Earth was not built for six billion people all running around and being passionate about things. The world was built for about two million people foraging for roots and grubs.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Earth was not built to serve the needs of humans.
Once humans traded their hunter-gatherer existences for more settled communities, we began a quest to make our lives better and more comfortable, but we've also been sucking precious finite resources from our environment ever since.
When I was born, the world's population was 3.5 billion. There are now 6.8 billion people on the planet. By 2050, that's expected to rise to 9.4 billion. What's more, the Earth's resources aren't growing; they're decreasing - and rapidly.
For centuries, building materials were free. You want to build a house, you cut down some trees. But we haven't been thinking about the cost to the planet.
The earth has a life of its own.
The older generation had greater respect for land than science. But we live in an age when science, more than soil, has become the provider of growth and abundance. Living just on the land creates loneliness in an age of globality.
For much of history it was possible to believe that the great diversity of life on Earth was a fixed creation, that the living world had never changed. But when the first stirrings of industry demanded that fuel be dug from the earth and hillsides be leveled for roads and railways, the Earth's true past was dug up in abundance.
There came into the world an unlimited abundance of everything people need. But people need everything except unlimited abundance.
When I was born, there were three billion people on the planet.
Each generation takes the earth as trustees. We ought to bequeath to posterity as many forests and orchards as we have exhausted and consumed.
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