To Infinity and Beyond

“A fair defense can be put forward for the view that the world is infinite; or that we do not know that it is not. But, in terms of the practical problems that we must face in the next few generations with the foreseeable technology, it is clear that we will greatly increase human misery if we do not, during the immediate future, assume that the world available to the terrestrial human population is finite. "Space" is no escape”

Garrett Hardin was trying to provide a wake-up call of sorts to the human population, so we all start to realize we are all screwing ourselves over. A very simple idea that has been said many times before, this time in an almost pretentious voice, but correct none-the-less. He talks about how we go through our daily life using resources as if they are going to forever replenish themselves and we can just sit back and not worry about it. But the cold hard truth is our populations, industries and use of resources grows everyday and our planet is not growing with us. It is an unfortunate reality that our planet is finite and we need to act accordingly. It seems to be a common thought process ( I personally have this mindset occasionally), that we as individuals will not make much of a difference so we do not have to change the way we live. But obviously if everyone has that mindset then nothing is being changed and things continue to get worse and diminish. As he said in the last bit of the above quote, “Space is no escape”. There being talk about what planets are possibly inhabitable for the future is so aggravating to me. Where do humans get off  thinking that we can take over a planet, run it dry of its resources, leave it in shambles and continue on to another planet? That being said, is there even a planet that we could live on successfully? Earth has always gone and corrected itself in times when there were extremes, but it has also always led to mass extinctions. Humans have made it a long way since we were first placed here, but with all of this careless destruction of this great planet its honestly looking like we are on a road leading to our own self-created extinction. People need to open their eyes and take those small steps each day to live a greener life. Asking people to not have a certain amount of children is ridiculous; we all just need to live more responsible lives. And anyone who goes into this argument with the mindset that they won’t be around when everything goes downhill is both ignorant and just heartless really. Wake up humans, the earth was here first and it can do just fine with us not around, don’t give it a reason to get rid of us.