Children of Earth

Children of Earth....this may sound like something out of a cheesy 90's sci-fi show but I challenge you to think about this just a little bit more. What does it mean? Humans? Animals? Other things that may exist on Earth that we still don't acknowledge?

Let me tell you what it means to me. Everything, quite literally everything. Every organismal particle that occupies physical space and time on any plane of existence. As the dominating race on the planet, we homo sapiensis, have always considered ourselves rulers of our little blue planet. Therefore making ourselves the "Children of Earth". Is this correct? Well, somewhat so yes.

When you think of someone's children you might automatically think about what they will inherit based on their family name and who they are. For instance, a child of the Kennedy family would inherit a legacy of politics or a child of the Walton family would inherit the vast fortune of their family. But what will the children of Earth inherit? Well the Earth of course...or what is left of it.

I am now speaking of inevitable global extinction of the human race and all who live upon it due to the rapid effects of global climate change. From here I could go on a very long tangent about how people are destroying and how we could do things so much better. Given my background in the earth sciences and my current academic standing on the matter I can bet that I could even convince some of you, who are skeptical, that it truly is happening. However, that is not the purpose of why I am writing this.

My purpose is to convey a very simply message from every other organism from the planet, who are not members of the human race. "We are here". To my fellow humans I say the same to you "We are not alone on this Earth". You might be thinking well of course we aren't alone there are millions of other species on this planet that share our living space. But let me truly reiterate that statement so it really hits home. "We really aren't alone here, but we are the strongest and most advanced".

Now you're having another "duh" moment, of course we are the strongest and most advanced species, do you see a city of apes roaming around? What comes with being the strongest and the most advanced species on the planet? Responsibility. Right? I mean we expect our older siblings to be more responsible than our younger ones due to their age and knowledge of the world. But what does that really mean? What is responsibility and what does it really encompass? And more importantly why should we care about it so much?

I'll tell you why. Because we are the only ones in any position to care and take responsibility for what happens to Earth, it is our home after all. All of the other organisms here have never been in our position, I am sure they care (speaking anthropomorphically now) that their food and families are getting fed and they have a safe place to sleep and raise their young.

So with that in mind we can finally topple the main reason for this article, since we are in such a unique position to care and take responsibility. That makes the human race unequivocally responsible for what happens in the end, to our planet. The way our neighboring species (animals and plants) affect our planet is also our responsibility, because we are in a position of power over these things. We are not responsible necessarily in the sense that we can control these things, but because we can choose to bolster their numbers or eradicate them completely if we choose.

Just like pet owners are responsible for their pets, people are responsible for the health and upkeep of wildlife and their surrounding homes. Not because wildlife should be considered people's pets or their personal property in anyway, but just because we are all inhabiting the same space and we are the stronger and more advanced of the inhabitants. Being the biggest and the baddest predator on the planet doesn't just mean we can do whatever we want, it also means we control how and where everything beneath us lives and operates.

Similar to how a pack of wolves controls the deer population and indirectly all the animals beneath the deer in the food chain, including their food source which is grass and plants. In wildlife ecology this concept is known as a trophic cascade, in reality, everyday understanding it simply means, whoever drives the car controls the fate of the passengers within said car. The passengers can only hope that the driver will not careen into a tree and kill them all, all responsibility lies on the driver to see the passengers and themselves to safety.

So why am I blabbing about all this? What am I really getting at after all this? My passion. Animals and the health of the environment, I have spent my life learning about it and all the ways life could be improved or how it could end. My true passion is for the health and endearment of our wildlife population and our marine life populations across the globe in any capacity. I am not asking anyone to share in my passion, I am simply asking for everyone to take a step back and think about what I said in the beginning. "We are not alone here". Everything we do has an impact on something else, something we may not even think about or even realize.

We have grown to such an exponential population size that our impacts to the world are not just restricted to direct actions against nature (tree thinning, deforestation, mining, etc.) But all of our subtle and indirect actions are what now have taken over as the most destructive impact to our world. I am speaking now of garbage disposal, waste removal, global pollution of air, land and sea.

I care about high carbon dioxide levels dissolving into our ocean because these levels cause ocean acidification of our oceans, which will kill all of our crustaceans, and fish which will cause all the predatory species to starve to death. Those same high carbon dioxide levels that make it to the atmosphere are slowly heating up the planet, causing what is known as a Greenhouse Effect. This will eventually lead to our ozone layer depleting and exposing our planet's surface to the sun's direct UV rays and the vacuums of space. In case anyone hasn't seen Alien, or any other science fiction movie, there is no chance of survival in open space.

I care about our forest disappearing because millions of animals live in those forests from insects to the grandest of the land mammals such as elephants and big cats. I also care that these forests are being cut down because we as mammals must breathe oxygen from the air, and our trees supply 90% of that oxygen. We cannot live without breathable air, and neither can anything else.

So now that I have proven we should all be on the same page regarding animal and environmental health and how it goes hand in hand with our own health. Let me once again say that it is our responsibility as the dominant species on the planet to make sure we do not destroy it. Not only are we dooming ourselves by acting so recklessly but we are dooming everything else that lives here.

To use our car driver metaphor again, if the driver were to careen off the side of the road and kill everyone and themselves. Whose fault is it? The driver's of course, but what about the other passengers? Can they be faulted for being in the car at that time? In the end it does not really matter whose fault it was, because everyone is dead. The innocent passengers who decided to be in that car, were doomed not by any fault of their own but simply because they were occupying the same space. We are in the driver's seat of our car (Earth) and all the wildlife and marine life are our passengers. They rely on us to drive our car to safety and not go off a cliff.

Let us never let ourselves get to the point that we no longer care whose fault it is. Let's never accept defeat in the battle for stable, non-detrimental occupation of Earth where we can all coexist (us and wildlife) peacefully for many more millenia. We must maintain control and have a care of how we drive our car, because everyone in that car is counting on us.

And so ladies and gentlemen, I leave you with these parting words. Always remember you're actions affect other species and it is your responsibility to mitigate these affects, because you alone have the power to do so.