From: ag@gserv1.dl.ac.uk (Old Wolf)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asean
Subject: Re: Environment - Singapore
Date: 30 Sep 92 09:11:48 GMT
Reply-To: ag@gserv1.dl.ac.uk
Organization: Daresbury Laboratory, UK

In article 27693@news.service.uci.edu, cheu@venus.its.uci.edu (Kelvin Cheu) writes:
>
>I hope ag@gserv1.dl.ac.uk is not being upset by me.  I've been in the US
>for 3 years.  No doubt this country has lots of problems but the natural
>wonder never cease to amaze me.
>
>I've been to Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Denali, Prince Willian Sound,
>Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Death Valley .....It is
>hard to express the feeling of standing right at the bottom of a 
>granite cliff of 5000 ft tall, and those things has been around for
>million years.  To some of you I may sound wied.  But those stuff
>make me feel that man is relatively insignificant.
>
>I know that we do have such things to offer in Malaysia.  But our
>people is still going thru the slow process of learning to 
>appreciate nature.  As long as this is not achieved, those places
>in Malaysia are better kept unpublicised and left for those die-hard
>travellers who are prepared to hike days through our rain forest to
>explore them.
>
>Kelvin



No, I am not upset. A bit disappointed, but not upset.
I refer to my criticism of your statement regarding recycling.

I fully appreciate the beauty of nature, particularly where
man has not interfered, but I still appreciate parks, and
landscaping too (it would be pretty miserable without these
things).

I can also understand your feelings about the grandeur of
nature's wonders, although I must say that I think that man
cannot be insignificant if he has the ability to appreciate
such things. He would be insignificant if he ignored them!

My point about recycling is that:

If ANYTHING can be recycled, then do it. It might be 
expensive at first (initial costs of recycling plant),
but in the long term it will always be worth it. It is
not acceptable to continue damaging the environment
just because of human greed and short-sightedness.

I discovered an article which I think puts everything
nicely into perspective. I cannot remember the origins
of the article (Friends of the Earth, WWF, or 
Greenpeace probably), but here it is:



    Planet Earth is 4,600 Million Years Old.

 If we condense this inconceivable timespan into an
understandable concept, we can liken Earth to a person
of 46 years of age.
 Nothing is known about the first 7 years of this
person's life, and whilst only scattered information
exists about the middle span, we know that only at the
age of 42 did the Earth begin to flower.
 Dinosaurs and the great reptiles did not appear until
one year ago, when the planet was 45. Mammals arrived
only 8 months ago. In the middle of last week human-like
apes evolved into ape-like humans, and at the weekend
the last ice age enveloped the Earth.
 Modern man has been around for 4 hours. During the last
hour: humans discovered agriculture. The industrial
revolution began a minute ago.
 During those sixty seconds of biological time, modern
man has made a rubbish tip of Paradise.
 Humans have multiplied their numbers to plague
proportions, caused the extinction of over 500 species
of animals, ransacked the planet for fuels, and now
stand like brutish infants over their meteoric rise
to ascendancy, on the constant brink of war, and of
effectively destroying this oasis of life in the
solar system.


Old Wolf.
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