Limited Capacity

The UN Convention on Biological Diversity has said that humans have pushed the limits of what the Terran ecosystem can handle. I could have fucking told you that. I could have also told you that we need to do something about this now. Not lay out progress targets for 2010, because like all great progress targets (Kyoto Protocol, Live8, The Middle-East "roadmap" to Peace, ad infinitum) they won't be met. I know it, you know it, the delegates who sign such agreements know it.

However, all is not lost. I remain confident that the viral-like capacity to replicate ourselves is going to be our undoing. A shrinking forest can sustain less and less life. Shrinking resources (wether they be water, living space, or fuels) will mean 6+ Billion people is not sustainable. A lot of people are going to die until the natural balance is restored. What I fear, is this species coming out the other side of such a world-wide famine and learning nothing.

As a side note, I was watching Jaws on Tuesday night and juxtaposed the following two scenes:

Really beautiful... and direction changes just like a flock of birds evading a predator.
Alan Grant, Jurassic Park (1993)

ARGH! ARGH! GET OUT OF THE WATER! ARGH! AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHH! *people clambering all over each other in disarray*
Everyone at the beach, Jaws (1975)

That's [one of] the same reasons I found "9/11" hilarious. Americans on TV, never before being so hideously self-absorbed. How many fucking times must you scream "Oh My G*d!"? Anyway, I digress as always...

I think this nicely bridges the gap between the Low series (II, III, I*) and the Humanity series I'm preparing for publication in the next two weeks. In Low 2/4 I wrote the following:

...Humans arrived and unscrewed the cap on the equilibrium. At this moment , I would truly welcome this species' extinction

About a month ago I happened to catch the end of an early Next Generation episode. I retract the above words from Low 2/4 because of the following scene, which though shot on possibly the cheapest looking set of all time, is still poignant:

The portal figure forms into a hooded figure [...] It approaches Riker calling him a "barbarian" with its thundering voice. [...] The portal decides to test Riker's moral wisdom; as is customary to test all savages the Tkon Empire encounters. The portal demands an answer to its challenge. Riker finally answers: "Fear is the true enemy, the only enemy".

Satisfied with Riker's response, the entity turns rather friendly. It repeats "Know your enemy and know yourself, and victory will always be yours." which it gathered from Riker's mind and inquires who this Sun Tzu is. Riker explains he was a philosopher from Earth's past to which the guardian places his wisdom on par with its own.

[...] Riker requests the entity to free the Enterprise, which it does so. Then it asks what of the Ferengi; offering to destroy them. Riker states by destroying them they will have learned nothing to which the portal agrees is a wise decision.

This species may be a walking disaster for this planet, but we're rapidly approaching the point at which the planet is going to turn on us. Maybe then we'll come out the other side with more respect for nature, in the same way the Star Trek franchise shows humanity emerging from nuclear war and learning to co-operate with itself and with others.

This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. — President Jimmy Carter

*Low 4/4 was later incorporated into Almost which shares the tone of the series. 'Bridge' material written on 28/02/06

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