PLANET EARTH IS BLUE

What are we all on? By this I do not mean drugs although I would wager many are. No we are, quite simply on a planet. Just a lump of rock, billions of years old floating around in space.
However we humans are obsessed with the bloody thing. Some say we are ruining it; some say wait and see, and some don’t care.

The current debate raging in Britain about should we have more nuclear power stations is an interesting one. But one with no answer as far as I can see. Let’s look at the facts.
Nuclear power is a bit dangerous, but they argue better for the environment [barring core meltdown- Chicken Kiev anyone?]

than fossil fuel plants, then others say we need wind farms and hydro-electric plants but then the same people earlier in the chain say ‘oh we can’t have them they are so ugly and ruin the countryside can’t we have a nuclear power station behind those tall trees?’ What about the recent evidence of plants naturally releasing methane and thus adding to the greenhouse effect? I see it as a catch 22 situation myself.

Infact the whole global warming debate is dubious if you ask me. I’m not one of these conspiracy nuts before the two of you out there reading start typing your reply. but it does seem to smell of we can’t have the third world industrialising and spoiling all those lovely unspoilt places we go on holiday to with smelly factories and heavy industry. I’m quite sure the same landed gentry in this fair isle voiced the same concerns in the 19th century about preserving the countryside. Wait a minute. I think they are still saying that. Well as old Oscar said ‘They are the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable. Maybe the blood sport ban was revenge for the miners, the steel workers and the shipyards. Who’d have thought Maggie Thatcher was really an eco-warrior in disguise.

I’m getting side tracked here though. My main point stems from those lovely ads on TV about carbon footprints. Global warming, that great cause of those with too little on their minds to worry about other than the fate of their great, great, great grandchildren. A sizeable percentage of the population of this little globe are too busy trying not to die tomorrow than worry about thinning ozone. The jury still being out on that one.

One gentleman, feeling himself to be quite profound tells us smugly that we are destroying the planet’s ability to heal itself. Really? What he doesn’t seem to be considering and I doubt anyone else has is that this planet wasn’t made for us. I am not going to get involved with notions of higher beings or the like, but evidence would suggest a lot of other creatures have had the run of the place before us and we know that a great deal of them will continue to survive without us killing them all the time. I suggest that it is a bit big headed in a cosmic sense to think that the planet is unable to heal itself for our benefit. I think rather Mother Earth is trying to shake off a little virus, a skin disease it has and the universe’s GP has suggested she cut down on the ozone for a few millennia and the nasty little buggers will go somewhere else or die off.

Or put another way, Human knowledge of the planet is scant at best. Since we have only been forced to accept there are other planets out with our solar system, how can we pretend to know everything there is to know about such heavenly bodies? Our atmosphere could be changing in an organic way. We simply do not know for sure. But one thing is a dead cert; this spinning blob of matter will be here long after we frail humans are gone. Mind you by then the cockroaches will be as big as buses.