Rain Forest People Protection Act

So as I was sitting on my plane from the desert that is the southwest part of the United States, I started thinking about all of the farms that were created during the evolution of the American society all across the U.S. over the past 400 years. I thought about all of the trees that were cleared and cut in the northeast, the swamp lands that have been drained and developed into houses in the south, the vast prairies and huge herds of buffalo that were replaced with corn, wheat and cattle in the Midwest, and I thought to myself, what were those people thinking? Didn’t they know that they were ruining ecosystems and destroying nature? How could they be so barbaric and wasteful, where were the environmentalists to tell them that resources were limited?

Well they didn’t exist in mass, and they didn’t know that the world was round and finite, but more importantly, we were in it for the money! The land of opportunity! The blessed land! It turns out we are far from a perfect land, but we are now one of the wealthiest, we do have it better than most of the world, and our biggest concerns don’t usually include how to protect ourselves from the elements or where our next meal will come from (maybe what our next meal will be or whether we should pay electric bills or car payments, but you get the idea)

We like to think of our society as one that is trying to protect the environment that’s left, especially when you consider all of the efforts that are put into stopping the clearing of other resources, planting new forests, limiting harvesting of fishing, but I realized its ok for us to do it because we can afford to. We got our share of the money, we worked hard destroying our once limitless environment and now we don’t want others to go down the same road of destruction, right?

Or is it more complicated? Let’s consider the nations along the equator where all of the rain forests are, most of the diversity of the plants of the world is located, where huge amounts of oxygen is produced and spread over the world, and where a lot of what we consider undeveloped countries exist. We get angry when we see those fires burning, the video of animals running from loggers, and the pictures of the rare and exotic creatures that hide there (for now). Why don’t we get as upset when we see the people with a need for clean water, protection from the elements, or food?

It seems to me that they have the resources to acquire all of those things, but for some reason don’t. I want to believe that the only answer is they are not as smart, not capable, not motivated, or otherwise not worthy, but that’s just a little too cruel and cold for me. We know they are human, capable of all of the things we are, and have the ability to do the things our society did, but are being discouraged from it. They could take charge and start farming and building their cities, roads and malls; yet they don’t (or perhaps not as fast as they could would be more appropriate).

I have a problem with our society supporting the protection of things and places that in the end are going to disappear no matter what we do. The earth’s population of humans is going to double, soon, and the food to feed those people is going to have to come from somewhere. I know we would all like to see those rare and exotic beasts still exist for our grandchildren, but as any one in the population genetics field will tell you, it’s already too late.

We may be able to keep them alive for a time, but eventually they will have to be inbred, and eventually they will not be able to produce viable offspring. Eventually, those forests are going to be cut down so the people can feed themselves, eventually they are going to create demand for housing, roads, cars, and everything else that we consider normal, and when it does, what then?

When we can no longer support the population with the surplus of our society, what will be more acceptable, clearing forests as we once did, or allowing billions to starve so we can have jaguars and orangutans? Maybe its not so black and white as that, maybe we can boost the production of farmlands already out there, maybe we can solve both problems, Maybe we won’t even be around that long if the world gets destroyed by global warming, but how can we truly justify preventing other nations from striving to improve their lives when we did just as they did during our development? We preach freedom, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but do those ideals stop with our borders?

I don’t know about you, but I like to think we have been going to war across the globe for the past 100 years for exactly that reason. But how do we go to war when the enemy is us? I always knew my shadow had it out for me; I’ll be back once I do it in.