Gaia

Oh, look here. Right there on my calendar I’ve noted that on the 27th of this month the planet Mars will be the closest to Earth that it will ever be again until the year 2287. Maybe we will have a happy and thriving colony there by then. Or maybe we will have turned this lovely, bounteous planet that we live on into an dead desert like Mars or Venus by then. Maybe we will have killed Gaia or, more likely, ‘she’ will have killed us.
Again with the Gaia! Some of you may be wailing. “We don’t cotton to that there ancient Greek religious stuff!”
The only relation to the ancient Greek religions in what I’m talking about here is the name Gaia. Go, Google 'Gaia Theory', I did. Yes, It refers to something much bigger and more powerful than us relatively simple humans.
Just let me try to tell you what Gaia is according to the Gaia theory. Then you can check what I said against what the experts say.

Gaia is indeed a being. NOT a humanoid being. Gaia is a huge, complex and as far as anyone knows, non-thinking entity. But it is a living thing none the less. A living thing that has evolved with the aging of this planet. A living thing that has been intimately a part of that evolution since a few chemicals came together in some primordial ooze somewhere and started making more chemicals just like them.
Those proto critters changed the area around them, the area around them affected them, changed them a little, they changed the area more and it steam rolled from there. Some of the critters changed the environment around themselves so much they had to move to ‘greener pastures’, but the ones they left behind liked it just where they were.
That kept happening. The critters kept changing the environment, the environment kept changing the critters right on up until today with a few exceptions like asteroid strikes and such.
Make no mistake, this is still happening. But the important thing is that one of these critters, us, the hairless ape, developed the ability to change the heck out of the environment around him, and change it FAST. This hairless little ape has developed the ability to change the environment so fast that other critters just can not keep up. Oh, a few sort of have. Critters that this little ape happens to like, or want, or need for various things are apparently keeping up. I’m talking here about critters like dogs, horses, cats, cattle, goats, corn,rice, (I’m calling any living thing a critter here) cotton, bananas or what-ever. They are ‘keeping up’ because this little ape is changing them himself.
Now here is where the possibility of us turning this beautiful Earth into an unlivable place like Mars or Venus comes in.
The continuity of Gaia depends on the smooth interaction of all of her various organs so that the air, the water and the relative abundance of various chemicals and life forms remain in a symbiotic balance.
If you were a Doctor looking over Gaia as a patient at this point in time I’m fairly sure that right about now you’d be worried because of her unexpectedly increasing temperature. An increase that is occurring when you expected a decrease to start. Then there is the fact that it is also a fairly rapid increase. Then you’d start examining the patient, Gaia.
At that point you would find this one little group of cells, these hairless apes, that had started growing out of all proportion. Cells that had spread all over and were changing other cells (remember the cats and dogs?) and altering the area’s around them in ways that, while these cells were doing well there, even they would soon be unable to survive there. Not only that but these cells were also giving off gasses and other by products that were starting to radically change the patient (Gaia) in ways that would make it impossible for many other cells (wolves, elephants, tigers, tuna, wheat, whales, tomatoes) to survive anywhere within Gaia. These little naked apes, these cancer cells, are not just changing their own environment they are upsetting the ballance that keeps everything else on the planet alive. They are killing Gaia, just like any cancer can kill one of them.

The sad thing is these particular cancer cells are supposedly intelligent beings. They can think, plan and even, if the mood strikes, cooperate with each other. The only things keeping them from opening their eyes and seeing what is going on is fear and greed.

Many of them pop up with the true statement that even we mighty Humans with our greatest weapons can not distroy the whole planet. Like I said that is a true statement. The rock will remain. The water will remain. Exactly as what I don't know. Hey, life may even remain. After all this planet and thus Gaia, has gone through some very large changes in the past.

Yes, the planet will survive. Even Gaia may survive, in some form. But it will not be the Gaia we know. It may not even be a planet we can survive on. We, those nasty little cancer cells that can, but refuse to stop reproducing, we won't be here anymore. And if there is something of us here, on this, the third rock out from a little yellow drawf star, it quite likely won't be what we consider human anymore.

Why do we refuse to stop reproducing at such a bodacious rate? Because some of our religions say we must 'multiply' and nature has equiped us with an almost insane urge to engage in sex. We will do anything to get it. We will risk the Hell that the religions warn us of, the often painful death that other religions threaten us with (not to mention the possibilty of aids, and other desieases), the ire of friends and families and the scorn of sociaty just to get a little nookie. Dispite knowing this, dispite it being obviouse in the gossip of friends and on the news about the scandals of politicians, we refuse to acknowledge this truth about ourselves and most insist that the only way they want their children to be taught to avoid pregnancy is by abstaining from sex.

Yeah, right.

Those 'little angels' are just like Mom and Dad. They are just as much sex crazed naked apes as the parents were. I'm not saying they shouldn't be protected from the nastyness that sometimes accompainies sex. The sleazy stuff. I'm not saying they should be hit up side the head with the whole idea before they are ready for it mentally and physically. (I mean when a really young child askes where puppies come from it's likely best to answer "Mommy dogs" than go into the whole birds and bees story.) But when the hormons start hitting? That's when parents, gardians, or SOME BODY really needs to set the little nympho's in training down and tell them A) About pregnancy, certine deseases and how they are spread, B) How to have the sex they crave with out getting either, and last but not least C) That no mater what their hormons are screaming at them to do they just may not be physically or even mentally ready for any of it yet and that this and that and this other thing are what they can do to find out about it for themselves with no risk for pregnancy, desieas, or physical or mental trama.

Why and how did I get onto sex ed from talking about the Gaia Theory? Simple the worst threat to this planets ecosphere (Gaia) is not, a fuel shortage or even global warming or pollution, but what is causing all of that. What is causing all of that is the way we humans are over populating the planet.

I wrote an earlier blog about the economy and why I see it as being unsustainable. That ties into this. Our world wide economy depends heavily on an ever increasing number of us to work in the factories and buy the products of the factories. But this planet, Gaia, can not support that ever increasing population. A population that religions and political groups (are they really that different from each other even here in the U.S.??) want to keep expanding so that they will have enough believers or votes to become the majority and make everyone else do as 'they' want them to. These things tie togather in that the politicians also want the economy to grow so they can get bigger donations to their campains and the religions want more folks to donate to thier 'good works' and follow their belief.

Sigh.

See. It is circular. A pattern that feeds on itself. (That sort of thing has a name. I read it somewhere, but I forget where and what it's called.) It's a lot like Gaia. Except that it can be stopped. All it would take would be for people, Humans, that happen to be in power to say, "Hey, look. This just won't work anymore" and change things.

Yeah, there would be disruption. Lots of it in fact. The economy would have to be compleatly overhauld. Most folks would have to compleatly change the way they look at themselves and the world around them. Political parties and Religions would have to give up this stupid idea that their particular view and only it should be accepted world wide. There would probably be famins as the economy readjusted, and people being only human, deaths in the famins and the ourtraged political and religious wars.

If we started depending on our individual selves to control the population instead of leaving it to plagues, war, and famin, maybe even decide that a place to sleep in safty, enough to eat and drink and a little safe nooky (with out the chance of having a kid later) now and then, and something worth while to do, was really all we NEEDED and in many cases all a lot of us ever really want perhaps all that disruption could be avoided.

But I doubt it.