And even when we do know, we continue to destroy because today is much more important than tomorrow. It is by today's achievements, today's profit margins, today's boasts that we are judged. The very philosophy which has brought the planet teetering to the edge of destruction is, we are told, the same philosophy which will save us. Like the practice of bleeding in the 18th century, the cure for our haemorrhage, they say, is to prize open even wider the severed arteries of life. Allow those with the power even greater licence to make money by destroying ever more and the cure will be found.
Profit is now the global penicillin.
Perhaps the most frightening aspect of this voracious appetite is that it can never be satisfied. The more it gets the more it wants. Profit, however, knows no morality other than to be successful in financial terms. In pursuit of that success, humans and other animals are exploited - ever more demanded of them. Knowledge, truth and understanding have ceased to be signposts to the future and have become minor obstacles to be circumvented.