Excerpt #96 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
This thing we call life, far from certain, is a fragile phenomenon.
It is up and down like a seesaw.
We are sitting on that seesaw.
Many of us so eager to invest ourselves in the “hereafter” don’t have a clue about what we are doing to the “here.”
Nature has no patience for those who either ignore or abuse her.
THOSE WHO RAPE NATURE PAY WITH THEIR LIVES.
No matter how exalted we think ourselves, all that we can know and become has a material basis obedient to the decipherable laws of physics and chemistry. And no matter how intellectually far above the remainder of life we lift ourselves, and however technically proficient we become, we will stay a biological species, biological in origin, and thence adapted in mind and body to the living world that cradled us. – Edward O. Wilson, 1998 Phi Beta Kappa Oration, Harvard University
E. O. Wilson
Without urgent attention, the global ecosystem will continue to unravel and we’ll consign future generations to a nightmare of deprivation, insecurity and conflict. — Richard Steiner, professor and conservation specialist at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks
The United Nations says $40 billion a year — about what consumers spend on cosmetics — would provide everyone on Earth with clean water, sanitation, health care, adequate nutrition, and education.