Dust bowl.
Butterfly effect.
Passenger pigeon.
I had to look all of those up! This has been a very educational conversation!
I'm feeling pretty intellectually inadequate though. Thanks for bearing with me.
I will say, obviously, as you have stated, humans can and do effect things. And we make mistakes. Most, like the dust bowl, we also fix. That being said, even the dust bowl, as far as I know, didn't have any long term and especially any global impact on the Earth. The Global Warming believers are telling me that I am destroying the planet, and I just don't buy it. I don't think we have that much power.
Well said.
I can live with that.
My opinion is, individually, no, we don't have the power.
As a race, we may not have the power to destroy the planet as such.
However, we definitely have the collective power to destroy the conditions on the planet that give us a decent quality of life.
Think army ants. One? No threat. A colony not foraging? Not much of a threat. A colony foraging? Run for the river.
Humans are foragers. Always have been.
It's not just global warming (I was never much good at being "politically correct").
It's also: Depleting our aquifers...
Continuing to deforest and pollute mass tracts of land and water...
Changing the genetic makeup of our food which places the control of a smaller variety of available foods in the hands of a very few...
And so on.
Theres also the fact that in 1968 the population of the earth was around 3.5B.
The population is projected to be around 9.6B by 2050.
People steadfastly refuse to believe in the limitations of our planet.
Why are some of the most palatable species of fish in danger of being fished out?
The oceans are huge right? So huge that what I just mentioned should never happen.
I'm not out to change anyone's mind to my view, but only to have a few consider my view.
Consider this:
We are determined to burn every last bit of carbon in the ground.
When you look up at the sky, it looks and seems infinite.
In reality, the useable thin atmospheric "skin" on this planet is only a few miles thick.
I've run that distance in one stretch quite a few times in my life.
To bring this back to center, that's why I feel the Elio's "Total Environmental Impact" is indeed one of it's important characteristics.