There are people everywhere. I doubt there are very many places left in the world now where you can walk very far without coming across the obvious spoors of mankind. Tracks, roads, garbage washed up on the beach, cultivation, jet trails across the sky, we’re taking over. Not long ago I read an article that claimed the earth would run out of oil and gas within the next 30-50 years. I keep foreseeing a science fiction future of no grass, no trees, no animals except pets and domesticated breeds for slaughter and it’s in my lifetime.
All the little villages around us are expanding, a stop-motion crawl into the fields, paving over the earth and squaring it off into a concrete quilt of lots and blocks. The march of progress, the expansion of technology, the population increase. Where does it stop? With the Greater Metropolitan CityState of Earth?
How do we reconcile the improvements of science, technology and medicine with the losses we create each day?
It’s not as if we can hop next door to the nearest Earth-like planet and loot and pillage its natural resources instead. We can barely get humans off our own ball of dirt for a few days, much less interplanetary flight, exploitation and commerce.
We all go so blithely on our merry ways, using up, expanding over, discarding, piling on, reproducing.
Does it stop when the lions are gone?
Does it end when the frogs stop singing?
It stops when there’s no more left to use. It ends when it’s too late.