A Cancer On The Face Of The Universe

Fox News ^ | February 25, 2002 | Rand Simberg

[NonZeroSum]

Humankind is a pestilence

[NonZeroSum]

He's also got some hilarious emails in reponse to it at his weblog.

[Procyon]

And she's concerned that we will attack some "unsuspecting ecosystem."

You'll never win the argument because they'll claim that lifeless planets, inorganic sand and rocks, also have the right not to have lifeforms exploit their mineral substance.

They'll tell that not only do people not have souls, but that lifeless forms do have souls. It's the Gaia idea that all existence is interrelated and joined in a common soul.

[Junior]

As the old tee-shirt says, the meek will inherit the earth — the rest of us will go to the stars. And we will do so with a clear conscience.

Amen, brother!

[MarkWar]

>"We cause problems here and we would just take them somewhere else."

I once had lunch with some very successful businessmen and women -- boy was I the odd man out -- and the conversation got around to space travel and darned if this crazy view wasn't the consensus! "We pollute, we fight and we destroy everything everywhere we go," everyone -- but me -- at the lunch agreed. "Let's stay here on earth until we figure out how to live decently..."

It's really scary to imagine what our future holds if this "view" is as popular as it seems to be...

Mark W.

[Paul Atreides]

It's interesting how the people who think that humanity is ruining the Earth don't do their part and off themselves in the name of contributing to a better world. *Sigh*....if they did that, we wouldn't have someone to sanctimoniously tell us how to run our lives.

[lawdude]

I would have no sad feelings were she to be hit by a truck! She is the menace!

[NonZeroSum]

Space Ping...

[aruanan]

And she's concerned that we will attack some "unsuspecting ecosystem."

She attacks and condemns to death an ecosystem every time she takes a dump. In every one of Lori's bowel movements, there are several times more living beings than there are cells in her entire body. Weep, Lori, over your destruction when you wipe them out. Weep, Lori, for life is crap and you flush it away without a thought.

[Physicist]

There is no such thing as a healthy ecology or an unhealthy ecology, or a good environment or a bad environment, except insofar as it relates to man. Nature is indifferent to who lives and who dies. Nature and everything in it is amoral, completely lacking in moral desire or regret, the exception being man.

It is a moral imperative that all environmentalism be viewed through this prism.

[gcruse]

Beavers build dams. Ergo, beaver dams are natural.
Humans build dams. Ergo, manmade dams are not natural.
Something wrong with this?

[Virginia-American]

I can't remember whether it was Goering or Goebbels, but one of them said almost the exact same thing in his diary: paraphrasing, "Nature is beautiful and pure, man is destructve and evil"

[Plummz]

The Anglo-Saxon tribes seem especially prone to this kind of pagan nature worship. They got really freaked out when Christendom came up there and started cutting down trees.

[razorback-bert]

Why am I drawn to the image of glasses and hairy legs.

This has the making of a 60's acid flashback.

[mikrofon]

Human beings "cause problems here..." Indeed we do. Of course we cause lots of other things as well. We often cause solutions to those same problems. We also cause scientific theories. And symphonies, and majestic works of art, and gardens, and laughter, and joy

Some very valid observations, which apparently are (easily) lost on Ms. Lori ... her attitude is reminiscent of that 'Q' character on Star Trek:TNG.

Necessity is the mother of invention, but our imagination and dreams often provide the spark. Without such aspirations and acting on them, the human race might just as well linger here forever.

[gilor]

I would have no sad feelings were she to be hit by a truck!
How 'bout a meteorite, instead?

[lawdude]

"How 'bout a meteorite, instead?"

That works. But not a big one. Just a baseball sized right in her mouth.

[RightWhale]

Space travel/colonization would be irresponsible and sadly consistent with the thinking that got us to the state of informed depravity we are in now

Sorry the author is having a bad hair day. Yes, there will always be Clintons, but the stars won't be there forever. We have at most 1 trillion years before the universe goes big bang again and that barely leaves time to get out there and do the job we were created to do. There is no one out there and no ecosystems, so we will have to create everything we need as we go. Food, shelter, air, SUVs, everything.

[The Great Satan]

And I thought this was going to be about Islam.