After the Apocalypse

When the meteorite comes (assuming that we go the way of the dinosaurs), the Earth will do just fine without us.

I can't help but feel both reassured and depressed by this fact.

I am not an arrogant human. I don't think my species is the best thing that ever happened to this planet.

An anecdotal aside: I took an Astronomy class in college. One day, the professor announced in the middle of a lecture that we would have to figure out a way to successfully colonize other planets within 5 million years before the sun expanded and consumed the Earth. He even charged me and my classmates with the responsibility for the indefinite continuation of our species through these means. I laughed. Actually, I guffawed hysterically in the back of a packed (and curiously silent) lecture hall. I laughed so hard I had tears streaming down my face and had to leave the room so as not to further disrupt the earnest, albeit blindered, teachings of my distinguished professor.

So, in the sense of a universal evolutionary trajectory, I have no problem with conceiving of the end of our species and the continued survival of our planet - even if it's not in the idyllic form proposed in New Scientist.

What depresses me is the idea that we can't muster the courage and the discipline to limit our impact on the environment in such a way that we can experience this Earthly idyll ourselves. And actually, I think we can. And I don't think it'll be as hard as everyone seems to believe.

Another anecdote: My uncle and I were having a conversation about energy usage and the almost irrational avoidance of solutions, even reducing consumption. How had we come so far in technology, only to lose much of the value of what had come before? For example, my uncle says, why waste so many materials on creating packaging that can not be reused or recycled, when 100 years ago - 1000 years ago, in fact - we already had a material perfect for this purpose? What magic material are you referring to, I asked. Glass.

If we in the post-industrial west choose to trumpet our cultural superiority, then why can we not equal or surpass some of the most evolved elements of the past? For example, if aboriginal cultures the world over can live in such a way as to make no detrimental impact on the environment, why can't we? Is the destruction of the atmosphere, a huge number of species, and the alteration of much of the Earth's surface the legacy of our "civilization"? Based on that fact alone, can we really consider ourselves civilized?

I can't abide the idea that the greatest achievements of our species are in the past, nor that our greatest legacy is bipedalism.