the sad truth

There is a saying that children of today are the leaders of tomorrow. The heirs of what adults of today have left behind. Yet, there is little joy in considering just what is left behind by today’s adults.
According to the Department of Natural Resources, less than 20% of our original growth forests remain. Of the commercial forests that have taken their place in some areas, only 8% of these remain standing beyond the period when those trees are ready for harvest.
Most of our forests were not replanted with commercial forests. Most of that land was converted to farm lands or residential subdivisions. As such, those areas can never be reforested again.
Aside from cutting of trees and clearing of forests, logging, legal and illegal alike, has dramatically destroyed natural habitats of forest fauna; such as the timor, certain simians, and wild fowl. Many of these species endemic to the natural make up of the land are now on the endangered species list. Some are on the verge of extinction. All on the cruel hands of humans.
Deforestation also leads to siltation of rivers and contamination of our coastal waters where rivers feed into the sea or into a gulf. Greenpeace international and other environmental groups are warning against any further siltation of coastal waters. According to them marine and aquatic life are dangerously threatened by continued contamination of coastal by siltation.
Global warming is no longer considered a matter of alarmist propaganda; its threat is as imminent and as real as the sun rising each morning. The “breech” in the ozone layer above New Zealand is so dramatic that it is already being credited with the increase melanoma among people living in the western pacific region south of the equator.
Many ecologists, meteorologists and other expert scientists seriously believe that the damage in the ozone layer may become irreparable if we continue our abusive ways.
With the continued degradation of the ozone layer, skin cancer cases will increase and ultra violet rays would eventually destroy certain life-sustaining enzymes, and life as we know it, will somehow change dramatically. “A nightmare where the living will envy the dead”, to paraphrase astronomer and novelist, Carl Sagan.
Sagan, Isaac Asimov, even early science fiction and science fantasy writer, H.G. Wells predict a world of misery and suffering, all attributed to man’s insensitivity to his environment. His habitat.

Ultimately, our works of doom appear to be terrors of reality.

idlegrass