Our Fragile World

As a species - what things do we do mostly ?

Never mind the nice labels for a minute here, let's keep this very simple...OK ?

We eat, we use stuff up, we spread out, we make more of us so that we do more of all that other stuff, and...

We are really, really good at=>Burning stuff.

This is not new either; we've been at it so long that we don't even know how long it's been...

If there's any way at all to get fire, heat or even smoke out of something we're seriously doing it - ALOT.

So who cares, right ? Why does this matter at all ???

Well maybe we ought to care because we live in a bubble - a single, closed biosphere.

Nothing really EVER goes 'away'; it may change, but it's all still here someplace.

For example consider a huge, beautiful oak tree that took more than 100 years to get so big & lovely.

It becomes a pile of wood in just a few minutes with 'modern machines', and then gets all used up in a very short time too.

Unfortunately trees also work as land-stabilizers, homes for other creatures, and above all=> they're superb air factories.

Do you think we are putting back as many slow-growing trees as fast as we are using them up ???

If your answer is anything like 'yes', you'd better take another look.

An average, smallish house is built mostly from wood, and it can be mostly the woods from fast growing trees, BUT:

If it's heated with wood it'll use many trees worth of slow-growing wood every year - much, much faster than it can ever be replaced either naturally or by being re-planted deliberately.

And what about when houses are torn down, is that wood reclaimed somehow ?

Sometimes, but mostly it just gets burned or sent to a landfill to rot for centuries.

And that's just one thing we burn that is getting used up too quickly; think about oil; and there's coal, and oh yes, that one which most folks don't think of as fire, exactly=> that nuke-u-lar stuff.

WHAT ? You don't think that it's actually burned ?!? Well it is, and you may as well consider that it is like 'the fires of hell'=> nothing we burn gets any hotter. Not only is it a form of non-fire burning, it stays deadly for - well - forever.

Just one big part of it's hundreds of waste products that exists in huge amounts is directly deadly for over 14,000 years.

And that is before it even starts to become slightly less deadly to all forms of life.

That's longer than our species may have even been walking around for.

A trivia question for you=>

When nuke-u-lar fuel is 'burned' to make power, what is that heat really used for ?

One possible conclusion about all this burning stuff:

We've done so much of it, and for so very long now that we've just about turned this beautiful planet into a big smoke-bubble cluttered up with over-filled ashtrays everywhere around us.

Is this a good thing, somehow ???

(Answer to the trivia question...if it's done safely it just makes steam...when it's not done safely it just makes deadly poisons instead.)

Created by a peaceful inhabitant who loves this planet and all the other peaceful beings it is shared with.