Like all animals, human beings have always taken what they want from nature. But we are the rogue species. We are unique in our ability to use resources on a scale and at a speed that our fellow species can't.
Interpretation
Humans exploit natural resources more intensively and rapidly than other species.
This quote highlights the distinctive nature of humans as a species that not only utilizes natural resources but does so at an unparalleled scale and speed. Unlike other animals, humans have developed the technology and social structures necessary to exploit the environment in ways that can be both innovative and destructive, raising important questions about sustainability and our responsibility towards nature.
In practice
In a discussion about climate change, this quote can emphasize our responsibility towards natural resources.
Water, like many other resources, is harvested, transported and used throughout all aspects of society. Unlike other resources, water is critical to the survival of all forms of life. The underlying question that sits at the core of my exploration is to what degree can we shape water before it begins to shape us.
As artists, we can help, visually and intellectually, to make people understand that, at some point, we have to accept that it is our collective impact that is putting the whole planet in jeopardy.
Our planetary system is affected by a magnitude of force as powerful as any naturally occurring global catastrophe, but one caused solely by a single species: us.
Twilight drops her curtain down, and pins it with a star.
The earth has grown old with its burden of care, But at Christmas it always is young.
Many animals even now spring out of the soil, Coalescing from the rains and the heat of the sun. Small wonder, then, if more and bigger creatures, Full-formed, arose from the new young earth and sky. The breed, for instance, of the dappled birds Shucked off their eggshells in the springtime, as Crickets in summer will slip their slight cocoons All by themselves, and search for food and life. Earth gave you, then, the first of mortal kinds, For all the fields were soaked with warmth and moisture.
I drive a hybrid, and we've changed our light bulbs and windows and installed solar panels and geothermal ground source heat pumps and most everything else.
The world, when you look at it, it just can't be random. I mean, it's so different than the vast emptiness that is everything else, and even all the other planets we've seen, at least in our solar system, none of them even remotely resemble the precious life-giving nature of our own planet.
There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.
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