This is why I prefer to make phone calls rather than text or email when the subject matter is complex. Too much gets lost in the attempt to be concise, and occasionally sarcastic. I follow your analogy, but it is not what I’m implying at all. So, I’ll take another shot at it.
Yes, man can and has made some messes on our planet. But as often as not, the attempts to clean it up do as much or more damage as the original incident. Exxon Valdez would be a good example. There are a number of people and organizations that think all the advancements man has come up with to make our lives better (another subjective term), have only served to destroy the earth. Their solution would be to eliminate most of the stuff that does make our lives more comfortable. They also seem to have an “at any cost” approach. Therein lies the problem
Recognizing when we’ve developed something that has some adverse consequence and then attempting to come up with a reasonable mitigation is a good thing. I drive full size pickups, have for most of my adult life. I could drive a small car for a lot of my driving, but I like having more steel around me and am willing to pay the extra for fuel and repairs. As technologies advance, my full size trucks emit less and get better mileage. That’s a reasonable mitigation. There are those that have the attitude I shouldn’t be allowed to drive a full size truck because they only get 10-20 mpg; that’s not a reasonable approach IMO.
I firmly believe that nature does provide solutions for more of the problems than some people realize or might admit. For instance, there is a microbe in the sea that eats oil. They are well fed as more oil seeps into the ocean every day naturally than was dumped by the Valdez. Recently read an article about a “new” bacteria that is in fact eating some plastics. Volcanoes have been spewing immense volumes of gases and “stuff” into the atmosphere since the world began, but this biosphere deals with it. We’ve even seen this several times in our lives.
Recognizing that nature’s timeline is MUCH different than man’s is part of the problem, especially in this country. We really have a “now, can’t wait” attitude towards a lot of things. She moves in terms of thousands and tens of thousands of years, not 10-25 years. Geology, oceanography, and atmospheric sciences are improving at the pace of technology, but like medicine, they are still very much inexact. Doesn’t mean I don’t go to the doc and watch the weather. They are making what I consider educated guesses.
With regards to the reefs we visit, the same would apply. They are changing. We, man, have done some damage, but nowhere close to the damage nature has inflicted on herself. We are doing some things that should help, and probably some things that won’t, and possibly some that are doing a different kind of damage. But she works on her timeline, not ours, so those of us discussing this today won’t be here to see what they look like 100 or a thousand years from now. We also don’t know, but try to guess, at what they looked like 100 or a thousand years in the past.
My problem is with those, who often have a financial interest, that try to convince the world that there won’t be a blue sky or a blue ocean in 25 years. IMO, the only way that will happen is if nature decides to blow up and wipe the slate clean, not because of the actions, or inactions, of man. Sorry for the long post, but I don’t like to be misunderstood. And, this is simply my opinion, FWIW. YMMV.
