[StupidScript]

I think I did get your point, littleFella. I'm just stressing the fact that no part of the ecosystem can be impacted without the rest of the ecosystem being impacted. It's all the same loop.

If someone empties their used engine oil into their local pond, it has an effect on every part of the system in some small way. If a giant petrochemical company empties thousands of gallons of used oil into some other body of water (or on land, even), it has a greater impact, true, but the smaller abuses also contribute.

Global temperatures are directly tied into that system, and are directly related to those sorts of effects. We can't simply accept the idea that when the planet's water supply (or other attribute) becomes contaminated that it has no impact on the ecosystem overall. There is only so much a planet can take.

For all we know, we are much closer to the tipping point than we are capable of detecting. For all we know, it might be that last quart of oil that trips the final switch.

We DO know that humans are producing much more pollution of all forms than any other natural creature on Earth. We always have, because we can. We MUST know that our pollution is having an impact on the ecosystem as a whole. Therefore, we MUST acknowledge that some of that impact is likely to be negative, ergo sum, the longer we continue to make even a small negative impact, and we're making a big negative impact, the more likely that humankind is the single force most responsible both for contributing to the deterioration of the natural world we depend on for life AND for mitigating our actions to absolutely minimize any negative impact we are making.

We can't wait until the chimpanzees decide to take action. And we can't wait until the ecosystem becomes so badly damaged that there is NO recovery for it. At that point, the Earth can expect only a slide into a world where human beings simply cannot survive.

I, for one, don't want to wait until our scientists tell us, "Well, folks, that's it. Turns out that humankind IS responsible for messing up the ecosystem, like Al Gore warned us about 30 years ago. Because we didn't make any attempts to clean things up while there was still time, as we debated whether it was God or Man who was messing thing up, we're in a situation where we simply do not have the ability or the time to reverse the effects of generations of human waste spilling into the ecosystem. The end is here, folks. We could have worked on it when the problem was smaller and still managable, but we dicked around for too long, and now it's too late. Say 'bye bye' to Earth."

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I apologize for fear-mongering, G10, but this is clearly not the type of thing that the media are going to solve for us. Nor are the major corporations who contribute to this mess going to do anything about it, soon. We can go back to sleep for another decade, but if we don't get afraid of the potential consequences pretty soon, we can expect our daily lives to be changed by the forces of nature and we won't be able to do anything about it.

I'd rather be afraid while there is still time than be afraid because all hope is gone.
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