There are a great many things that could be sighted as representations of our collective stupidity. After all, we possess the ability to annihilate ourselves – several times over just for good measure. But perhaps the most telling is our indifference with regards to the planet that we inhabit, its ancient rhythm, and how we have altered that rhythm.

There are many that believe that climate change is a hoax – or at least not substantiated. There are even more that believe it real. In the end, what both groups believe matters little. One aspect of the environmental debate that is never discussed is that of natural selection, that we are going about fulfilling a destiny of self destruction that is actually a part of the natural order of things.

While we might dominate this planet at present, there is nothing to suggest that such a state was ever meant to be permanent. Given that our species actually plays no role within the cycle of the natural world, it’s only reasonable to assume that our time here has always been limited, and that we will eventually pass into the annals of natural history as other species have before us. While we might possess the ability to prolong that inevitability, it is one that is assured given our growing numbers, the inability to sustain those numbers, and all of the residual effects that as a species we rely on that are irrevocably damaging.

The truth of the matter is that no one, not even the most ardent of environmentalists, is willing to turn back the clock to a time when our presence was not responsible for a significant environmental footprint. We will never revert back to a global agrarian lifestyle that, for example, sees a variety of complex structures abandoned to assure the protection of the planet. It simply isn’t something that we’re capable of. While sustainability is seen as a countermeasure, the fact remains that the global infrastructure that we have created will be responsible for our ultimate demise, be it in a century or four centuries. That is, if nature itself does not exact a toll on us in the meantime that is devastating in scope.

We have the ability to send people to the moon, to construct devices that have the ability to venture beyond the bounds of our solar system, even gift a person an artificial heart. But beyond such triumphs, something as ancient and powerful as a storm still possesses the ability to diminish our perceived greatness. The same applies to droughts, tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, and a host of other natural events. Nature, though commonly considered something that we control, is by no means controllable. In fact, all that it would take to erase us from existence is a rock 6 miles in diameter impacting any part of the surface of the planet at 15 to 20 kilometers per second. Were that to occur, the result would be equal to the energy created by roughly 300 million nuclear explosions that would create temperatures equal to that of the surface of the sun for several minutes. In those several minutes, everything with a specific radius would be instantly destroyed, leaving the rest of the planet to endure a sonic shockwave capable of bursting eardrums, the production of global winds hundreds of kilometers an hour, flash fires due to sudden spikes in temperature, and severe radiation that would produce a nuclear winter of unknown length and severity. And nothing that we possess in all of our technological bag of tricks would save us from it.

True, astronomers the world over scan the heavens in search of such potential threats, and while it might seem science fiction to some, the truth is that it’s happened before and could very likely happen again – though I personally believe that we’ll have done ourselves in long before something as random as a meteor striking the planet occurs.

Right now, as I type this, there is a mass of garbage known as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch – 80% of which is plastics, weighing approximately 3.5 million tons – floating in the Pacific Ocean that has been slowly growing in size since the 1950’s. At present, it’s twice the size of Texas – making it 1,392,482 km2. Call me crazy, but the existence of something of that nature trumps the importance of the War On Terror in my books. Of course, we’ve known about it since the 80’s, but that fact hasn’t prompted any sort of international alarm.

To put the devastating ramifications of The Great Pacific Garbage Patch into perspective, below is a picture of the insides of a dead Albatross chick…

On Midway Atoll, close to half of all Albatross chicks die because of the ingestion of human waste products.

But it’s just a bird. So what do we care? It’s not as if it’s a bird with explosives strapped to its back flying towards a skyscraper. That, of course, would constitute an immediate threat, and we’re fantastic at addressing those – though, commonly ass backwards for the most part. But when it comes to half the population of a specific breed of bird dying in a remote location because of the ingestion of plastics, well, that shouldn’t be something that alarms you. God, in his infinite wisdom, must have created that floating mass of garbage for a reason, and by way of that, doomed those birds for whatever reason. Religious explanations are always the easiest – no wonder it’s such a popular phenomenon.

If you take off your goggles long enough and dare to gaze into the distance you’ll eventually come to the realization that we are those birds, and that our own demise will quietly befall us even as it’s being denied. Of course, the world will still be here and it will continue to spin much as it has for billions of years – long before we showed up, and so long after. To be a proverbial fly on the wall when the infinite noise of our recklessness stops is a thing of dreams. I would very much like to see it, though know that I will not.