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Theuns, from a spiritual point of view, it certainly does suggest that the modern state of things agrees with the end-days of the bible. Scary in some ways, but for those believers in spiritual things, this may be the release they are seeking from a damaged earth!

You all forget how ingenious man is. There might not be many surviving animals, but man will be here for still some time. The sun or the atomic bombs will decide for how long.

Deep philosophy OWN

Okie, not my own (thank goodness ), but spiritual viewpoints that have been debated for centuries.

Do not lose sight of the fact that the the rate of advance of the human race has been so vast over the last few centuries , the effects thereof have yet to manifest themselves .

That is an angle on things I haven't yet considered in detail! Thanks Ndloti. Sort of like a delayed-effect thing, really - is that what you're saying? And I suppose this concentrates primarily on the negative, damaging delayed-effects? If that is the case, then we're in for more of a torrid time than we might imagine as these delayed problems could manifest at any moment.

I think we have done more damage to the planet in the last ten years than the previous 1000 years combined.

At this rate, I don't rate our chances of seeing the next 50 years, let alone the next 90 or 100 (as a species that is.)

But,I thinkbeing our normalselves, we arelikely to continue to ignore the writing on the wall and continue to accelerate the paceof destruction until it is way too late.

It's like telling teenage children that speed kills and they go out to race around in fast cars until they find out for themselves.

Why will we only pay attention when we burn our fingers?

Absolutely, BH! It continually amazes me how stupid the human race is regarding our environment. Somehow, mankind has always supposed that the vastness of nature's resources cannot be depleted, and thereby has wrought the type of spinechilling destruction that successful horror movies are made of!

How could the gargantuan volume of the oceans be polluted by the madness of man's non-biodegradable plastics and the terror of giant oil-spills?
How could the pristineness of space be packed with waste material that threatens every spacecraft entering the orbit of earth?
How could mankind possibly cause the tremendous recoverability of the earth's atmosphere to fail?
Or large parts of the mighty ozone to be removed?
Or the temperature of an entire world to rise?
Or billions of passenge pigeons to be wiped out in the space of a century, using relatively primitve rifles?
Or ... ... ...

Sometimes I can only believe that the majority of humans are so blinkered by their tiny personal-bubble of a world, and hence their incredible selfishness, that they either fail to understand that the world is in jeopardy, or they actually care very little that it is.

Increasingly, though, I feel that more and more people are suddenly awakening to the fact that, if nothing imminently is done to save our planet, they may just awake one day to find it is irrecoverable (if it already isn't! ). Damage control is never a wise way of doing business. However, we have no choice really, for the amount of damage - as you suggest, BH - that has already been done is already at lethal levels!

However, there is a slim hope still - if the minority (those special souls that appreciate the magnificent Earth we have been blessed to be born on) can sway the majority (those less-interested homo sapiens that I alluded to earlier). It is a mighty task, but so was the topling of communism in the Soviet Union or the recovery story of the white rhino from the brink of extinction; and those were somehow achieved, mainly due to a few people's untiring efforts to bring their dreams to reality!

I pin my hopes to the unfathomable magnificence of the Creator, and to His great plan of existence on this Earth - Mother Nature. They will find a way, but we need to assist them by slowing - and even ceasing - the mindless destruction of everything good and important around us. Otherwise, I'm devasated to say, humankind will be sacrificed on the altar of continuing life on Earth, albeit without us!

Modern humans are not the only ones to have an affect on the planet. Here in the Americas, the paleo-Americans appeared to have a culture based on the overkill of the abundant megafauna. This also occured as people migrated from Africa into Europe and Australia. By contrast, those who stayed in Africa seem to have been in greater harmony with their environment. I hope this continues.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_megafauna" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

One with nature - if we as humans get wiped off one day, I doubt it will be loss of intelligent life. We will reap what we sow.

Im not a religious person, but what Theuns is saying holds a LOT of weight, the signs are here, that teh end is near. I dont know if that will be teh big armageddon/Judgenent day etc. but if we as an dont make a plan now, and by that I mean all man, one collective effort, the end for us at least will be here.

1 hour from now 1 species of lifeform dissappears off the face of the planet...................forever............

And the rate is accelerating.

James Lockwood, of the Gaia understanding looks very seriously at chemistry.

We have treated this world for far to long as "expenditure". It is not, it is capital. What we loose now can never be regained.

One species an hour ... that is UNFORGIVEABLE!

A thought has just struck me, reading all of this Armagedon/Day of Judgement stuff:

What may be very interesting from the religious point-of-view is that, perhaps, this has all come to pass as it is meant to and that, maybe, none of us can do anything about it anyway!

Now, that is both sobering and uncontrollably frightening!!

Fascinating stuff, Sagebrush! So, it is maybe more of an hereditary trait, this lack of understanding of the finiteness of our environment? As you say, though, certain cultures and regions still demonstrated the more advanced approach - harmony with everything.

Perhaps this should be put over to Timepilot's Paleoanthropology Quiz, where we could look at this in more detail? Very interesting indeed!

One difference, I would say, between the Paleo-Americans and modern people is that we make such a huge impact on our planet simply because of the numbers of people in the world at the moment. How much longer can our planet's resources support the exponential increase in human beings too?

Nice way of putting it, MM.

I have mentioned it before, but I think that it is worth repeating it here. My big problem is uncontrolled population explosion. More people need more resources. More unspoiled wilderness areas are being ploughed to produce more food for the masses. We all know about the rainforests that are disappearing at an alarming rate, the fish stocks that are depleted in many areas and fishermen have to sail further and further to catch enough in order to feed the billions of people and so the list goes on.

On the other hand, we invent better and better medicines to keep man alive for longer. Kingsley Holgate travel all over Africa, dishing out malaria nets to prevent people from dying. During the 80's, there was a severe drought in Ethiopia and thousands of ton of food was flown in to save the people.

Are thing like floods, drought, AIDS, malaria, earthquakes, diseases etc not nature's mechanisms to prevent us from destroying ourselves. Look at Kruger for example. During years of good rainfall, water is everywhere and the animals are dispersed all over Kruger. Because of the abundance of food, animals multiply and anthrax is not a problem, but during droughts, animals congregate around the few water holes, and anthrax is more prevalent, killing the weak animals and thus keeping the number of animals at a sustainable level. Anthrax is also one of nature's ways of maintaining a balance and to take out the poor genes from the system.

What's your thoughts?