Do We Really Know What We are Trying to Conserve?

How well do we humans really understand what we are attempting to conserve? We worry about the rain forests, yet we don't even know everything there is to know about the same. For example, what is the acidity of the soil in the average rain forest? Are they all the same or are they all different? What kinds of trees directly affect which kinds of wildlife? If you remove one tree and replace it with a different kind, will the forest be forever altered? These are the types of questions that I'm afraid many conservationists don't bother to ask before they leap into the quicksand of propaganda with both feet.

Take air pollution for instance. Conservationists go crazy over that one. "Stop polluting the air", they shout, yet how exactly do you do that? If you take away one type of pollutant, another soon takes its place so that society and technology can proceed as before. Take away all forms of pollutants at once, and society would drop dead in its tracks. The problem is, we are not looking at the wider picture on this issue. The facts are irrevocable: Air pollution is a problem best solved by nature itself. When it rains, the air is purified, cleaned of all the toxins, and nasty pollutants. This is why if you walk outside during a rain, and lift up your face, when a rain drop hits you in the eye it will sting and burn horribly until you wash your eye out with pure water.

The thing of it is, that same water that you are using to cleanse your stinging eye is where all that polluted rain water eventually goes. It gradually gets filtered as it sifts down through the many layers of sand, soil, and rocks and when it once again reaches the water table, deep under the surface of the Earth, it is fresh, clean and pure water again. Where do you believe your drinking water comes from anyway? A bottle? Even bottled water has to have a beginning somewhere. A "pure" mountain stream is full of rain water, but when that same stream goes underground the impurities get filtered out yet again. No matter how you look at it, air pollution is a self-solving problem, and for that matter so is water pollution.

There are microbes that will eat oil spills faster than you can say, "Exxon Valdez", and other natural elements that can take care of certain types of garbage, or spills. Plastics of course, are another topic altogether, but they fall under the category of "burnables". Yes, it's true that it has been said you should not burn plastic because it pollutes the air, but the truth is, as I mentioned above, the pollution from the plastic fumes will get taken care of the next time it rains. This planet Earth that we are all so worried about "saving" is actually pretty much self-reliant. It takes care of itself quite nicely.

What do we really know about good old planet Earth anyway? What are its likes and dislikes? Does it actually "appreciate" all the so called, "help" we have tried to give it over the decades? The fact that planet Earth is still here says something for its durability. Seems as though I recall someone declaring that the world was going to end over 100 years ago! Obviously it has not ended yet, and truth be told, as astonishing as it may seem, there really is still some natural beauty left in the old girl yet.

Earth even still has wide open spaces, full of wildlife, and untamed wilderness. It is no wasteland of brick and concrete, and technically speaking, you can fit every human being alive today into a space the size of Jacksonville, Florida. That does not sound to me like the world is overpopulated by any means. It is arrogant to assume that we can knowledgably preserve the world in its pristine state, when we don't even fully understand the intricate and intertwined mechanisms that make up this world in its current state.

While Earth is truly no "garden of Eden" at this point in time, it is certainly not the toxic waste dump that tree huggers would make it out to be. The Earth is by its very nature, renewable to the extreme. Do what you will to this planet and it manages to bounce back again somehow. The reason is simple...it is difficult to destroy that which you don't understand in the first place. You can destroy a bug by stomping on it, because you are thousands of times bigger than that bug, but we are thousands of times smaller than Earth, yet we still believe we have the capacity to destroy it. Where exactly is the logic there?

In conclusion I will add that I believe the Earth should be enjoyed rather than just worried over. God gave it to us to use, and to govern. So we do not govern this Earth wisely? I sincerely doubt that God did not account for that when He created our world in the first place. No, He knew exactly what he was doing when He put this blue orb in space, and He knows what He's doing today as well. So why don't we quit arguing about who's right and who's wrong, and who is polluting and who is not, and just have a little faith, that the wonderfully made world that God gave us is quite capable of outlasting us all.