My eyes slowly open. I sleep with the curtains pushed back, so am blinded briefly. In that instance, as I lay in bed new to another day, people around the world are being killed violently.

What has transpired in Mumbai is a representation of the worst of what we as a species are capable of, but it is by no means the only example of our predilection for death. We live in a world in which more has been done to further the arts of destruction than creation. It has become our great work, our calling card, the one constant employed by terrorists and governments alike. The majority of the planet fears death, so possessing the ability to deliver it has become the greatest undertaking in human history. Its perfection has many faces, from the mushroom cloud to the seizing of hotels in a major city. From carpet bombing to suicide bombing.

As an advocate of peace I feel peace too great a threat to the status quo to ever become a reality. Peace does not further agendas, nor does it possess the power to threaten. Peace is simply the unfortunate lesson learned when the fullness of our inherent aggression has been spent.

Those responsible for what has occurred in India are to be utterly condemned. But to condemn them also requires that we condemn every facet of the aggressive mechanism that we have allow to continue that cements the promotion of the deliverance of death as a tactic with which to intimidate, depress, and dominate. For we are all culpable in helping maintain that reality, even if we have never personally fired a shot.

We are the sons and daughters of a terrible legacy, one that has gone unburdened throughout the course of our tenure on this planet. We are children of murder, the anointed offspring of death from above and search and destroy.

There will come a time when this planet will no longer have any use for us. Perhaps, when all is said and done, that is peace. And in saying as much, one can only hope that nature shows us that no matter how skilled we have become at destroying one another, she possesses the ultimate solution to the problem that is mankind. For despite all of our hypocritical beliefs with regards to the use of dominance to secure peace, it seems to me that its full measure can only be achieved when we are no longer.

That is the reality that we have created for ourselves, and one that, in the end, we will ultimately have to account for. The world is old, she can be patient. We are but the blink of an eye to her and millions of her other guests that have lived in harmony with her long before we assumed this mantle of superiority. They, nor she, will mourn our passing. For with it will come peace, even if those we consider too unintelligent to comprehend it ultimately inherit what we could never brave to aspire to.

How does one react to the fact that, according to the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species, 25% of mammals on this planet are at risk of extinction?

That’s one quarter of all mammals on earth.

How in the hell did we allow it to come to this? That there would be a time in our history in which a quarter of all mammals on this planet would be facing the possibility of extinction. I realize that I’m repeating myself, but I am simply stunned.

And the foremost cause? Loss of habitat primarily due to deforestation.

As the population of the planet increases, and room and resources are required to facilitate such growth, animals are paying the price for it. In fact, according to the authors of the report, 25% could be an underestimate.

It is a good thing that animals do not possess the ability to take up arms and coordinate some sort of counter offensive, because put into human terms they would be fighting for their very survival, something that, given our own rationales throughout history, we would be unable to condemn them for.

And rightly so.

The Critically Endangered grey-shanked douc langur.

It’s a good thing that we possess the technology to photograph and film animals in the wild. That way, when a species disappears, it has the ability to haunt us for eternity.

In the documentary 11th Hour, former CIA Director James Woolsey, of all people, makes a very important point with regards to the correlation between consumerism and industrial opportunism and the ability to affect change in a very short period of time given what are traditionally viewed as ‘exceptional circumstances’.

Woolsey’s point of reference was the transformation of the US auto industry into an industrial mechanism with which to produce aircraft, tanks, and a variety of other military necessities during the early stages of America’s involvement in the Second World War. That transformation took, believe it or not, merely six months. Put into context, if the disastrous environmental reality that we are currently facing was seriously addressed by government, the implementation of alternative energy use, that being non-carbon based energy (fossil fuels), could be introduced in a very timely fashion. It would also create jobs, which would replace those lost in the transformation. The only loser in that transformation would be the corporate oil sector, which possesses such enormous influence that, in truth, they are largely responsible for the inability, or unwillingness, of government to act. Ultimately, greed has become the foremost factor in the inability to seriously implement alternative energy sources that would significantly impact the amount of damage that fossil fuels do on a daily basis.

Of course, many economists will argue tooth and nail that such a transformation would be disadvantageous. But that supposes that the economy is of greater significance than the environment. The only problem with such logic is that economies can grow; as can populations and the waste they produce. The environment, on the other hand, cannot expand to match it. It is a limited and immovable thing, and therefore unalterable with regards to meeting the demands of economic growth.

In the last half of the twentieth century the world’s population has grown faster than at any other point in human history. In fact, during that period it has increased so much that that increase alone constitutes a figure greater than the population of the planet at any time prior to the industrial revolution. During that increase, the primary source of energy used by the population of the planet has been carbon based – which includes everything from food production to transportation to the production of electricity.

For the majority of human history our species relied on available sunlight for energy. But since the discovery of fossil fuels, we have become wholly dependent on an energy source that is not only unsustainable, but also catastrophically damaging with regards to its impact on the environment. Thus, we now find ourselves in an era in which we are forced to make a very important choice – to either disregard the realities of that dependency and its ramifications or to address our dependence on fossil fuels and work to eliminate it.

In the end, and despite our intelligence, our species may very well constitute nothing more than a global parasite, one that, having been given the chance to grow and consume the benefits of its host may very well find itself the author of its own destruction because of it. Given that, it should also not be overlooked that despite the damage caused, our host will outlast us, no matter how superior we believe ourselves to be. It has, in the billions of years of its existence, seen life forms come and go, and to think that we are somehow immune to that natural eventuality is, perhaps, the primary reason that we refuse to alter our perspective.

Of course, there are those that faithfully believe that a higher power created the world and that what we do to it doesn’t matter because is it, in the end, part of a greater divine plan. There is little that can be said to such individuals regarding this subject, only that if a divine plan does exists, our eventual demise is a part of it, and that the endurance and eventual reconstitution of the natural world is as well. Unless, that is, God’s plan is to also destroy the natural world in the process.

For those of you that are unaware, the Province of Alberta is the world’s largest exporter of oil to the United States. Since the invasion of Iraq, instability in the Middle East has made the arduous and expensive process of exploiting Alberta’s oil sands lucrative. Since then, it has become one of the most magnetic oil reserves in the world, with both foreign and domestic corporate interests operating in the Province paying unbelievably low taxes for the privilege of raping the Canadian wilderness. In return, numerous Albertans have gained from the boom while some haven’t, and the rest of the country really hasn’t – but that’s not really an issue of import next to the damage that process itself is doing.

According to Environmental Defense, the excavation of the oil sands is, itself, producing enormous amount of greenhouse gasses. The process is also poisoning local water supplies. Of course, and not surprising in the least, output is projected to grow to a level that, by 2015, will see 3 million barrels of oil produced a day.

Money, as we’re all aware, is far more important than the environment. It is also, in some cases, worth running the risk of creating public health problems as well. But as long as the bank is fat, it’s easy enough to dismiss such concerns as long as those benefiting continue to benefit – and that most certainly includes both the Albertan and federal governments.

While futile, the question must be asked – how much damage must be caused before the Province, and Ottawa, realize what it is they’ve done? Besides the global affects of the greenhouse gasses produced, what of the affects on the environment itself? On the ecosystem and ground water? How much of the northern Albertan landscape has to be turned into something that more resembles the surface of the moon than the earth before we wake up to the fact that it wasn’t worth it in the end?

You know, it’s interesting how easy it is to forget that this planet has finite resources, and that the longer we abuse it the more assured our own demise as a species becomes. Of course, there are those that will argue until their dying breath that that isn’t the case, that we couldn’t possibly consume so much of this planet’s resources as to actually cause our own extinction. Then again, the last two times the world went to war we exclaimed after each - never again - and look how that’s turned out.

Any species that has already created a means with which to destroy itself several times over certainly can’t be taken at its word with regards to the exploitation of its own environment. Destroying is, in truth, the only thing that we actually excel at. Even our creations cause destruction. Truthfully, the seeds of some of our most brilliant advancements have come from our never-ending love affair with exacting the art of killing one another in a more timely and efficient manner.

Nowhere in the natural world does that phenomenon exist, and that fact is something that we should take to heart. That is, if we haven’t wiped out every living example on this planet before we finally do. Because every hour of every day, three species, be they plant or animal, are rendered extinct. That’s 500 species a week. Given the law of averages, we can’t avoid the inevitable forever.