Pollution threatens all life. Man made pollution is the result of the industrial revolution and growth. Or it is the result of criminal expansionism?
Pollution is the addition of artificial byproducts from unclean industrial activity to a natural environment, too often with unforeseen consequences, or worse, known but hidden consequences. One of the pollutants we continue to add to the precious atmosphere is CO2. Unfortunately for us, there are many others. In the short term, we are most threatened by the consequences of CO2, but who knows what other accumulations of poisons in the food chain may cause breaks and starve us to death first.
For example, our chemical warfare on “pests” that seems to have a side effect of bee eradication, may be the end of us before lower Miami is fully under-water from sea rising with the melting ice-covers of Antartica and Greenland. That is ice above the land not, which when it is water will displace the coastline and reshape the British Isles. Is that how much we care about our countryside?
See also:
George Monbiot – Why we couldn’t care less about the natural world