Machines can work exponentially faster at chewing up our Earth than a human with a plow. The last 300 years has seen a level of environmental, ecosystem and species destruction that it would have taken many more centuries for a less technical society to achieve. It is hard to imagine that it is ever possible to run out of time, but we are. Rainforests once covered 14 percent of the land surface of the Earth. Ninety-five percent of the forests in the lower 48 states having been logged at least once.
Time is no longer on our side.
Large areas of our oceans are poisoned and lifeless and in some parts of the world, birth defects are a way of life. Since the debacles of James Watt during the Reagan Administration when this Secretary of the Interior openly showed his contempt for environmental issues and captured massive media attention, conservative forces have gotten really good at keeping their environmental destruction below the level of most media attention. I preferred Watt - at least you could keep an eye on him and know where the battle lines were. The conservative of today knows how to talk the lingo and distract us from what they are doing with promises of fairness. We are in an unprecedented era in human history, one where ecosystems and planetary life support systems upon which the future depends are being destroyed.