Humans are the only creatures on earth that harm the planet

Anyone ever think of this?

 

Probably is true,isn't it. Although humans consider all kinds of other beings to be "pests" and try and wipe em out, like bugs and rodents and wolves and humans from other countries. sigh.....

 

man I know there is some kind of weed (not from the hemp genus) that they imported from africa to help protect against soil erosion on road sides in tennessee. it ended up not having any natural enemies in america and is destroying all the trees and plantlife in the area by starving the trees of sunlight.

I think *everything* harms the planet but also helps it. Humans just don't have any natural enemies except for each other so we are running amok. Thus in the last 50 or so years we get AIDS, cancer, VDs, and whatnot. The planet's doing what it can to slow us down, and we're still fighting it. If we don't find symbiosis than I have no doubt the earth will cure itself of the human virus eventually. or the body will die and the virus feeding off it will no doubt die as well.

pretty interesting situation from a cosmic perspective. Imagine looking at the earth from your place on Jupiter as some third world planet with some crazy fungus/cancer growing on it and starving it of all it's nutrients.

 

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I consider the indirect actions of humans to be of the worst consequenses as in biological pollution. Heard of rabbits or canetoads in Australia? Both were deliberatly introduced. The same cannot be said of some species of ants.What some are capable of is quite frightening.

 

but if we would have never of moved the plant here there would have been no problem... it serves its purpose where it was ......... was it garlic mustard by chance?// that shit grows like crazy around here sucking the light from everything around it

 

I think there are lots of plants, animals, insects, bacteria, etc that are somewhat harmful to the planet (or at least other oganisms) but they are usually in some kind of natural balance with their environment. Humans have just figured out how to things on such a large scale that it is not within the natural balance.

 

We just don't seem to belong in the web of life.

 

It's called "kudzu" and it came from Asia, not Africa. It has no natural pests/enemies here, I guess you've noticed.

The beaver changes its environment drastically, but the change is only temporary (a few years to a decade at most). The changes man makes last a very long time.

 

this goes threw my head like 23 times a day

 

Wow... that's like so deep and so true. If you really sit back and think about it, no other animal in the world would be able to harm the environment.

 

so a beaver couldn't knock over a whole forest liek a stack of dominos? pssht

 

Many many years ago, a monocellular organism developed the ability to take CO2 in, convert it to carbohydrates and exhale O2. This poisoned the atmosphere, killing the anerobic organisms that were 90% of the species living at the time.

From a more recent era: when a beaver builds a dam, the local ecology changes dramaticaly. A flowing stream is turned into a still pond. There is a complete change over the affected area.

Every species affects the earth. Humans are the most powerful, but that power also gives them options. They can choose between differing effects.

 

Wow, interesting point. But I think, as both the thread starter and MikeE said, humans also have the ability to create unknown substances like our chemicals and bi-products that impact the environment in a huge way.

 

Correction. Human's are the only creatures on Earth who are concious of themselves harming the planet, and actually have a choice to harm or not harm the Earth.

 

Humans will only learn we cannot control the earth when it is too late.

 

like when someone steers it into the sun?

 

i knew i took a wrong turn, my GPS has been crazy latley.

 

Elephants produce more co2 in their shit than a small country

 

Maybe not the only but defintiley the most. I don't want to get into a whole religous discussion here but this thought has popped into my head from time to time. Most religions (I'm by no means a religous expert so I'm making a generalization here) believe that God created us in the image of himself. Well considering the amount of damage we cause to the rest of Gods creations (earth, wildlife, each other) I sometimes find this hard to believe. Basically what i'm trying to say is that humans consider themselves the dominant species of the planet, meanwhile we are really screwing the planet up. You ever think that God created everything on this planet to coexist and humans are actually his 'mistake' that is fucking everything else up? Anybody ever think this, agree, or just think I'm a blasphemous atheist. I'm Catholic by the way but as you would imagine I don't consider myself devout.