will we change the enviroment so drastically it will threaten our existence..or do we have millions of years left to play with?

I know the popular opinion goes against this but in my opinion we are nothing more than a thorn in the foot of our planet. Yes we effect it, but I personnally think if we buzzed off, 5 minuts after we were gone the place would blossom. I think earth is far more resilient than we give it credit for. Having said that I am always happy to be concious of our environment.

Many species have gone extinct. The earth has undergone many climactic changes. The mediterrainian was once a desert. The sahara was once semi tropical, and Siberia was once a massive volcanic field. The earth will continue to change. Some species will go extinct and new ones will evolve.

Our survival depends on our adaptability and management of our changes to the earths environment. If we fail and go extinct, the earth will still be here and so will life.

Mankind is put down for the destruction he causes allot. With 50% of the worlds forests cut down by us there is no doubt that we are having an effect on Earth's ecosystem for better or worse.

If you try to imagine what it was like when Mother Nature pushed mankind around and people could not imagine that cutting down a tree could impact the environment, you may begin to see why a lack of restraint has been seen up until recently. What is going on here is that man was beat down. He was stepped on over and over even as he tried to fight back and lost. In time he learned how to be the master of a world that was relentless and unfair. This is what he saw when he looked at nature. Now man is finding that he is running out of nature to be cut down. He simply over did his efforts. How is the time to learn to care for the Earth and the life on it as much as it has been caring for us all this time. Humanity can pay back nature for all that it has given us and much more. We just need to learn how to change gears.

Is this because man is evil? a virus? No, just that he is learning to see the bigger picture. In a fight you can only beat down your opponent so much before you destroy him.

If man left the Earth right now nature would reclaim the cities and have things back to normal soon enough. It would be a mistake to say it would be the same Earth as it was before we got started but it would reclaim the Earth.

There should be no doubt that man will continue to take resources from the Earth without adequate balancing to keep the Earth stable. Yes man will drive the Earth into more dire situations before we learn to keep the Earth under our feet.

But all is not lost, right this minute the word "Green" as regard to causing less harm to nature is a multi-billion dollar word and growing by the day. The destructive species called man does have a heart. As destruction is felt there are those learning to watch out for nature.

Man has every right to be on this Earth as every other animal found on it. Man will never "go back to nature", he is simply not that infatuated with nature. However it is possible to live our lives in concrete buildings, asphalt streets and cars without wiping out the rest of life on Earth.

Man has a potential saving grace he can live up to. He can learn how to keep life going on Earth while he lives on it. Not enough ozone? Over fishing? Not enough trees? Too much ground becoming unconserved? We can grow in our understanding of not just how to cut down a forest, but how to create one too.
Ozone does not replenish very fast in nature, yet man can speed it up by many times.

Humanity has been pushed around by nature. He has developed an attitude over many years that he will push down and roll over anything that gets in his way. Well, at this point he has reached a very high level of domination and nature is bending to his will. The days of nature pushing around man are gone. The days of destroying all that would oppose man must go too.

While some reading this may find it hard to believe, it is possible to not only destroy the world we live in, but to create a new one too. Mankind can restore a destroyed world. He can learn how to cut down enough forest for himself out of the much larger one he made and live on a beautiful Earth he works so hard to maintain in great condition.

For every tree cut down there are 2 that take it's place. There is less CO2 on Earth right now than ever in it's entire history. We have a long time on this planet. Man is the best thing that has ever happened to this planet. There is more individual lives now on Earth than there ever has been, in during the time of the dinosaurs. Animals that would have gone extinct centuries ago are alive and well today b/c of man. Yes, there has been some animals that have not been able to cope with man being here and are close to extinction, but there are even more animals thriving b/c of us.

There are more forests today still standing b/c of man. Old growth forests have a tendency to burn down on it's own due to all the dead leaves laying on the floor of the forest. Instead of letting them burn out of control we used to log these forests so that new trees and plant life can grow a new. Now that logging has been restricted the natural logging of fire has taken over. Way to go congress.

The bit about the rain forest is also a big feel good, but not based on reality movement. The rain forest is more like a kudzu. You can slash and burn it all you want, give it a month and it will grow back. Don't believe me, take a visit to Clark Air Base in the Philippines. The US Air Force took years upon years to build that air base in the middle of a jungle. After Mt. Pinatubo wrecked everything with in hundreds of miles, everything is growing back just as strong as it ever was. Plants and animals in a jungle are fast living and fast dieing. Thus the rain forest can grow back just as quick as it is chopped down.

Here's a kicker, the soil in a rain forest is relatively infertile. After a good slash and burn of an area it's only good for one or two seasons. The natives aren't stupid. They slash and burn an area for that season, the next they let it grow back over while they use another area. The go back and forth in order to replenish the nutrients in the soil. The native farmers aren't stupid. They've lived there for centuries, and I am pretty sure they know more about their area than some tree hugging hippy from the states.

I am getting a bit tired of this tree hugging, hippy horse crap. No, we shouldn't go around trashing the planet, but we shouldn't act like the world is going to burn down tomorrow. Man is a good thing, not some virus.

I think we are definately playing pinball with our enviornment when it comes to global warming and if something isn't done soon, the next 200 years are not going to be nice to us.

I agree. I think it is pretty damn arrogant of us to think that we have affected earth that much in around 100 years, after she has survived all kinds of violence for 4.5 billion years

not really wodan,think for a minute ,we are the only creature on the planet that has changed the enviroment it lives in, it uses fossil fuels,agriculture,mining resources,over fishing,nuclear testing,wars. so i think we can have a profound effect on things.The animals were getting on fine and so was the planet till we came along like an out of control parasite.we cannot continue the same way for the next hundred years.

Animals have never been "getting allong" And in fact, there are more species today then there has ever been before. We have more trees now then 100 years ago. People are so concerned about the environment that they will do almost everything to at least think they help. The planet has been bombarded by asteroids that have wiped out 80-90% of the species living on it, covered the entire planet in a dark blanket keeping the sun out. But here mother nature still stands as fertile as ever.

Not just more species, but more individual lives. This does not include bug life either.

So where are all these trees, that is complete bollocks.human life is abundant.but animal life is decreasing.how many species have we wiped out building cities,deforestaion and agriculture.we change things for our own need,barely give consideration to other species.Some extinctions are through natural selection.fish stocks are at their lowest in recorded history.although during world war 2 fish stocks apparently flourished and a massive scale due to fisherman avoiding the north atlantic..what does that tell you.human intervention and invasion has done this planet more harm than good.We have flood problems due to houses being built on land that was once flood plains,also concrete driveways and patios ever increasing,not allowing natural absorbtion of rain water.i an go on all day pointing out where man has had a negative impact it has had on the natural life on this planet.

I think you are underestimating yourself.

Lets say a meteor struck the Earth. A blaze of flame and soot wipe out much of Earth's biopresence. But the dead tree gives life to the next. Life has a way of organizing the many chaotic elements. So the next tree benefits from the it's predictor. But a tree needs a certain amount of help. It is a complex organism. The amount of work needed for a tree to live in beyond it. It needs smaller plants to pave the way.

But here comes man with a chain saw to carry away the tree and with it a portion of what any tree in the area would require. There is in fact a name to this, it refers to the continued nutrients needed for plants to survive. The word is conserve. To unconserve soil means to reduce it to the point that plants will not grow. It is an old concept that comes form ages of farming. There are other things that can unconserve soil, but man is way ahead of all of them. Deforesting is not the same as a forest fire, as fire does not remove the nutrients from the area.

The level of oxygen on Earth has fallen, unnatural chemicals that nature has never had to deal with. Did you know that drugs are poisons? And that illegal, legal and other poisons in the sewage are dumped by the trillions of gallons into the ecosystem? That is enough poison to kill billions of fish not to mention the ones we remove in the form of fishing, all this in the last few years.

You have underestimated man's presence. You have not noticed that our buildings are not grown on trees. We are at odds with nature. Don't get me wrong, I am not a hippie or a "tree hugger", you do not need to be to see what I am talking about. As I have said before, man will never become a "tree hugging" race. Your comment is not unbelievable, it is proof that man will never become druidic.

We do not need to become a "tree hugging" race to be able to live in some degree of harmony with nature. We just need to get our technology and efforts of creating a planet up to the level of destruction we cause. It may be beyond your coprehention that we can get so good at creating a planet that we can restore dead worlds. We can give back far more than we have ever taken without a single tree hugging.

Man is a power on Earth that makes the Earth shake when we move, there has been little concern up until now that we could really have a effect on this huge and seemingly immovable Earth. Yet people find that we have reached the level were the immovable Earth gives way and were our actions can effect the fate of all life globally. Welcome to Earth, 2008, were man is king of the jungles, deserts, oceans, mountains and sky. This is man now, renew your perspective with what is going on now, not 400 years ago.

I think that man is a far more important object than this planet. Yes, I know it sound very non-new age and non-hippy of me, but I believe the survival of humanity is far more important in the long run than that of the planet. If we need to screw this planet to survive in the end (yes, I know we need it to survive, so don't start), then so be it.

didn't expect that from you senhuan.i like this place and can't afford to move to europa just yet.can you get a mortgage there,is fuel cheaper,will the poor still starve,and will the americans still bomb the s--t out of the middle east.For all this planets ills,i think it is the best place in the universe.