the idiots get their way and grow crops for fuel rather than food, land is being used to grow vehicle fuel. This is total and utter madness.
We abuse the Earth left, right and center, and also below the surface, and then wonder why things go wrong and the Earth is in the process of throwing a wobbly.
Are we that stupid? Apparently the majority of people are and those in government definitely. We are, for sure, in the Age of Stupid.
© 2011
