The recent documentary by Ken Burns on the American Bison exemplifies where we have gone wrong with regard to nature. For thousands of years the indigenous tribes of North America relied on the buffalo for their existence, using virtually every part of the animals that they took. In return they held a sacred relationship to the herds, leaving their management to nature. By the time the European settlers arrived the buffalo numbers were in the millions. As these new people pushed westward following their "Manifest Destiny", they killed the animals relentlessly until only two dozen remained. It destroyed the lives of those who lived here first, and reduced their numbers correspondingly. Our pursuit of progress has led to completely ignoring nature to the point that our population has created an overshoot situation. When this happens in nature, the population in excess dies off until it reaches a level consistent with available resources, or simply goes extinct. We're on a collision course to one of those outcomes.
The recent documentary by Ken Burns on the American Bison exemplifies where we have gone wrong with regard to nature. For thousands of years the indigenous tribes of North America relied on the buffalo for their existence, using virtually every part of the animals that they took. In return they held a sacred relationship to the herds, leaving their management to nature. By the time the European settlers arrived the buffalo numbers were in the millions. As these new people pushed westward following their "Manifest Destiny", they killed the animals relentlessly until only two dozen remained. It destroyed the lives of those who lived here first, and reduced their numbers correspondingly. Our pursuit of progress has led to completely ignoring nature to the point that our population has created an overshoot situation. When this happens in nature, the population in excess dies off until it reaches a level consistent with available resources, or simply goes extinct. We're on a collision course to one of those outcomes.