Open the Future: The Earth Will Be Just Fine, Thank You - 0 views
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Arabica Robusta on 23 Apr 08We sometimes make the conceptual mistake of thinking that the way the Earth's ecosystem is today is the way it will forever be, that we've somehow reached an ecological end-state. But even in an eco-conscious world, or one devoid of humans entirely, natural processes from evolution to geophysical and solar cycles would continue. The Earth's been at this for a long time, literally billions of years; from a planetary perspective, a quadrupling of atmospheric carbon lasting 10,000 years (for example) is little more than a passing blip. The fact of the matter is that, no matter how much greenhouse gas we pump into the atmosphere or how many toxins we dump into the soil and oceans, given enough time the Earth will recover. But human civilization is far more fragile.