People are hungry creatures. We eat food and utilize resources to ever greater extents. On a finite world, this can only mean that other living beings have less and less available. Certainly other living creatures don’t want petroleum. Most consider it a dangerous substance. Yet, as we use energy resources to expand our presence, less and less remains for other living beings. Only remnants remain of the once flourishing ecosystem that encompassed Earth.
As long as people can rely upon disparate ecosystems, our existence continues. However, should the remnants fade or the transportation network fail, we will need to rely upon the ecosystem that surrounds us. Given the great modifications of landscape and wildlife undertaken by people, this may not be possible. Further, as the rate of extinctions ever increase, the surviving life forms may be inadequate for the task.
Wise future planning would attempt to negate this possibility. Both the Royal Botanical Gardens (1) and the global seed bank in Longyearbyen (2) are indicators that some people and governments believe the future needs more care and planning than we now give it.
If we are planning for remnants, does this mean we’ve given up on trying to maintain the status quo? If we have, will a few repositories of some viable genetic material be enough to let the surviving life forms flourish. The future is indeed going to be interesting.
(1)Seed Bank
(2)Longyearbyen
Energy Source | Energy Sink |
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