Carson

Carson states that, "Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species-man-acquired significant power to alter the nature of the world (Carson 153). As children of the new millennia and the technology that it introduced sometimes I think mine and later generations forget about the state of the world that existed before the age of technological advancement. A little over a hundred years ago people lived with none of the modern advancements that we enjoy today. They had very little ability to alter the nature of the world beyond constructing buildings and establishing crop lands. However with our modern advancements that allowed us to alter the shape of our world, also came the consequences of those actions, things like acid rain, and the greenhouse effect to name a couple. People lived very simply at the turn of the 20th century and they relied on their land directly for their care and well being. However with the increase in technology and urbanization that came with the industrial revolution our society took a shift, forgetting about the environment that provides us life in favor of greed and industrialization. If we would bring someone from the 19th Century to ours they wouldn't recognize anything from their time. The rapid societal change we have seen in the last 100 years is unprecedented to anything that has come before.

According to Carson, "The rapidity of change and the speed with which new situations are created follow the impetuous and heedless pace of man rather than the deliberate pace of nature" (Carson 154). Man has tampered with the fundamental aspects of nature, taken those gifts and warped them to suit their own twisted purposes. Now we are spiraling towards disaster and are scrambling to find ways to fix what we have destroyed. However it is always easier and quicker to create a problem than it is to fix one. I'm reminded of a quote from the movie "Cold mountain" that actress Renee Zellweger says "They create they rain, and then they stand in it and say Crap! its raining". While Renee was talking about the actions of men during the Civil War I find this to be true in regards to the environment. We destroy the environment to fulfill our short term goals of greed and prosperity, however our actions have consequences. So we inevitably have to fix what we destroyed, however that costs us money, which upsets us. So we try and put a price tag on the environment to limit the amount of money we "have" to spend to satisfy our guilt. The whole thing is backwards. We need to think about the long term ramifications of our actions before we make decisions that could affect future generations forever. We must think about someone besides ourselves, its the only way for a society to survive let alone survive.