Re: I love David Attenborough
Everything is interdependent. All of us can all be pro-human, pro-flora, pro-fauna, pro-resource - all at the same time. We can't fix all of it, but we can try to cross party lines to establish priorities.
The planet will always work towards stasis. It doesn't make ethical decisions about what stays and what goes. We can work to control it for so long, but the historical outcomes for species that use up their resources or become over-populated is highly predictable.
That said, we can, to some degree, slow down or speed up the natural system. If we chose to do nothing - that is a decision too. It's just a matter of priorities as it has been said here.
When it comes to dependence on the system, there is no more endangered species than our own in the grand scheme. We are just too resource dependent and exploitive. We all either work with Nature or against it to delay the inevitable and hopefully ensure we have some quality of life between now and then. It's just a matter of how we want to play this fools game of being little gods.
But, there is another interesting thing - it isn't just about function, our ability to survive as a species, there is also this strange element that plays into the universe - form. If we abandon all quality of life - say in an apocalyptic scenario in which we have figured out how to control nature enough that we can still survive, but have wiped out all natural beauty (beaches, rainforests, hillsides, reefs - with all their flora and fauna) having paved the world and growing food in skyscrapers for an artificially sustained rats-in-a-cage population of 20 billion or more - then what's the point?
Attenborough has brought to our consciousness, all of these things.
(Muddy, I have worked on that beach many times in Southpoint Hawai'i to clean up beach trash - about 2 tons washes up a month. Seeing the impact of plastics, the state has illegalized single-use plastic bags. When I was there this month, they are back to using brown paper bags in every store and most people are now using reusable tote bags. No one is complaining.)